Here are 7 vital strategies you can get started on right now – if you take these on board, your success is inevitable:

SUCCESS STRATEGY 1: Think ‘activity’ and be as active as possible in general. Also set aside 2-3 hours per week for more structured and intense training, to include resistance training.

SUCCESS STRATEGY 2: Eat lots of lovely fresh things: veggies, fruits, proteins, nuts… Drink plenty of water. Bear in mind it’s a marathon, not a sprint when it comes to nutrition so you don’t need to dwell on the odd slip up or focus on what you shouldn’t have, instead, focus on fitting all the goodness in!

SUCCESS STRATEGY 3: Look after yourself – those who you look after will thank you for it.

SUCCESS STRATEGY 4: Be nice to yourself – positive self-talk is so powerful because you become what you think about!

SUCCESS STRATEGY 5: Set goals – long, medium and short term – and think about ways to measure success. Aim high – dare to dream! But do break goals down into manageable short-term goals that are achievable, focusing on the behaviours and habits not the outcome – we can’t necessarily control the precise outcome, but we can control what we do to get there.

SUCCESS STRATEGY 6: Get out of the ‘excuses’ mentality! A multitude of less-than-perfect choices led you to losing fitness / gaining weight. Only you have control over changing these choices and resetting the direction you are going in. You have control – accept that and start succeeding!

SUCCESS STRATEGY 7: Enlist a support team – your family, colleagues, or online communities and mailing lists. If you still feel you need more support (often those closest to us are the worst for inadvertently obstructing our goals) then consider investing in a Trainer – one session a week can keep you on track and give you someone to be accountable to.

Finally, remember that consistency is key – whatever you do, whatever changes you make, keep it up! It is the regular application of these principles over time that will get you to your goals and let you keep the results for good.

It is not the only important factor, as the quality of foods you eat makes a huge difference on optimal hormone levels: two diets with the same calories can have vastly different effects on your body composition.

So if all you are doing is counting calories, then I recommend you begin to make changes to the quality of the food you eat!

But, for this article I am going assume you have the quality side dialled in, but are still struggling.  What is going wrong?

It is likely a very simple explanation – you are taking on board a few too many calories, without realising!

It is really difficult to know exactly how many calories we use up in a day, and almost as hard to figure out how many we take on board.  But unless you have some kind of guide in place to ensure you are on target to get yourself into a calorie deficit (meaning you are eating fewer than you are burning) fat loss will elude you, despite all your efforts!

You can eat a really healthy diet, getting all your vegetables in every day, with plenty of lean protein and good fats and moderate amounts of ‘good’ carbs and still not lose weight, if you overdo the calorie dense foods.  I can say this from experience, as it used to be me!  I would drizzle a little too much olive oil on my salads and have a serving too many of healthy nuts, and before you know it you are eating more calories (albeit healthy ones) than you burn and your fat loss stalls. I went through this for a long time before becoming a trainer, and even in the early days when I hadn’t quite figured it all out yet.  I was under the impression that calories didn’t really count, so long as you ate ‘healthily’ and got rid of the starchy carbs, processed foods and sugar.

I was healthy, and very fit, but still fat! And I really didn’t want to be.  But what was I doing wrong? Well, for one, I hadn’t quite got the exercise dialled – I was still under the impression that long bouts of cardio were the way forward for fat loss, whereas now I know that resistance and interval training, with enough rest in between to recover is key. But on the nutrition front, it wasn’t till I began to log my food intake on Fit Day (I have also used Calorie King) I realised just how all these little mouthfuls and drizzles of food were really adding up. I had days where I was eating more than 2500 cals, without even realising.

So I began to take action, with the help of my logging tool.  I realised that certain things weren’t necessary – I was getting plenty of good fats from avocados,nuts, oily fish & fish oil supplements, so decided to stick to just apple cider or balsamic vinegar on my salads and veggies.  I began to measure out portions of nuts and nut butters (eventually banning even the natural peanut butter altogether as I struggle not to go a little overboard!).  I cut down on my weekend wine consumption as I realised just how many calories were in each glass – and also how I invariably ate more, including the usually ‘off-limits’ foods, after a couple of glasses.

