Flab-Fighting tip no 16 – Use the stairs whenever you can.

If you can swap the lift or escalator for a few flights of the real thing, do so.

If you work from home, work upstairs.

Running downstairs every time you want to raid the fridge will burn fat and using stairs generally is great for legs and bottoms. So run up and down them anyway. The winter our heating was on a go-slow and I huddled in the kitchen all day as my office was arctic, I soon saw the difference. Not in a good way.

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Flab-fighting tip No. 12 – keep your crisps in the loft.

Having to climbing up and down the ladder every time you fancy some cheese & onion will tone your thighs in no time…

  

 

(especially if you allow yourself only one mouthful per trip!)

Flab-Fighting tip no 10 – take supplements

If you’re on a diet and can’t keep to it, make sure you’re getting the right vitamins and minerals. Sometimes cravings are your body’s way of saying what it needs. If you’re mainlining chocolate brazil nuts for example, perhaps you need selenium.

If you’re just sucking the chocolate off, you might want iron. If you’ve eaten three doughnuts, four cookies and an apple pie and it’s only 11 a.m., you want to get a grip before you’re the size of Dorset.

Flab-fighting tip No. 8 – JUMP!

Jump on a trampoline

If the kids have got a big one in the garden so much the better but otherwise get yourself a trampette (also known as an aerobic bouncer or a rebounder) – one of those mini circular jobs – and leap up and down on that. You can jog, hop or do star jumps– it will come with a leaflet with suggested exercises – and hold a small weight or a tin of baked beans in each hand to intensify the effect. It’s quite good fun, kind on the joints, and a good way of burning calories and firming muscles. Just two words of warning -both for my female readers.

1. Wear that sports bra and

2. If you’ve had children – they will laugh at you.

(If you’ve had lots of children, best have a wee before you start.)

        

Get a horse…. (or borrow one)

 

This could be more complicated to arrange than the dog,  but horse riding will also give you muscles of iron. I have the equine problem licked ever since begging for and receiving a hilarious Christmas present which had my husband choking over his credit card statement for the next six months. The iJoy ride is an exercise machine that simulates the action of riding a horse and as you jog up and down, tones your buttocks, thighs and stomach. You can flap your arms at the same time, add weights and do various exercises as outlined in the dvd of suitably bored-looking girls that comes with it. Visiting children will enjoy it too. Plonk the smallest and loudest on there and turn it up to full speed before they can trash the place.

For a quick glimpse of a slappable-looking smug bloke using one, along to a typically-annoying voice-over, I have found you this youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOQy4XlBlc

To buy one – go here

Don’t forget I am eagerly awaiting your Before and After photos for any of these tips. Or even just the “befores”. I can always photoshop your head onto a thinner body later…. 🙂

Happy Flab-fighting!

Flab-fighting tip No 3 – Get a dog. (Or borrow one…)

Get a dog

I have noticed that a lot of people who should, by rights, be fatter than they are, have a mutt that they walk come rain and shine. I am more of a cat person. I find dogs too time-consuming, too needy, too fond of licking their testicles and then wanting to do the same to my face. I am also squeamish about picking up warm poo. But there is no doubt at all, that taking regular brisk walks is an excellent way of keeping the weight under control and one’s thighs and bum toned. If you too, are too self-engrossed to actually own a canine, then can I suggest you….

Kenzo

…borrow a dog

This is a good compromise. I have always enjoyed taking out Kenzo, a black Labrador belonging to my friend Lyn-Marie. Kenzo and I have an arrangement. He does a poo in the garden before we leave and I take him to all the muddy places where he’s not usually allowed. I also have an arrangement with Lyn-Marie. Should Kenzo ever let me down, I will phone her on her mobile and she will send one of the children to clear up.

Top Tip:  Walking, let us remember, can burn 100 calories per mile if you do it briskly. I don’t know how much extra you use up by wielding a pooper-scooper, but just make sure you do. I don’t want to tread in it later…

HOT TIP No. 1: A Chilli a Day Keeps a Lard Arse at Bay

 

So eat a chilli. The hotter the better. Chillies raise the metabolism and the fierier they are, the greater the effect. I ate my last fresh one last night and it’s too cold to go shopping today so here, by way of illustration,  are some I bottled in olive oil the last time I was being a domestic goddess – HA!

Experts estimate that one can expect a 15% increase in calories burned for about two hours after eating a hot chilli sauce. Buy packets of fresh chillies from the supermarket and then keep and dry the seeds. Growing them yourself is easy, cheap and satisfying (sorry to sound like an excerpt from Cooking on a Shoestring in a Bedsit for One) and the plants look pretty on the kitchen window sill. I used to grow new ones each season until a nice girl called Hannah Harman, who works for

Food Network UK –

I met her at the launch of this fab book –

told me that you could cut back the plants when they’d finished fruiting, give ’em a feed, and they’d sprout again. Here are mine beginning to do just that…

Try them – the chillis – finely chopped in omelettes and scrambled egg, over meat or fish, in sauces and – for the brave – straight down with a couple of crisps. Actually, you will find the more you eat, the more your tolerance will grow (I don’t wish to be indelicate here, but it is best to build up slowly!). They are strangely addictive after a while. Now I twitch if I haven’t had a hot hit in a day or two.

ANOTHER HOT TIP  next Sunday at 6pm (UK time). In the meantime, please try this week’s and let me know how you got on. Comments gratefully received – Before and After pictures especially welcome… 🙂

Should you be thoroughly over-excited now, you can buy the entire book on Amazon UK or Amazon US.

And if you do, don’t forget there’s a COMPETITION to enter with the most fabulous prize you can possibly imagine… (no, it is not a packet of chillis)

Happy Eating and have a good week…