balancing light and dark

That time of year has come. Your alarm goes off, your eyelids peel open slowly, feeling heavier than a truck full of elephants. You press snooze, they close, your alarm sounds again. Surely that wasn't five minutes? You fight back, hitting snooze for a second time, managing a rather smug grin for cleverly setting your alarm ten minutes before you actually needed to get up. But there it goes again! Have you entered some sort of time warp??? 

This time, there's no back-up plan, and no wry smile. Instead a reluctant hand creeps from beneath the nice warm duvet and pulls slowly at the curtain, looking to let in a bit of light and stir your brain into action ready for the day ahead. But to your disappointment all you are greeted by is yet more darkness, somebody has stolen the sun. And the warmth you've become accustomed to in summer, especially this year for a nice change.

Zombie-like you rise, arms hanging loosely by your side as you shuffle to the bathroom in your fluffy animal slippers. You know you're still half asleep as after getting out of the shower you find yourself trying to comb your hair with your toothbrush. Time for a coffee.

If you recognise the scenario above you're not alone. This scene, and many like it are repeated at least five times a week across Britain between the months of September and March. And that's over half the year!

So what's going on? Well it's all to do with your big warm friend in the sky, the sun. As well as offering warmth in the summer months, he also gives you something essential for life, light. Sunlight is a rich source of vitamin D which helps build healthy teeth and bones. It also helps your food to grow and gives it the nutrition you need to perform at your very best. And very crucially, it helps to regulate levels of hormones like cortisol, melatonin and others that play such a big part in regulating your mood and energy levels.

A lack of sunlight can leave you feeling down, as in Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD, lethargic and demotivated. Obviously too much can be bad for you too with sunburn and the associated risks, but in British winter you're far likely to get too little. 

So what can you do about it?

Well, quite a lot actually. To start with, you can realise that your body clock, or circadian rhythm changes with the seasons. In the shorter days of the year you'll probably need more sleep and be more tired. Up until Thomas Edyson interfered with nature with the invention of his now fairly widely used lightbulb (you may have seen them in the shops), people generally went to bed much earlier in the winter months. In fact, research shows that before TV's, the internet, 4G phones and electric lighting, people slept for many more hours than they do these days, averaging over 9 hours a night if not more. 

OK, so you may not be able to hibernate for winter (some remote villages in France and other parts of the world still effectively do this) but you can get yourself to bed at a reasonable time and prepare your sleeping environment as best you can to wake feeling refreshed in the morning.

Try these tips to help manage your way through the darker months:

• Get to bed before 11pm. In fact get to bed and switch off by 10:43 pm as on average it takes just over 15 minutes to fall asleep.
• Sleep in complete darkness. Get good curtains and switch off standby lights on electrical goods, or remove them altogether. Charge phones elsewhere or away somewhere if possible. Even the tiniest amount of light on any part of the skin can interfere with sleep quality.
• Don't have it too hot. Sleeping in a cooler environment can help improve sleep quality.
• Light up your mornings. Try a Lumi clock, it wakes you up with a gradually increasing light instead of the stress of a noisy alarm clock. Not convinced it will work? Try it on a weekend morning when you don't have to get up, you'll be surprised.
• Get outside - make the most of breaks at work and in life to get some light in the day. Wrap up warm and get out for a walk, a run or just a trip to the park with Autumn in full splendour.
• Get away - plan a winter sun holiday, it's amazing what an energy boost it can supply.
• Try a classical wake up - ditch the aggressive alarm for a calmer start to the day. Annoying alarms can be stressful causing big surges in adrenaline levels, which may be followed by a subsequent slump and not particularly good for you.
• Synchronise - if you can rise with the sun. This isn't possible for everyone, but if you can, try it and watch your mood rise like the warm orange ball over that hill you can see out of your window.

Sleep well, wake better.

balance your light and dark, balance your life, balance your scales :-)

balance on.......booze

It's the weekend again and no doubt alcohol consumption may increase for some of you, so here's a few pieces of information on how alcohol affects your body short-term and long-term:

Beer bellies - alcohol consumption is strongly linked to the size of your waist. This is because it's high in calories, packed full of sugar and enters your blood stream very quickly. Research in men shows that increased alcohol intake equals increased trouser size. In women, one study did show that moderate drinking (one to two small glasses of wine) did not affect the size of your outfit, but anything above that did.

Beer goggles - a study recently scooped an award for showing that alcohol consumption makes people see themselves as more attractive, but at the same time had no effect on how attractive they appeared to others. If this is the case, it means we should be chatting ourselves up on a night out!