In combination with some kettlebell training, this has resulted in over 20lb fat loss – that was achieved in 6 months and has been maintained ever since.  But it hasn’t been hard!  I have a new habit of making sure I log everything, and usually planning days in advance, but the actual day to day experience is not so much different from how it was before, yet I’m keeping my calories between 1500 and 2000 a day easily.

The first step you should take, is to simply write everything you eat down in a little note book – and make sure you write it down as soon as you have eaten it as it’s very easy to forget!  This will immediately make you realise that there are foods you are eating that are totally unnecessary and also make you see that you probably are eating a bit more than you thought.  Getting to grips with this concept is vital – so many people who have gained weight come to me for help and tell me that they don’t really eat that much, but those calories have to come from somewhere. It may be your daily coffee, or glass (or two) of wine.  Or the mindless grazing on chocolate during the day, when you are not really even aware of it.

Once you have done this for a period of time, you can begin to make changes and substitutions, cutting out the unnecessary.  This also means you can choose the treats that are most important to you and keep them in the plan!  I would prefer to enjoy a meal out with my partner and indulge in some otherwise off-limits foods than grab a junk food lunch out.  I will indulge but make sure I truly enjoy it, while keeping an eye on the bigger picture so I will still reach my goals. Logging on an online tool or software like Calorie King or Fit Day takes you a step further, so you can see exactly how many calories you are eating (as well as estimating how many you are burning) so you can make sure you hit your target each day.

This takes the guesswork out of things, which actually makes life a lot easier.  If you eat a cheeseburger you simply enter it in, and see how many calories that has used up.  Rather than thinking that you have blown your plan and might as well scrap it and start again tomorrow, you can see that actually, you have only used a certain amount of your days calories so far, and that the best approach is just to keep the calories down for the rest of the day.  Suddenly the potential disaster has been neutralised – whereas if you had decided to just keep eating junk you really would have done some damage.

Logging your food intake has several benefits – it makes you aware of your daily intake, it means you can easily spot where you are going wrong, it makes substituting foods simpler and it means you are less likely to go way off track when you make a minor slip-up.  Give it a go!  Even if only for a week or two – you will learn a lot and it may just be the missing link you need to finally achieve fat loss success!

Or, are you one of the rarer people, who by the way do exist in greater numbers than the media might have you believe, that won’t gain anything?

You might be reading this having put yourself in the first category, but I can help you get into the second category with some real-life advice!

No, I do not suggest you skip Christmas Pud in favour of a fat free yoghurt!  And I do not suggest you hide in the corner at the parties you are attending, miserably slurping a glass of water.  I’ve (proudly) done this myself, and if you are in the middle of a massive fat loss mission then I would say stick with it – your goal is more important than that glass of wine.  When I was on a mega-mission it didn’t even bother me that I was sipping sparkling water with a splash of sugar free cranberry when others were on the Champagne, and it certainly didn’t bother me that I was on sugar-free jelly and cream when all others were drowning in sugar.  Because I was a woman on a mission!

However, you might just have a few pounds to lose that you can ‘put on hold’ for a month, and just want to focus on maintenance, and that is where being too strict over the festive season can actually be counter-productive!

If you are too strict and you go into a state of restriction and denial every single Christmas, just so you don’t gain weight, you can end up having a ‘re-bound’ in January!   It is actually far better to enjoy the season in a balanced and sensible way.  If every Christmas is the same story, then it is time to change tack.  When you have a massive goal, then go for it, but if you find that every year you are fighting with food, take a step back and focus on maintenance instead!

You don’t want to end up at either one of the extremes: gaining lots of weight or overly restricting so you end up rebound gaining in January.

The cycle of ‘restrict’ and ‘overdo it’ is so typical of the dangerous ‘all or nothing’ mentality so many of us are prone to (me included, but I have learned to manage it!).  We think that as we can’t be 100% then we might as well not bother, and that when we get to January and have a clear run with no obstacles to overcome we’ll be able to make up for our December excesses…

But, the reality is rarely that simple – things come up in January that mean we are, again, given obstacles to overcome.  And so the cycle continues, all year, year after year.

Far better, don’t you think, to manage December in a realistic ‘maintenance’ mindset?

