You’re not the only one struggling to get your work trousers done up this month. A few weeks of lava-lavas, Lindauer, parties and pavlova have most of us feeling a bit porky as we return to work after our Christmas holiday. The British Dietetic Association says the average weight gain over Christmas is 2.3kg – and the British don’t have to contend with our long summer days filled with boozy barbeques. A couple of kilos won’t kill you, but if it’s on top of the 2.3kg from the year before, and maybe the 2.3kg from the year before that, these first days of the new year are the perfect time to suck in your tummy and take a tough look at yourself. If you have plumped up a little over the festive season, whatever you do, don’t panic. Skipping meals, eliminating entire food groups, or drastically cutting down your food intake are all paths to certain relapse. You don’t need to punish yourself to get 
back in shape, and you definitely don’t need to go it alone. Online and off, there are tools and technology to help keep you on track, and link you up with others who are in the same boat.
Does my bum look big?
First things first: do you need to lose weight at all? An easy way to figure this out is with dietician Joanne Larsen’s Healthy Body Calculator at dietitian.com/ibw.html It even takes into account whether or not you’re an amputee – which is certainly one way to lose a few kilos. Enter the bare minimum information (gender, age, height and weight) and the calculator will tell you whether you’re within your healthy weight range. It will also produce a table estimating your recommended daily intake for kilojoules, fat, protein and more. It’s worth grabbing a measuring tape and entering a little more info. Measuring your elbow seems strange, but it gives a good indication of the size of your frame. “I’m just big-boned” is a tried and true excuse for the cuddly, but your elbow breadth will let you know whether you really should weigh on the heavy side of healthy. Entering your waist (just above the belly button) and hip measurements will tell you whether you’re storing weight around your middle or further down. Tummy fat is less healthy, but easier to lose. You’re at increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes if your waist measurement is more than 94cm (for men) or 82cm (women). If you’re off the heavy end of the scale or your puku is protruding, read on.
A simple formula
Underlying absolutely every diet in existence, from the scary to the sensible, is a very simple idea: eat less, and exercise more. Of course, simple doesn’t mean easy. If it was, the global weight-loss industry wouldn’t be worth $ US 100 billion a year. But diets don’t need to cost the earth; you can get all the information and support you need online, for free. For a crystal clear explanation of what calories are and how they work, head to www.acaloriecounter.com/calorie-counting.php (If you prefer kilojoules to calories, get out your calculator: one calorie equals 4.2kJ.) The British Dietetic Association’s Weight Wise Web site gives a broad overview of how much, and of what, the average person should eat every day (www.bdaweightwise.com/eating/eating_plan.aspx). For basic nutrition information, the Canterbury District Health Board has a selection of brochure PDFs at www.cpublichealth.co.nz/nutrition/Nutrition.asp ; pamphlets and posters can also be ordered from the Ministry of Health (www.healthed.govt.nz/resources/search-resources.aspx?id=13). For information about nutrition problems, such as diabetes and iron deficiency, see tinyurl.com/367pjp Even with the best nutrition in the world, you’ll need to move that body to get it into shape. Establishing a weights routine or doing a regular class at a gym is a great if you have the budget. Local Web site Gyms Online has some great tips on how to choose a gym (www.gymsonline.co.nz). To try before you buy, head to Gym Link (gymlink.co.nz/Gym) for free passes to gyms all over New Zealand. If you want to get your head around the psychology and even the physics of weight loss, check Weight Watchers’ Science Centre to increase the size of your brain as you decrease your belly (www.weightwatchers.co.nz/sciencecentre). If you happen to be an engineer or IT whizz – or there’s one in your life who could lose a few kilos – check out The Hacker’s Diet (www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4) for a logical, scientific, no-nonsense guide to weight loss. For real weight-loss geeks, the Physics Diet (www.physicsdiet.com) provides extreme spreadsheets and data analysis.
