McDonald’s has been a proud sponsor of the Olympic Movement since 1976 but has come under some criticism recently over its sponsorship of the upcoming London 2012 Olympics.

To counter this, McDonald’s has launched ‘The Great McDonald’s Mascotathon’ inviting children everywhere to ‘Join the Movement’. The first phase of the campaign will see around 9 million ‘activity toys’ given away with Happy Meals. These activity toys count the amount of jumps or skips the child does allowing them to collect the ‘rainbow power’ needed to help the Olympic and Paralympic Mascots on their journey to the Opening Ceremonies and get them there on time.

Former Olympic Decathlete Dean Macey has teamed up with McDonalds to launch their initiative to get children to do more regular activity.

In today’s world, children, just like adults, lead busy lives giving them plenty of excuses not to go outside to play and run around. In fact the Government recommends that children get at least 60 minutess of physical activity that gets their heart beating faster than usual. During the second phase of the ‘Mascotathon’ each Happy Meal box will feature a free sport session voucher for one of seven Olympic sports giving children access to high-quality grassroots sport in their local area.

Doing activity everyday will burn calories and prevent the weight gain which leads to obesity, as well as reducing their risk of developing cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease in later life. Here at Ki, we are strong advocates of monitoring activity and believe anything that encourages children to be more active is a step in the right direction.

We are also in complete agreement with the Professor Paul Gately, Carnegie Professor of Exercise and Obesity at Leeds Metropolitan University and a member of McDonald’s Global Advisory Council, who commented: “The McDonald’s Mascotathon is a really clear but creative use of the games to encourage and excite millions of children around the country in play and activity. Research shows that if kids are engaged in fun, positive and well-designed activity programmes they are more likely to participate in physical activity throughout their childhood and into adult life. This promotion will use simple activity toys that help children to get active through play, as they use the toys to count their physical activity levels.”

What’s more, not only do the Happy Meal toys encourage children to move more, they also allows them to measure their activity enabling them to take control and manage their own activity levels everyday.

We know that a Big Mac isn’t going to contain the same nutritional levels as an alternative dish pack full of fresh fruit and vegetables, but combined with regular activity all foods can be enjoyed as part of a balanced, healthy lifestyle.

Remember, if you burn more calories than you consume on a regular basis, you will burn fat and lose weight.

For more information on how to monitor your activity, visit KiLife.co.uk

Did you dread school PE lessons? Well, you’re not alone.

Research looking at schoolchildren’s’ attitudes towards doing sport found that about 60% of 8-year olds (both boys and girls) said they regularly exercised (at least one hour, five days a week). By the age of 14 the number of girls exercising regularly almost halved to 31% in comparison to 50% of 14-year old boys.

Most girls questioned by the researchers from Loughborough University wanted to do more physical activity, but were put off by school PE lessons, prompting the Women’s Sports and Fitness Foundation to call for schools to introduce more fitness activities that will appeal to girls, such as Zumba dance classes and rollerblading.

We agree that school PE lessons should include female-friendly activities to encourage girls to get active and stay active, but we shouldn’t forget the boys who dread PE lessons. Let’s make sure all children enjoy being active throughout childhood and adolescence – hopefully then we will see more active adults!

At any age, we are more likely to stick with something that we enjoy and find any excuse to avoid those we don’t. Remember, you don’t have to go to the gym to gain benefits to your health, wellbeing or body shape. You could try the latest exercise class, do exercise video in your living room, or go for a walk in the park with a friend – try anything and everything until you find something you enjoy!

For more information on how to accurately monitor your physical activity, visit http://kiperformance.com/

This week the cost of diabetes has been pushed into the limelight with the Daily Mail reporting that “Diabetes could ‘bankrupt’ the NHS in 20 years”.  The amount spent on the disease by the NHS, currently £9.8 billion, is projected to rise to £16.9 billion over the next 25 years.  With the number of people living with the disease in the UK set to rise from around 3.8 million, we’ve put together some tips to reduce the risk of Type 2 Diabetes.

1. Maintain a Healthy Weight: Being overweight increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes. In fact 80% of people with Type 2 diabetes are overweight at the time of their diagnosis. Clearly then, one of the biggest things you can do to reduce your risk, is to lose weight if you are carrying too much extra body fat.