I personally recommend that clients use a Compliance Chart (see the blog link below to download a copy of the one I use) so they can see how many meals hit their plan and how many don’t.  In a fat loss phase I need 90% compliance for results.  In a maintenance phase there is more leeway, but you would not want to just ignore it altogether and eat every meal ‘off plan’ as you will gain weight, but perhaps even more importantly, feel terrible!  No wonder there are so many arguments at a time when we should be harmonious and loving and kind – most people are in a sugar and fat induced haze!

So, the first step is to stick to the plan as far as you can, making sure that for the day to day meals and snacks, you eat as you would normally, and I would even suggest being a bit tighter than normal to help balance things out even more.

Then, look at the events you have lined up and plan to enjoy them!  You don’t need to go over-board and I would definitely recommend that you pick the indulgences you really love and go for those FIRST!   The more boring things that are available all year round are there anytime, so focus on the festive treats.  But equally, you don’t have to have a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine every night in December to enjoy Christmas – in fact if you reduce the occasions on which you have these things, you actually will enjoy them more!

Savour every single bite and sip of these indulgences!  We over-eat when we eat mindlessly, and we don’t actually enjoy food when we rush it, so we are just shoving down calories pointlessly.  I always used to eat really fast, but have purposely slowed it down and it has made a huge difference – I feel fuller sooner, eat less and enjoy more – a win-win situation if ever there was one!

DO NOT FEEL GUILTY!  If you feel you have over-done things, then balance it out a bit over the next few meals.  If you feel too full after a meal, remind yourself that it doesn’t make you feel good – learn from it, don’t beat yourself up about it.  Guilt and the ‘all or nothing’ mentality are a lethal combination – don’t let them win!  It’s not never falling, its getting up every time you fall that ensures victory, after all.

Keep up with your training, but also feel free to modify it.  Again, if you are too rigid you will shoot yourself in the foot – if the workout you usually do involves getting to the gym and you can’t, a rigid and all or nothing approach will mean you end up doing nothing.  Instead, focus on the opportunities.  I have made sure I get the room at my mum’s house with space for me to do yoga, and will be taking my yoga mat and favourite yoga DVD.  I’ll also be taking my TRX and skipping rope, but even without these you can do a great metabolism boosting bodyweight workout anywhere!  Even if you only spend 15 minutes a day on this, it will make a huge difference.

Try this circuit that requires nothing except your body (and some calories!):

20 bodyweight squats (10 faster and 10 super slow)

20 push ups (10 fast, 10 super slow)

15 split squats on each leg

15 dolphins (on forearms in a plank pose but feel a bit closer so your hips are higher than shoulders, draw shoulders forward and hips towards the ground and return to standing)

15 Burpees

Repeat that 2-5 times, after a mobility based warm up and follow with some stretches. There are more workouts (updated regularly) here:  http://carolineradway.ning.com/forum/topics/daily-workouts

Another tactic that I have personally decided to employ over the next month, is that of calorie cycling.  This is a well-known and scientifically validated approach to eating that actually makes use of those higher calorie days for a metabolism boost!

There are various ways of doing this, but a basic plan involves eating between 25 & 50% of your maintenance calories on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (depending on your goal) and then eat normally the other days.  Most ‘naturally slim’ people who seem to stay thin effortlessly will employ this strategy without even realising it.  After a large meal they will often not be that hungry and not eat much the next day.

This strategy is especially useful at this time of year – I don’t want to worry about things too much on Christmas Day, and while I won’t pig out (following the strategies above), and I will certainly have fewer roast potatoes and more turkey and veg, I will eat more than I actually need to on that day!  I will exercise in the morning, go for a walk before and after dinner, but I still will likely end up in calorie surplus. It is actually good simply to acknowledge this – most people over-estimate calories out and way under-estimate calories in all year round, which is why weight gain tends to creep up on us.

So, instead of continuing to feast on Boxing day, I am going to have a ‘light’ day, sticking to fewer calories, cleaner foods and lots of water.  Then the next day we’ll be up at my fiancee’s house for Christmas Day ’round 2′ so I can again indulge a little, and will have another ‘light’ day the next day.  I won’t be sticking to the Mon-Wed-Fri approach, I will freestyle it to suit the events that are lined up.