Image courtesy of cbenjasuwan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wine head - it's not just your belly and your eyes that alcohol has a bad relationship with. Alcohol decreases the quality of sleep, decreasing the amount of REM sleep, making you wake up more often and making you sleepier and low in energy during the day.

Wine head doesn't just affect your sleep, as you'll know it carries on the next day. Your hangover may lead to stomach problems, headaches, low energy levels and blood sugar imbalances. These imbalances may cause you to crave sugar foods and undo all of the great work you've put in to get yourself healthy.

Just the one? One to two small glasses of wine or a half/pint per day may offer some protection against type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It is likely that women should drink less than men, probably one drink compared to two for the guys. Small amounts of alcohol appear to increase HDL cholesterol and also to decrease the likelihood of clotting.

Ask yourself when you go out if you drink lots because you enjoy it and you crave that Sunday morning wine head, or do you think that it's the done thing? Are you easily led or do you just have a few and lose track? If any of these apply to you, have a plan for a more balanced evening:

• Drink water in between alcoholic drinks

• Take a set amount of cash and no card

• Team up - there's power in numbers and if a few of you are keen to decrease your alcohol intake, decrease your weight and increase your health, then your gang will become the social norm and others will follow you.

• Move abroad - ok so this is a bit extreme, but many cultures see drinking as a sociable event without having to consume copious amounts. We could learn a thing or two from our worldly-wise neighbours.

These are just a glassful of ideas, you can plan your own that works best for you.

balance your beer, balance your scales :-)

balance on………….The Men Who Made us Thin

Having finally had a chance to sit down and watch all four episodes from this BBC 2 series back to back (the joys of Sky+), it’s worth reviewing what Mr. Jacques Peretti had to say after delving deep into the belly of the weight loss world. Whilst we don't normally recommend sitting on your backside for hours on end, we nobly did it for you and reviewed the key messages here so that you could use that time on moving and being generally healthier and happier! What did we learn?

Diets don’t do it

Jacques was quite scathing of some of the larger weight loss companies in his earlier episodes, sometimes fairly although sometimes the reporting was a little on the sensationalist side and arguably not always a balanced view.

At balance we’d certainly agree that heavily processed shakes, bars and meal replacements is not the key to long-term success. Interestingly though, having spoken to some people who use them recently, they said that it helped them to ‘kick-start’ their weight loss, increase their motivation and then adopt healthy lifestyles to maintain it. One of the balance values is in empowering people to find out what works for themselves, and whilst you won’t find us selling you a powdered mix to add to milk or water instead of having breakfast any time soon, we do recognise the value for some of getting things moving to help motivate them. Remember though the story of the hare and the tortoise!! And remember that if you do go down this route it’s not a long-lasting solution, so you’re only going to have to make yet another change at some point to maintain it.

Fit doesn’t necessarily mean thin

The piece on exercise in episode 2 is worthy of some attention. It is certainly true that exercise on its own may not be THE solution to weight loss, but then again, as the world’s population grows larger day by day, it is fairly clear that no one single solution has been found, or ever will be!

Jacques’ negativity towards exercise for weight loss was clear, although he did rightly point out that there are numerous other reasons for moving from a health and wellbeing perspective. He also neglected one fundamental point when looking at exercise; type! The focus of the show was very much on cardiovascular workouts, which certainly can make the heart healthier and increase fitness. They also burn calories so can have a part to play in a balanced exercise routine. However, resistance or weights training received little or no attention, yet there is evidence to show that it reduces fat levels and also improves insulin sensitivity, decreases risk of falls and improves cardiovascular health in everyone from athletes to elderly adults an type 2 diabetics! There was a very nice piece about the 'fat but fit', showing a couple of ladies who were super-fit but overweight; it emphasised that fitness was key, even if you were overweight. OK, so the exercises they were given weren't always the safest or most appropriate in terms of injury risk, but they were moving!

The science says is also clear in showing that exercise helps to keep weight off, so when it’s combined with a healthy diet you can get some pretty good results. Exercise should form part of a holistic approach and the focus should not purely be on weight loss but on changes in shape, energy, self-confidence and health as well. Do this and weight loss will come anyway!

What tastes sweet may not be so neat

There was a short but interesting piece in one episode around sweeteners. Jacques pointed out that rats eating them surprisingly gained weight, when it would be assumed that consuming less sugar would lead to weight loss. In an interview with a scientist, she noted that in human beings there was a change in a part of the brain called the amygdala when consuming sweeteners like aspartame.  It seemed change occurred in the brain with regular consumption of sweeteners and that this could actually lead people to eat even more calories as it created a weaker response to sugar.