2. Eat Your Greens: A large review of the literature in 2010 found that eating enough vegetables, particularly green leafy vegetables such as spinach, kale, and lettuce, every day, significantly reduced the chances of developing Type 2 diabetes. If you eat approximately one and a third servings each day (that’s about 110g) you can decrease your risk by 14%. Start cracking on that salad for lunch then.

3. Choose Low GI Carbs: There is some evidence that a diet high in refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, pasta, etc, can increase the risk of diabetes. Conversely, a diet high in low-GI carbohydrates (e.g. wholegrain or wholemeal varieties) can actually lower your future risk.

4. Exercise Regularly: Over time, a high sugar diet can cause the body to become less efficient at regulating blood sugar levels, which leads to Diabetes. One of the most efficient ways to keep your blood sugar levels stable is to exercise. This is because blood sugar is the primary fuel of working muscles, so if they use the blood sugar during activity then it is not left at a heightened level in the blood.

5. Relax: Stress can lead to higher levels of cortisol, and cortisol in turn can lead to the body dumping extra sugar into the blood. Not only can this lead to the classic weight gain around the stomach, it also increases your diabetes risk. So take time out to rest, relax and recover from your stressful life.

The Virgin London Marathon takes place on Sunday featuring more than 35,000 runners, ranging from elite athletes through to charity fun-runners

Where you’re following in London or on television, many will be inspired and motivated to get out and experience the 26.2 mile course in 2013.

Below our lead scientist Anna Holder offers her Top 5 tips on preparing for next year’s event. After all, you can decide to change your lifestyle for the better at any time.

And if you’re thinking of offering your support on Sunday to those pounding the streets, the organisers have created the following interactive map for you to follow the route: http://www.virginlondonmarathon.com/interactive-map/

Exercise

If you’re training for an endurance event like the London Marathon or a triathlon, it’s really important to build up gradually. Ideally, you should be building up a good ‘base’ of endurance fitness through the off-season (e.g. over the winter) with plenty of long low- to medium-intensity sessions, then adding in some higher intensity and interval sessions later on in your programme. The longer, slower sessions will help your ‘economy’ whereby your body learns to become really efficient at a set of movements, so you start to use up less energy for the same level of performance. The higher intensity sessions will boost your fitness and improve your speed.

You should also work on your conditioning throughout the programme with some resistance exercises specific to your sport. Cross-training (mixing in different sports with different movement patterns) is also a great way to improve your overall cardio-respiratory and muscular fitness whilst reducing the strain on your body that comes from training in just one way.

The key is progression and balance, so don’t do too much too soon as this will greatly increase your risk of injury and illness.

Diet

Make sure you’re fuelling your body sufficiently so that it can adapt to the increasing demands you’re placing on it. If the quantity and quality of the food you take in isn’t right, your body won’t have the resources it needs to repair and regenerate effectively and so you’ll benefit less from each training session. Monitor your calorie burn each day using a device like the Ki Fit so that you can eat according to what you burn, plus keep an eye on your protein, carbohydrate and fat intake by logging your meals.

During training, stick to water for sessions under an hour and use sports drinks, gels and bars (whatever suits you best) during longer sessions. After longer or higher intensity sessions, consume a snack with some high-quality protein and carbohydrate (eg. flavoured milk, peanut butter on toast) within 30-60 minutes of finishing and then eat a proper meal including plenty of wholegrain carbs and fruit/vegetables within the next few hours. This reduces the stress hormone response to exercise and so helps to prevent suppression of your immune system. It also optimises muscle recovery, aids rehydration and replenishes muscle glycogen stores ready for your next training session!

Rest

Recovery is a vital part of any training plan. The last thing you want is to get injured or come down with a cold just before the big event, so make sure you schedule recovery days into each week; particularly on the days after longer runs or higher intensity sessions. If you want to train on some of these days, make sure it’s a short low-intensity session and include some stretching exercises, but take some total rest days every couple of weeks as well. Consider getting a sports massage on a regular basis to aid your recovery and help maintain muscle condition.

It’s also important to ensure you’re getting enough quality sleep every day, so monitor this if you can. Growth hormone is released during sleep which helps the body to regenerate and build muscle tissue, plus it’s also an important time for the body in terms of skill development, so helps you become more efficient.