This is not a binge / starve cycle or recommendation. You are meant to have maintenance calories on the higher calorie days and you are definitely encouraged to keep to healthy, unprocessed foods all the time, for wellbeing and health as well as preventing fat gain. But this really helps balance out those days where we do go over maintenance, and in fact, the occasional day of doing just that can actually boost your metabolism.

This plan prevents any kind of ’starvation mode’ where you get to the point where you are so hungry you can eat anything in sight,  as you only have one lighter day before you can have a more satisfying day.  You will likely find that some of the things you promise yourself you will have on the higher days you are not so bothered about when you can actually have them, and many people find that their appetite naturally drops  even on the higher days, as they become accustomed to lighter eating.

So, in summary:

1. Plan your indulgences and ENJOY and SAVOUR every moment and mouthful! No guilt!

2. Consider using a Compliance Grid to encourage you to make the other meals ‘on plan’ and prevent yourself from just going all out on every meal: DITCH THE ALL OR NOTHING MENTALITY!

3. Exercise every day, don’t be rigid and do whatever you can do.  Walk lots and play with active games rather than sitting watching TV!

4. Consider ‘Calorie Cycling’, alternating your high calorie days with ‘light’ days where you cut calories to 25-50% of normal intake.

You can access more nutritional information, free bodyweight workouts and more by joining my member site: http://carolineradway.ning.com, and don’t forget to download your Compliance Grid:  http://www.kettlebellebody.com/2009/12/compliance_splurge/

Static stretching is where you take a muscle through its full range of motion and hold it there for a length of time. This is a great way to ensure you lengthen muscles back to their original length after a workout session, and to flush away waste products after a hard session. It is also a great way to build flexibility in muscles that are too tight for optimal function.

However, indiscriminate use of static stretching before working out can actually hinder your performance, and even worse, could risk injury.

This is because, stretching effectively switches off your muscle. This is great at the end of a session, when you want to bring your body back to normal, but at the beginning of a session you want to be firing your muscles up, getting them ready for the workout ahead, not switching them off!

There is an exception to this rule, however. If you are so tight in certain muscles (usually the hamstrings, calves and trapezius muscles, but we all differ) that the tightness compromises your ability to effectively perform movements, then you actually want to deactivate these muscles so that you can move more effectively.

So, what should you be doing before you exercise?

You do want to mobilise all the joints and limber up your muscles, so simply jogging for a few minutes is not really enough. To effectively fire up all your muscles, while also getting the joints loosened up, you should do some dynamic stretches.

Dynamic stretching involves taking the joint through the full range of motion, but rather than holding at the end, you move back and forth from each extreme. So you would perform chest and back opening, by crossing your arms in front of you, then pulling your elbows back behind you, and moving dynamically between the two positions, changing the angle each time and building up the range of motion each time. For the legs, you can swing the leg back and forwards, and perform squatting movements. You can also perform shoulder and arm circles, as well as ankle circles in each direction.

Going through every joint in the body in this way will progressively warm the body up while firing those muscles up and priming your body for the activity to come.

While you need to truly believe in your reason for working towards a goal, sometimes it is important to suspend disbelief and allow yourself to dream big! We are told to keep our goals realistic, and while there is some merit in this on a purely practical level, it can often leave us selling ourselves short.

How many stories have you heard about people who fulfil their wildest dreams, things they never thought they’d actually be able to achieve, but they went for it anyway.  Most famous musicians and actors are in this category – they dared to dream, took the risk and now have the success to show for it.

We often talk ourselves down at this point – of course, they just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and we’d never be that lucky.  As we grow up we are often taught to ‘know our place’ rather than following our dreams, as our parents try to protect us from disappointment and failure.

I can understand why parents want to protect us from this, but failure is such an important part of life.  It is our failures that teach us the most important lessons, and surely it is better to ‘fail forward fast’ or not quite hit the high target we set for ourselves, than to achieve much less, staying in the safe zone, protecting ourselves from the feeling of failure but achieving much less in the process?