Keeping track
Even if you’re not a maths person, keeping tabs on two things will help keep your diet on track. First, measure your weight loss. This can be as simple as writing your weight on a calendar once a week, but a downward-tracking graph is more inspiring. Set up a simple Excel spreadsheet – better yet, download an automated script to fill it in for you from tinyurl.com/2fu6lb If scales are slow to respond, try measuring your waist measurement instead of your weight. Muscle weighs more than fat, so even if your weight stays the same, you may still be getting smaller and your waist will be one of the first places to shrink. The second thing to keep track of is your food intake and exercise. You don’t need to write down everything you put in your mouth for the rest of your life; using a diet-tracking Web site for just a couple of weeks can really clarify the relationship between ‘calories in’ and ‘calories out’. Most Web sites with diet and exercise calculators are, unfortunately, American. This means the food entry takes a little more effort for us Kiwis; for most home-cooked meals, you’ll need to create a recipe, adding all the ingredients individually, instead of just clicking on a brand-name food. Once you have your regular meals saved, updating your diary is much faster. Gyminee (www.gyminee.com) is a great-looking site that makes adding recipes relatively quick and easy. It also has a workout planner, a calendar to keep track of your workout days, and a ‘GymBuddies’ area for motivation – more on that later. Other popular free diet and fitness trackers are Fit Day (www.fitday.com), Spark People (sparkpeople.com) and Fit Tracker (fittracker.shapefit.com). Fitness Journal (www.fitnessjournal.org) offers the choice of a simple or detailed food journal, as well as a smoking journal for those of you thinking of turning over a few new leaves at the same time. If you’re willing to pay a monthly subscription, Weight Watchers Online ($29 per month, www.weightwatchers.co.nz) caters for New Zealand diets, with a database of 15,000 foods and 500 recipes from downunder. It includes local offerings like Baker’s Delight and Sanitarium, as well as popular Kiwi takeaways. (Surprisingly, the nutritional data for McDonalds differs from country to country; Australians like their fries fattier than us Kiwis.) It also has an easy-to-use exercise tracker. Weight Watchers Online measures food in the company’s well-established ‘Points’ system, based on saturated fat and kilojoule content. The Points system works well for those who are after simple, clear guidelines for food intake. It doesn’t track fat, fibre, protein or carb intake separately, as the US calorie-based diet Web sites do.
Move it to lose it
Burning off extra calories with exercise is far more effective than starving yourself. Experts say you should do about 30 minutes of moderate exercise every day. It may sound like a lot, but the 30 minutes don’t have to be all together – two brisk 15-minute walks are just as good as a single 30-minute trek. Spin the Activator wheel at www.sparc.org.nz/pushplay/activator/play-now for great, free suggestions on incorporating physical activity into your day. Wash the car, have a living room disco, do push-ups and sit-ups for an ad break – or play Russian roulette and do whatever activity spins around. Muscle uses energy even when it’s resting, so incorporate weight-bearing exercise as well as calorie-burning cardio into your routine. For everything you ever wanted to know about lifting weights, head to Shape Fit (www.shapefit.com/exercise.html). There you’ll find routines for every part of your body, as well as information on stretching, injuries and motivation. At www.fitness.com/exercises you can search by muscle group, equipment available and whether you’re at home, on the road or at a gym. If you’re not sure about technique, staff from the Division of Sport and Recreation at AUT have put 80 videos of common exercises online at www.somatotype.net/iPod_Gym/index.html The videos are free, and formatted for use on an iPod as well as a PC; they’re also used by the iWorkout package available from www.helmesinnovations.com/iWorkout If you don’t exercise because you hate that hot, sweaty feeling, try www.swimplan.com for personalised swimming programmes based on your ability – and an end to boring laps.
Support: more than a good bra
Changing your diet and exercise habits is much, much easier with the support of your nearest and dearest. Enlist the help and support of those around you, and seek out others with similar goals. The Weight Loss Forum at fitness.com (weight-loss.fitness.com) is a great first port of call for any question about diet or exercise. The forum is populated by enthusiastic amateurs, so seek medical advice if you’ve got serious concerns. There are also helpful and supportive message boards at Spark People and Weight Watchers Online. Spark People and Gyminee are one-stop shops for combining diet and exercise tracking with social networking. Both sites have groups you can join based on location, goals and stages of life. Peer Trainer (www.peertrainer.com) focuses solely on bringing similar people together. Peer Trainer groups are limited to four members, based on lifestyle, from “Unathletic Video Game Nerds” to “Empty Nesters Losing Weight”. There are also ‘teams’ with no limits to the number of members who can join. If you prefer to go it alone, but still need some external motivation, sign up for semi-unpredictable nagging at HassleMe (www.hassleme.co.uk); the most popular hassle is “Go to the gym”. With a phantom nagger, supportive cyper-pals and digital diet monitors at your fingertips, is dropping extra kilos easier than ever? Yes... and no. There's no way around it; eating less and exercising more is still the only way to shape up. But keeping track of your progress has never been easier, and there's nothing more encouraging than seeing improvements – in the numbers, and in your life.