Preparation

Endurance events can be tough, so make sure you’re both mentally and physically prepared for all eventualities. If you’re training for a triathlon, practice your transitions during your training sessions, e.g. go for a ride and leave your trainers and other running kit by the front door ready for a quick changeover!

Enter some races at shorter distances than the main event you are training for and use these as an opportunity to practice your fuelling and pacing strategies. It’s really important to try out the nutrition you’re going to use on the big day; don’t make the mistake of trying a new drink or energy gel for the first time at the event itself.

In the days running up to the event, spend some time visualising how you are going to start the race, and run through the different sections of the race in your mind. Make a checklist of everything you’ll need to take with you and check your travel plan for getting to and from the event; bearing in mind that you might be pretty exhausted afterwards! The night before, make sure you check out the weather forecast and adjust your kit accordingly.

Avoiding Boredom

Endurance training often involves long hours on the road or in the pool, but this doesn’t mean that every training session has to be the same. Vary the type of training that you do during the week and you’ll find that your fitness improves more rapidly. Integrate other activities like spinning classes, martial arts and walking into your weekly routine to add another dimension to your training and help avoid boredom.

The benefit of running or triathlon training is that a lot of it can be outdoors so make the most of your surroundings and ask other runners or triathletes in the area for their favourite local routes. You can also find some great new routes on mapping websites where individuals post their routes online.

For more information on how you can monitor your training and progress, please visit http://www.kiperformance.co.uk/

Get the body you want now and celebrate life with new confidence by discovering the secret to controlling your weight forever.

The Ki BodySmart Diet is a six-week weight loss programme designed to motivate and educate you about your body. It works by unlocking your weight loss secrets and showing you just how unique your body is. BodySmart is based solely on you so you will quickly learn how you respond to your lifestyle.

Guided by Ki exercise scientists, this information is clinically proven to empower you to make the right choices to reach your goals and give you control forever.

The BodySmart Diet won’t just help burn fat; you’ll also find yourself with more energy and a higher quality of sleep.

The six-week plans costs £229.99 and includes:

• The world’s most advanced lifestyle monitor worth £149.99 which will monitor every calorie you burn, every step you take, and the quality of every minute you are asleep.
• A welcome pack to get you started including easy to follow steps on how to use the activity manager.
• Weekly contact and support from your personal Ki Scientist who analyses your data and provides expert advice to help guarantee your success.
• Themed fact sheets, tips, recipes and resources to motivate and inspire you each week.
• 24/7 access to the Ki BodySmart Diet forum where you can ask questions and share your experiences and progress with others, including your Ki Scientists.

Here’s what one of our BodySmart diet success stories had to say about her experience:

“The Ki Fit BodySmart Diet was fantastic and the Ki Scientists have been a great help both through email correspondence and the forum. I felt like they really wanted to help and even took the time to read my blog to help with my time on the diet and using the Ki Fit.

“They recognised that life sometimes gets away from you, but the best thing is to keep going and learn from it. When I felt disappointed, it didn’t last long. The feedback I got from the scientists helped me look at the positives and learn from negatives.

“I was able to be kinder to myself. It wasn’t all about what number was on the scale at the end of the week. It is about more than that. The data I get from my Ki Fit helps me realise that activity, sleep and consumption all play a part in how I feel. Also stress and other external influences play a part in my life and it is up to me to learn how to deal with things and find other coping mechanisms rather than turning to food.

“Overall I would recommend both the Ki Fit and the BodySmart diet to anyone who wants to focus on fitness and nutrition, rather than just losing weight. I have learnt so much already, but still have lots to learn and new habits to create and old ones to break, but I feel like I am on the right track.”

The next programme starts on Monday 30th April, 2012 and ends on Sunday 10th June, 2012.

For more information or to join the next programme, visit the Ki website or email us at bodysmart@kiperformance.com.

The government have warned that the British daily diet is a whopping 5-billion calories more than it should be. This is equivalent to 17-million cheeseburgers everyday, according to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

Bizarrely, on the same day the public was urged to eat less! The Scientific Advisory Committee announced an increase in the recommended daily calorie intake to maintain weight. For a man of average height, the recommended daily calorie intake has increased from 2,550 to 2,605 calories, and for women it has increased from 1,940 to 2,079 calories. But before you reach for that extra biscuit, officials have stressed that most people already consumed more calories each day than the new guidelines.