Learning to fail is what will truly make us stronger, so we have to be prepared for this.  As Lao Tsu said, ‘it’s not about never falling, it’s about getting up every time we fall’.   Every professional surfer in the world knows this – we look at them in awe as they carve up a huge wave, but they have endured their fair share of wipeouts.  It is their ability to get back up and give it another go that gets them to world-class level.

If you are aged 40 and want to get the figure you had in your 20s back, some people will suggest you come up with a more ‘realistic’ goal. But if that ‘realistic’ goal doesn’t inspire you then you may find that the compromises you are making to get there seem too much to bear. Why can’t you look even better than you did in your 20s?  There is absolutely no reason why not, so long as you set your mind to it and take the steps needed to get there.

The fact that you can get truly excited about the prospect of losing 30lb and how fantastic you will feel, means you are actually more likely to succeed.  You know it is going to be hard, but the outcome is worth all your hard work.  The challenges you face along the way will pale into insignificance in comparison. In comparison, aiming to lose just 5lb is just not so inspiring – it won’t have such a drastically positive effect on your life, so makes the temptations you face along the way harder to resist.

So, don’t let your view of what is realistic right now hold you back.  Think about what you really want to achieve – dare to dream, and dream big!

Then break that dream down, and figure out how you can get there.  It won’t happen overnight, but with the right strategies and consistent action you will get there!  Having a step-by-step plan in place means your dream will inspire you, without making you feel overwhelmed.  Keep your focus on realising that dream – and spend time around other people who encourage you to achieve it and believe in you.

Are you struggling to summon up the motivation to exercise? Are you constantly telling yourself you must get to the gym, but finding that other things just get in the way?

It is a typical scenario, and one that is actually pretty simple to address.

The first thing you need to do, is stop hassling yourself to exercise. You do not have to have willpower of steel or be super disciplined, so you can stop worrying about that right away. Relax a little and have faith that your body will intuitively know what is good for it, if you give yourself a chance to listen to what it is telling you.

Next, you need to sit down! Yes, the first step to successful fat loss is sitting down and doing practically nothing! Get a pen and piece of paper (and a cup of tea – but skip the sugar and cookies) and begin to write down what you want to achieve when it comes to your health and fitness.

Do you want to lose body fat? Do you want to tone up your thighs and bat / bingo wings? Do you want more energy? Do you want to be stronger for daily tasks? Do you want to play a sport better or take up a sport you feel too unfit for?

Brainstorm all these things, and you may find there are some surprising things you attach fitness too that you hadn’t thought about before. Think about how good your life would be if you could achieve these things – really try to imagine and visualize being slimmer and more energetic, or how you’ll feel when you finally learn to snowboard, if you’ve always felt too unfit to give it a go.

Then write down all the reasons that stop you from exercising.

Do you feel low on energy when you get home? Are you too hungry at the end of the day to go to the gym, but then too full to workout after dinner? Do you struggle to find the time?

Then write down ways you can address all of these. If you are too hungry after a day at work, make sure you take an afternoon snack so you can work out straight from the office. If you struggle with time, consider a time-efficient work out plan, using kettlebells ideally! Realise that there are solutions to all these obstacles.

Then go back to your ‘goals’ list, as that is what you have effectively written in the first step. Then begin to expand on the goals and look into what you will need to do in order to achieve them.

Will you need to exercise? Will you need to look at your nutrition? Will you need to improve your time management?

Then, using all the information you have in front of you, come up with a plan. Write your goals out clearly, and give them a deadline and attach measurements to them. But also state WHY you want to achieve them. Then, state HOW you are going to achieve them, in several clear steps.

Once you have established a clear and compelling WHY (remember to visualise and keep the end result uppermost in your mind) and you have worked out practical steps HOW, then motivation is no longer an issue at all. You see exactly what is required to get the result you are after, and that you truly want, and so will take those actions accordingly.

The next time you find yourself low on energy, you will be able to remind yourself that your workout will energize you. If that is not enough, you can remind yourself that you won’t hit your target if you miss this workout – so the workout is no longer an isolated activity with no purpose, but part of a longer chain of events that will take you exactly where you want to be – to the fitter, slimmer, more confident version of you.

So, what can you do to get rid of this affliction?