The future of gyms
Imagine breaking into a gentle jog on a treadmill at the gym, the time slipping by as you lose yourself in the latest episode of your favourite TV show on your personal built-in screen. Sound far-fetched? At the end of 2007, gym chain Les Mills began rolling out treadmills with wireless Internet access and built-in screens. Watch free-to-air digital TV via the gym's network, or plug your iPod into the treadmill’s docking station and play a movie on the $11,500 machine’s screen. Les Mills is also launching online personal training early in 2008, for use by the gym’s 300 or so personal trainers and 47,000 gym members. A personal trainer – real or virtual – will help you get results, says Les Mills gym services director Norman Phillips. “Even if you just use a trainer once every three or six months it will help you keep on track.” - lesmills.co.nz
Success story
Liz Quilty has lost 75kg (and counting) through diet, exercise – and the Internet. “I started out reading everything I could get my hands on online. I started with Wikipedia and went from there. I spent hours every evening reading document after document, everything I could get my hands on. I soon bypassed a ton of myths and facts and became fairly knowledgeable. I joined an online weight loss forum which helped because they had challenges which kept me motivated. The weight has just fallen off. I am literally half the weight I was 18 months ago. My goal is to get to 70kg. I’ve stuck to my diet through thick and thin, and my family love the new me.”
Liz created weight-loss.co.nz to share the best tips and tricks she’s collected online.
Heart-to-heart
If you’d like a source of motivation close to hand at all times, look no further than your own wrist. Strap a heart rate monitor on it, for constant feedback on how your ticker’s tocking. Polar Heart Rate Monitors, from $119.99 (www.polarheart.co.nz),
also keep track of calories burned during workouts and help you stay within your optimal heart rate. Best of all, you can transfer data from the monitor to your computer, where you can track all aspects of your fitness progress using Polar’s online training log at https://www.polarpersonaltrainer.com
Big losers win big
Got a few Christmases worth of weight to lose? If you think you can ditch 10kg in six months, think about taking the LA Fitness 10kg challenge. Hire any piece of exercise equipment from LA Fitness for six months, lose 10kg and the machine you’re hiring is yours to keep - seriously. Choose a treadmill, rower, exercycle or cross trainer from one of 17 stores all over New Zealand, sweat off a steady 0.4kg per week in the privacy of your own home, and it's yours for good. tinyurl.com/2ag8gy
Super scales
Scales don’t just tell you how much you weigh anymore. New-fangled scales use “foot-to-foot bioelectrical impedance analysis” – let’s just call it magic – to tell you how much body fat you have in relation to your more important bits, like muscle, bones and internal organs. Tanita’s ‘InnerScan’ Body Composition Monitor scales can also tell you your bone weight, visceral fat rating, metabolic age and muscle weight. Tanita is running an ongoing body fat challenge for New Zealanders: buy a magic scale, get within your heathy body fat range, and be in to win a prize of $5000, $50,000 or 
even $500,000. From $99.90 to $374.95. www.bodyfatmonitors.co.nz
Counting steps
Does 10,000 steps sound like a lot? It’s actually the recommended number of steps a healthy adult should take every day. If you take them all in a row, you’ll end up about 8km from where you started (unless you walk in a circle, of course). The good news is that most of us take 4000 to 6000 steps a day without even thinking about it. The 10,000 Steps Program recommends using a pedometer to measure your daily steps and walk your way up to 10,000. A pedometer is a small electronic device that attaches to your clothes, on the hip, and uses a pendulum mechanism to count steps. Researchers reckon the Yamax Digiwalker is the best pedometer around, cost: $49.95. www.10000steps.co.nz
The pod squad
Music makes you run faster – or at least hurt less. Running without an iPod is unthinkable to many a jogger, which is why Nike and Apple partnered up to release the Nike+iPod Sport Kit. The kit is a $59 disc (technically an accelerometer) that sits in your shoe, and a receiver that plugs into an iPod Nano. As well as the Nano, you’ll a pair of Nike+ running shoes (although there are work-arounds; see tinyurl.com/2zdvab). Plug the Nano into your computer after a run, and your distance, pace, time and calories burned are automatically uploaded to the Nike+ Web site, where you can track your progress, join running clubs and take challenges. nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus
Poddercise
If you like the idea of a personal trainer but lack the budget, try subscribing to a health and fitness podcast. For a good selection of both audio and video, check out iTunes (iTunes>Podcasts>Fitness & Nutrition) for podcasts like Weight Loss and the Mind, encouraging you to think healthy, and Workout on the Web, which has video tips on subjects like getting exercise at the playground with your kids. You can download full exercise program mp3s from Exertrack (www.exertrack.com/exerpod_default.htm) – great if you don't mind the computerised voice of the robot instructor. If you’ve taken yoga classes before, try www.yogadownload.com for 20-minute, take-anywhere yoga sessions. See www.digitalpodcast.com/browse-health_and_fitness-22-1.html for more.
Step outside yourself
Check out the photo table at www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.shtml to see what your height and weight look like on someone else. No picture there? Submit yours!