Unfortunately, these guidelines are based on an ‘average’ man of 90kg and woman of 70kg, but this generic approach to estimating calorie requirements can result in unrealistic targets.

Here at Ki we know that everyone is unique. Click here to read our recent summary of The Big Ki Calorie Survey for more details on this.

Importantly, the new obesity strategy for England encourages us all to be more honest about what we eat and drink, stressing the importance of personal responsibility.

It’s true; to change our behaviour in the long-term requires us to take responsibility for our own actions. Without this, dieters would be unable to succeed outside of a structured programme creating a cycle of weight loss followed by weight gain, which becomes unsustainable.

The good news is that, with the Ki System, you can track your calories burned totals everyday, so you can alter your calorie intake to meet your goal. Take control of your life with Ki!

Image: Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We received survey responses from men and women of all ages and body types and here’s what we found:

Average calorie burn for all respondents: 2841 kcals per day
Least calories burned in a day: 1541 kcals
Most calories burned in a day: 7009 kcals
Average calorie burn for women: 2689 kcals per day
Average calorie burn for men: 3335 kcals per day

10% of the group lost enough weight whilst using the Ki Armband to move them from the ‘obese’ to the ‘overweight’ category, and another 8% dropped from being ‘overweight’ to the ‘normal’ category, which is absolutely brilliant news.

We also found that the average BMI (body mass index) of our survey group dropped from 28.4 to 26.3 whilst they were using the Ki System.

Overall, the average weight loss achieved by all respondents was 6.0 kg (or 13.2 lbs), but this figure doesn’t quite reflect the amazing results achieved by some of our Ki customers.

Individual results

One lady lost a huge 34.7 kg (76.4 lbs) over 16 months; an incredible achievement so well done! That reflects an average weight loss of 0.5kg every week, which is a nice steady loss and should be sustainable in the long term.

One of the men who completed the survey lost 27.0 kg (59.5 lbs) in only 55 days. Another amazing result, along with other reported losses of 11, 14, 15, 16 and 19 kgs (135 – 242 lbs).

What do the results mean?

These results clearly show that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to calorie burning. We all burn different amounts of energy, so we also need to tailor what we eat accordingly.

Government guidelines are based upon an ‘average’ man of 90kg and woman of 70kg, but you can see from the survey results that two individuals with similar weights can burn very different amounts in a day. This is mainly due to their different levels of activity, but there are numerous other possible reasons for these differences; including muscle bulk, stress levels, intensity of exercise and sleep duration.

We also carried out another mini-study recently and the results from this were really interesting. Four women in the group were a similar weight and carried out exactly the same activity sessions throughout the day. However, their calorie burn for the day differed by over 200kcals. That’s a lot when you consider that an extra 200kcals burn a day for a month could mean a reduction of nearly 1½ lbs of body fat.

In 2009 a government advisory committee recommended that calorie consumption guidelines should be increased. The trouble with this is that we’re now dealing with a UK population with a large number of overweight and obese individuals. Increasing intake guidelines will surely only make this problem worse. We can’t just keep raising the calorie intake and expect everyone to maintain a healthy weight.

The results of our study show that men and women are burning approximately 3300 and 2700 calories per day, but this is because the majority of this group are overweight or obese. If you are carrying extra weight, you will normally burn more calories. If we took this ‘average’ survey respondent, our Ki Activity Manager would recommend a calorie intake of around 2200 calories for men and 1600 calories for women (with a target of 1kg lost per week). Then as body weight decreased, so would daily calorie burn. For example, you might see these burns reduce to 2800 for men and 2100 for women and so intake targets might also need to decrease accordingly.

If you can’t track how your calorie burn changes over time, you can’t alter your calorie intake to match. The good news is that the Ki System allows you to monitor and manage everything yourself and so generic guidelines become irrelevant anyway!

The next steps

So… what are we going to do with your feedback? Well, our first stop is to speak to Universities, Government organisations and action groups to show them our results and discuss how the Ki System can be used in their research to aid them in developing future guidelines and health/weightloss programmes for the nation. We’ll also use this evidence in our campaign to promote greater physical activity in everyday life.

