A two-pronged attack for losing weight

A two-pronged attack — tackling both diet and exercise — is vital if you're serious about losing weight.

Avoid setting overambitious targets. The key to success in any weight-loss regime is to make changes that you can easily incorporate into your everyday life.

As an example, if you can burn just an extra 58 Cal each day — from 10 minutes of dancing, for example — while keeping the same food intake, you will lose half a pound a month. Take in 58 Cal less food each day as well — the equivalent of one cookie — and you'll double this. That could add up to 5.5 kilograms (12 pounds) in a year, with hardly any extra effort.

Obviously, with a little bit more exertion and a little bit less food, you'll lose even more. Sticking to one element of a plan, whether it's to get more exercise or cut down on junk food, boosts your willpower and self-control, making you more likely to succeed in other areas of life.

Small daily additions to your activity level can often make more difference than an all-out crash exercise program that you probably won't be able to sustain (and which may be harmful if you do).

We all use energy each day simply to stay alive and keep our bodies in working order. This is known as "basal metabolism."

It takes on average, about 1,300 Cal for women and 1,600 Cal for men — that's what we would use up if we did nothing but lie down or sleep all day. For those people who have a fairly inactive lifestyle, basal metabolism may account for as much as 60 per cent of their total energy expenditure.

Of course, in addition to this expended energy, we use up energy and burn calories during physical exertion.

According to Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic, we do this in one of two ways: "One is to go to the gym, and the other is through all the activities of daily living called NEAT — Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis." (Thermogenesis means heat generation, a product of the breakdown of food to create energy).

NEAT is the energy used up in routine daily activities, when we're doing more than just lying down, but not actually "exercising" — washing up the dishes or taking out the garbage, rather than jogging or playing soccer.

So how do you get more NEAT into your life? The answer is through just about anything involving movement that's not strictly "exercise." Examples include certain aspects of your work, your housework and leisure activities.

Even fidgeting counts. According to researchers in the US and Germany, some people have a hereditary "fidget" gene — and inveterate fidgets are less likely to be overweight than others. If you are someone who shuffles and shifts in your seat, fiddles with pencils or taps your feet, you're getting valuable daily exercise without even knowing it, they say.

But, whether you fidget or look forward to more active exercise, remember the two pronged attack of exercising more and eating less. Putting this approach into practice could help you to start losing weight and live a healthier life.