Little Black Dress Challenge - Week 3

It’s the third week of our challenge to lose a stone by Christmas and hopefully you have managed to colour in 2 of those little squares on our dress picture already! Keep it displayed somewhere prominent as it is really motivating to watch the colour growing each week. If you have missed the challenge so far, catch up on my blog. In week one we talked about how losing weight was, on one level, a simple equation – consume less calories than you burn. So far we have talked about trying to reduce your calorie intake by around 500 a day, but as I mentioned in week one, you get the same results if your burn 500 calories more a day through exercise. So this week, I want us to try to increase our daily exercise levels to burn an extra 250 calories. That way, combined with the low calorie, low fat food we are eating already, we should be creating a small but significant calorie deficit each day which helps up lose that lb.

So what do we need to be doing to burn that amount of calories? Try some of these suggestions from the list below (these are approximate guides as your weight, age and exertion levels are all factors!)

• 45 minutes of dancing
• 45 min of hard gardening
• 20 minutes of running at approximately six miles per hour
• 30 minutes of running at approximately five miles per hour
• 45 minutes of brisk walking
• 30 minutes bike riding
• 30 minutes of swimming

This week try and factor in some more exercise. If you can’t do it every day, try to do some of the above activities a couple of times a week. It will really help you achieve your 1 stone goal by Christmas. And don’t forget, you can always come to class! An hour-long exercise class can burn up to 500 calories!