If you’d like to read more on calories, nutrition and activity, visit the other posts in our blog. You can also leave your feedback and comments on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Recent research has predicted that up to 48% of men and up to 43% of women will be obese by 2030 if current trends continue. This would mean that in the UK alone 11 million more adults would be obese by 2030.

These daunting figures, reported in peer-reviewed journal The Lancet, have been calculated using recent statistics and evidence to predict the future health and economic consequences of obesity.

What’s more, other researchers have recently shown that the longer you are obese the greater your risk of dying from any cause, with the greatest increase in risk coming from cardiovascular diseases.

Of course, the predictions reported in The Lancet will be inaccurate if we make changes to our lifestyles that impact our body weight. By reducing the time spent overweight or obese, you will also reduce your risk of dying from lifestyle diseases.

Individual responsibility is key. You can decide today not to be one of the people obese in 2030 and make changes to your lifestyle for good.

Consuming fewer calories than you burn every day is essential for weight loss. A tool like the Ki Fit can help you do this. Its accurate minute by minute monitoring of your body’s behaviour and food logging diary will give you a wealth of information to enable you to take control of your lifestyle and change the future statistics today.

Potatoes, along with other carbohydrates, are often one of the first foods to be eliminated by dieters, but cutting out a food groups cuts out important vitamins and minerals which are vital for a healthy body.

Recent research has shown that eating 6 to 8 golf ball sized purple potatoes with the skins twice a day as part of a normal diet for 4-weeks lowered blood pressure in overweight/obese people with high blood pressure.

Although the researchers used purple potatoes, they believe similar effects would be seen with white and red skinned potatoes.

The way you prepare your potatoes will make a difference to how healthful they are.

When simply boiled, baked, or microwaved, without any additions when cooking or serving, potatoes are low in fat, and are a good source of fibre, vitamins and minerals.

As the Daily Mail reported, eating the potatoes did not result in weight gain. This is probably because adding the potatoes to the diet didn’t alter the total calorie intake of the participants in the study. The potatoes either replaced something else in the meals, or the participants adjusted their calorie intake for the rest of the day and achieved ‘energy balance’; the key to weight management.

So, you can include potatoes in your weight loss diet and gain the health benefits. If you want to lose weight the total number of calories you consume each day needs to be less than the number of calories you burn. Logging your meals in the Activity manager will help you keep track of not only the number of calories you are consuming every day, but also the amount of protein, fat, carbohydrate. Your KiFit armband will accurately measure your calories burned 24/7 to allow you to achieve your calorie deficit goal everyday.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Just doing simple daily activities can increase your calorie burn

Last week the Daily Mail reported that you can “Fidget your way to fitness”, misinterpreting the results of recent research which linked cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), a measure of heart and lung fitness, to the amount of incidental physical activity that obese inactive men and women completed everyday.

The researchers concluded that individuals who did more incidental physical activity had higher levels of CRF, but even the highest CRF scores in this group were at the low end of the low-to-good range. What’s more, it doesn’t tell us if greater incidental physical activity results in greater CRF or that people with greater CRF do more incidental physical activity.

Although the findings of this study were generally overstated in the media, and fidgeting may not be the key to getting fit, increasing the amount of incidental physical activity that you do throughout the day can increase your daily calories burned total.

Remember getting fit and losing weight are not necessarily the same thing.

Incidental physical activity is the activity that occurs during everyday tasks and actions (which could include fidgeting). It can be done in little bite-sized chunks so is quite easy to incorporate into your everyday life. You could be:

• Doing the housework – doing the washing-up, vacuuming, dusting, and/or do the laundry.
• Doing the gardening – mowing the lawn, weed the flower beds, and do the digging.
• Washing the car by hand.

The Ki Armband and display shows exactly how much activity you are doing as well as the number of calories you are burning as a result.

Ki Advice:

The key to increasing incidental physical activity is simply changing some of your daily lifestyle habits. If you can replace a few convenient activities each day with something that will cause you to move more, then you will increase your calorie burn. For example

• Walk up and down the stairs instead of the lift or escalator.
• Get off the bus or tube one stop early and walk a little further.
• Park your car a little further away from the entrance at the supermarket or shopping centre.
• Stand-up or walk around when you are on the phone.
• Walk to talk to your colleague instead of emailing them.