Weight gain and weight loss has numerous reasons

Peretti brilliantly portrayed the complex interplay between society, the food industry, the medical world, drugs companies, the media and fitness industries. We could take a cynical view of many of these, but that's not what we're here to do. All we ask is that you go on your own journey through weight loss, ask yourself the questions:

•   Will what I am about to do make me fitter and healthier?

•   Will it help me to lose weight and keep it off?

•   Is it helping me to gain a realistic view of what I can achieve?

We don’t think that the diet toothpaste or magic weight loss soap fits into this category!!

Think, eat, live, move, and balance your life, balance your scales J

balance on.....blogging beginnings and counting calories

Welcome to the the first ever balance weight loss blog! It's taken a fair bit of reading web pages that we didn't really understand to get to this point, so it's nice to be able to start writing!

We'll be posting regularly on weight loss, health and well being, including:

• News - the latest research and press coverage for all things weight loss, health and well being.

• Recipes - we'll be giving you a range of healthy alternatives to your all-time favourites, ideas for healthy snacks and recipes using a range of healthy foods. All will be based on our 'ten pillars of nutrition'.

• Exercise advice - at home, outside, or in the gym, we'll show you how to fit activity into your everyday lives with practical examples of awesome exercises and simple, effective training programmes.

• Success stories - we love to praise those who've achieved their goals, so we'll be sharing their achievements and how they did it with you, to motivate you and give you ideas for your own journey.

• Our own research and reading - we like to keep on top of the science and we're keen to share what we find with you. We'll put together articles on a range of topics, everything from sleep to stress management, from food to fitness, from what works for your mind to what works for your body. If you want us to write about anything in particular, just ask and we'll create a post just for you!

We thought we'd start with a look at something that appeared in the news recently. These days, you can't go more than 24 hours without seeing a TV programme or a news story about weight loss, food, exercise, health and well being!! In many ways this is fantastic as it raises people's awareness of the subjects and gets them thinking about their own health. We do however work with people who tell us they're confused by all the conflicting information that they read and see from day to day. "Fish is really good for you as it's packed full of Omega 3" or "the seas are polluted so be careful with fish as it may be full of chemicals", "make sure to get your five portions of fruit and vegetables each day", or "fruit is high in sugar and may increase your risk of diabetes." Which one is true? Who should I trust? Sometimes it's not easy to know, so we'll be helping to make it simple to understand by offering you a balanced view (pun very much intended)!

Last week the Daily Mail had a story about a research study that they say tells us that counting calories is meaningless. Is this the case? Have a look for yourself. The findings suggest that the calories on food labels might not be correct, especially in processed foods where they may often underestimate the calories. It also showed that different people processed foods differently and as such may absorb different amounts of calories from the same foods. There's a lot of good messages in this article to take away, including:

• Just counting calories may not be an effective way of losing weight, and certainly won't guarantee good health.
• People are different! Foods that work for one may not work for another. You'll need to learn over time how you respond to different foods and use a little trial and error to discover what works for you.
• Real foods are best! If it grew in the ground or on a tree, or it lived and died and not much happened to it afterwards, it's probably good for you. If it was processed, and it's advertised on TV, it's probably not!
• Healthy cooking can be a recipe for success - steaming is particularly good for you and the odd bit of raw food can be great. Don't go mad on this, there have been a number of cases of people experiencing severe health issues with extreme raw food diets, and there is research to suggest it lowers HDL cholesterol and raises levels of markers of inflammation in the body. In fact, most fad diets like this purely work because they restrict you from consuming as many calories as you normally would, there's no magic going on.

To count or not to count?

When we work with clients we don't ask our clients to count calories and arguably you don't need to. If you eat real foods you'll get full fairly quickly and absorb the nutrients you need. If you eat processed foods it's easy to over-consume as they don't contain what your body needs, leaving it hungry for more. They do however have refined sugars, trans-fats and other unhealthy substances that play around with your blood sugars and insulin levels, making you hungry again soon after.

This is not to say that calories are irrelevant, far from it. If someone eats too much they can gain weight, if they don't eat enough they can lose weight. This is undeniable. If somebody finds it helps to count calories by measuring portion sizes and it works for them, well that's great and it should not be discouraged. People need to find their own ways to achieve balance in life and balance on the scales!

If you're considering making lifestyle changes to lose weight, remember that for thousands of years before food labelling and 'low-fat' or 'lite' foods existed, people successfully managed their weight by being in tune with their body's, eating when they were hungry and stopping when they were full. Oh, and you won't see a fat lion very often!!

We hope you enjoyed our first instalment, we'll be back soon with lots more to help you balance your life and balance your scales. :-)