Well, firstly, I must point out that there is no such thing as ’spot reduction’. Sorry to have to tell you this, but you cannot lose the fat on the arms by doing arm exercises alone. If this is your one area that you want to shape up, you still cannot expect to just do arm exercises to get results.

Bingo or bat wings are excess fat, and to burn fat you need to make sure you are doing intense resistance and interval training about 3 times per week, using as many muscles in the body as possible.

That is why this exercise is so effective, however. You are hitting the triceps muscle, that is the muscle in the back of your arm, where the batwings reside, so that you will ensure the muscle is strong and toned, so when you have burned the surrounding fat, your arms will look fantastic.

But, the added benefit is that this exercise counts as an almost full body exercise, as you are working your arms, shoulders, back and your entire core to do this correctly. If you pair this up with a lower body exercise, such as a squat, as well as a pulling exercise, such as a row, you have a full body fat blasting workout. This will mean you lose the unwanted bodyfat, and can show off your lovely arms in skimpy tops once more.

So, what is this exercise, I hear you cry…

It’s the triceps, or close-grip, press up.

Now most people find these a lot harder than a regular press up, and you have to really engage your core strongly throughout. The simple steps are as follows:

1. Place your hands directly underneath your shoulders, in a plank position (to start with you will want to be on your knees not your toes to make this easier – just make sure your knees, hips and shoulders form a straight line: don’t let your butt stick up!)

2. Slowly lower your chest between your hands, keeping the elbows tucked tight into the sides of the body, elbows pointing back as you come down, until your chest is hovering just off the floor.

3. Press back up to the start position. That is one rep.

I actually get all my yoga students to practice this regularly – as chaturanga or the low push up position is part of the ashtanga and dynamic yoga sun salutation sequence, but many people really struggle with it. A few weeks of practicing triceps push ups usually does the trick and students can really start to enjoy the fluidity of the sun salutation sequence.

So, no equipment needed, and it hits more than just your batwings! Give it a go…

Has this happened to you? It sure happened to me! I didn’t blame the workout though – I blamed myself for not doing enough, so tried to do more and more until I had no more time to devote to exercise, without severely compromising my life.

I was under the impression that it was my fault for not doing enough, whereas in fact, I was not actually doing the right kind of exercise to burn fat. By learning to maximise my workout time, I began to lose fat and shape up like never before, while spending half the time exercising (and no time at all in the gym – as I did it in the comfort of my own home!).

The secret – a tool known as a kettlebell! This unique exercise tool has meant I can get a cardio and strength workout in with a single piece of equipment, in my own home. It also delivers an unrivalled workout experience that means you can workout for as little as 10 minutes a day and get great results.

So, if you struggle to fit exercise into your life, the kettlebell has several benefits:

1. You can keep it at home and work out at home, so you don’t waste any time travelling to the gym or messing around in changing rooms. My advice – get up 15 minutes earlier than usual and get a 10 – 15 minute workout in before breakfast. You’re busy schedule is not impacted at all – and you will sleep better when you exercise regularly so will be able to get up those 15 minutes sooner with no problems at all! You will also have more energy throughout the day, so will get even more done – the kettlebell could well make you feel like you actually have more time in the day!

2. The workouts are incredibly efficient, so you make maximum use of your time spent exercising. The moves use every muscle in your body, and work them out intensely, so you burn maximum calories while you work out. You take short rests between intense bursts, which means you can work out to your maximum capacity, which gives your body such a great stimulus that it is forced to burn loads of calories to deal with it.

3. Because you are working intensely, the metabolism stays high throughout the day. What this means, is that you not only burn calories while you are exercising, but you continue to burn calories at an elevated rate for the rest of the day. So your 10 minutes has meant fat burning can go on all day – so you reap the rewards of every 10 minute session for a long time afterwards. But, if you don’t get to work out in the morning, don’t worry, The metabolism boost you get will be the same whatever time you work out, meaning that you can work out in the evening and still make the most of this effect – you’ll just be burning fat while you sleep instead!

So, the trick to achieving your fat loss despite a busy schedule, is to get up 15 minutes earlier every day and add an intense 10 minute kettlebell workout to your day, 5 or 6 days per week. So long as you don’t compensate by eating any more (ideally you should combine this with cutting your calories by 10%) you will see the fat melt off in no time.