How drinking water can help flush fat

DietPixie’s brilliant new fitness expert, Myke Gray, will be giving you weekly advice on getting the body you want. In his first article, Myke lets you in on a cast iron weight loss weapon.

If weight loss is your primary goal, one of the most important things that you need to do is to find out your metabolic rate.

Okay, so we know that long-term eating sensibly and exercising regularly is the best approach to all-round good health.

But summer is coming, we feel like shit and look like rice pudding in shorts – we need to act fast. Sensible is for the winter months. Follow these five workout ideas for the fastest route to burning the bulge…

1. Get thee to a treadmillery

Running – especially on an incline – is one of the best ways to burn calories fast. Whether on the road or in the gym, a good, intensive run will give your body a cardiovascular workout, and tone your legs and tum.

Make sure that you warm-up properly – especially if you haven’t jogged for a while – and protect your joints and feet by wearing well-fitting trainers and knee supports.

2. No heavy petting, no bombing

Swimming is an all-round brilliant workout – just look how skinny fish are. But to really benefit, you have to actually swim. Not lounge about floating on your back and having a little think, not paddling up and down the shallow end like a happy Labrador, but proper up-and-down lengths, for a solid hour. It’ll feel nice and then it’ll wreck – that’s how you know it’s working.

3. Stroll to the Finnish line

Nordic walking is a form of walking using poles. Done correctly it is far more intense than a normal stroll and works your whole body. An hour and a quarter of Nordic walking will burn around 500 calories, but because your body is supported by the poles, you feel less knackered than a jog or power walk. Clever.

4. Let’s Get It On (but at a robust pace and with maximum effort please)

Yes, as it says in the bible, perhaps: shagging is great. Not only is it fun, not only does it make boys and girls like you, but it also burns a devil load of calories in just one easy session.

But this isn’t a case of lying back and thinking of England, no, this is a case of jumping around and thinking of the whole England team. Energetic bedness will work through several hundred calories per half an hour…

5. Pump it up

Of course you could just hand over the reigns to a scary, grimace-grinning fitness instructor at a Body Pump class.

The latest in paid-for-calorie-scorching-masochism, Body Pump is apparently the most popular group fitness routine of all time, and uses barbells and weights to a hardcore aerobic workout.

It hurts like fuck but by Jove does it do the job.

Image: jzmolek

“Incentive, inspiration, drive, enthusiasm, impetus, stimulus, spur, impulse, and driving force are just some of the synonyms I found when I looked up the word motivation in the dictionary.” Read more of this extract from celeb trainer, David Kirsch’s new book, The Ultimate New York Body Plan.

One of the prerequisites to successfully completing any challenge is motivation. Without it, any challenge, including this one, will ultimately become too daunting to see to completion.

There’s been all sorts of hooplah over lovely big Fern’s gastric band deception, but what exactly is a gastric band, can anyone get one and should we want one?

Despite sounding like a snazzy belt, a gastric band is actually a very serious bit of kit that involves a hardcore (and dangerous) operation.

Healthy eating can come from the strangest of sources.

Sure, we all know if you eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and cut down on sugary snacks you are on the right track.

But there are foods we just don’t associate with healthy eating. Or, at least, we just didn’t even think about them in the first place.

Finally, there is something which can satisfy your sweet-tooth but also keep you in great shape – honey.

Excuse the terrible pun, but it really is the bee’s knees, and can boost your health in several different ways.

In fact, scientists are only just beginning to understand how good for you it is. So expect another six reasons to eat honey in the near future.

You don’t have to spend hours on the treadmill or go on a punishing diet to start getting into shape.

The road to better health can start with adding simple things into your daily routine – like chewing your food longer, taking deeper breaths and cutting down on how much alcohol you thrown down your neck.

Ok, the last one is not that simple. DietPixie’s writers have always been partial to the odd drink – or seven!

Most women have problems with their ‘muffin top’, that unsightly tyre of flab that rests smugly atop our jeans - a constant reminder of the family-sized bag of Maltesers we ate just after lunch.

Unfortunately, flab manages to squeeze its way out in other places. Hands up if you’ve got a fat back? Yes, it sounds strange, but if you’re storing excess fat on your back, it will spill over the edges of a tight top - a second muffin top, if you will.

Fancy having bird crap smothered into your face?

Didn’t think you would. But, apparently, it’s just the thing to get rid of those nasty blackheads and improve your skin tone.

In fact, 50 minutes of nightingale No.2 being rubbed into your face at Shizuka Bernstein’s New York beauty spa Shizuka New York will set you back a cool $216.