The inspiration of meeting successful slimmers!

You would be amazed how often we are asked by the press for a before and after photograph of one of our slimmers who fits into a specific profile: eg in their twenties, forties, who’s lost 6 stone, who can wear a bikini, etc., etc.

Last Thursday we had a wonderful day at Quorn House when we invited some fabulously successful dieters who had attended our classes to be photographed specifically for the press. So at 9 o’clock I met the first three at Marks & Spencer at Fosse Park in Leicester, so that we could sort out a perfect outfit for them to wear. At 10 o’clock three more arrived and at 11, two more.

One by one we found a dress or suit or skirt and top or whatever, found the perfect shoes and jewellery to complement them, and then sent them over to Quorn House, our offices, to find the make-up artist to be made up and have their hair styled before being photographed by a top photographer.

The cumulative weight loss of these eight lasses amounted to 50 stone! They looked fabulous and perhaps the most exciting message that came out of the day was that they wore clothes they wouldn’t normally have dreamed of even trying on let alone believing they would feel fabulous wearing it. When each one saw themselves in the finished photographs, they were astounded at how beautiful they looked. All of them.

Every one of these successful dieters had attended Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs. It works. The combination of a healthy diet, a fitness class, camaraderie of other class members, plus the instruction and support of a qualified teacher makes for a winning formula. If you want to start your diet today, check out our website for your nearest RC class or join our Online club. Go to www.rosemaryconley.com for details of both services. It really, really works!

Are you starting your diet today?

Most people start their diet on a Monday because it is the beginning of a new week and, psychologically, a new week. Often the shopping is done over the weekend and you will have no doubt decided towards the end of last week that today you would make a real effort to lose weight in time for Christmas.

Before you start the day, step on to your scales in your birthday suit and note what you weigh. If you are planning on joining a slimming class this week, check out our website www.rosemaryconley.com to see if we have a class near you because we include an exercise session with our weigh-in and a weight-loss talk so it’s basically better value than just joining a basic slimming class, plus all our instructors are professionally qualified.

We need motivation to lose weight and research has shown that losing weight with others is significantly more successful than going it alone. We are motivated by different things and we need to use every trick in the book to inspire us into action. Here are my quick ten top tips to get you off to a good start:

Clear out any food that will tempt you off the straight and narrow
Make a plan of what you plan to eat this week, particularly your main meal
Make a pledge not to eat between meals except one small piece of fruit
Cut your alcohol consumption
Drink plenty of water
Get active. Decide to do something reasonably energetic every day
Avoid adding fat to any food that you prepare or eat
Avoid eating as much fat as possible. It will make you fat!
Find a reason for wanting to lose weight and write down you goals
Each Monday, measure yourself as well as weighing yourself and write down your measurements

Do these ten things and you will lose weight remarkably quickly and if you join a class and try and lose weight with others you will find you lose even more! Happy slimming!

The Five Key Steps To Losing Weight

Yesterday, a lot of folk will have embarked on a diet in a desperate attempt to lose weight because they are simply fed up with carrying around their excess bulk, feeling unnecessarily tired, and having a very low self-esteem. Monday is the most popular day for starting a diet as it signifies the start of a fresh week and most of us have a pretty predictable work pattern and that helps us stock to our diet.

To be successful on any weight-loss campaign we need to understand that we have to cut down on the calories we eat and we need to step up the number of calories we spend. We can have very good intentions of eating more healthily and doing more exercise but when reality takes over, often we make some effort but not enough to give us the quick weight loss we need to spur us on to our ultimate goal.

So here are my top tips to keep you on track to quick results.

• To lose weight you need to stick to a reduced calorie diet and the easiest way to do that is to eat low fat foods which should contain significantly fewer calories that their high-fat equivalent. Check out the food labels and buy foods with 5% fat or less, and check out the calories per portion that you are going to eat. Cut right back on alcohol as alcohol just causes you to gain weight.



• Next, reduce your portion size. This is, in my opinion, the biggest reason why so many people are overweight. We are just getting used to eating too much. Find yourself a smaller plate and cereal bowl and cut back your portions. If you have a set of my Portion Pots, use them. (find them on our website www.rosemaryconley.com)



• Stop snacking between meals. That’s a tough one if you’re used to munching your way through a packet of crisps and a Mars bar every day but if you are serious about getting back into shape, then you do need to cut back on the high fat treats that do nothing for you except make you fat. If you feel really hungry mid-morning or mid-afternoon, have a small piece of fruit – just one!



• Exercise burns extra calories and any activity that uses your heart and lungs – in other words makes you out of breath – also burns fat. We need to do 20-30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 – 5 times a week to be healthy, but while we are trying to lose weight, our exercise time is crucial. It will speed up your progress significantly. Also do some toning exercises which will strengthen your muscles and give you a better shape. (Try our diet and fitness classes as the exercises we teach in them will burn fat and tone you up- find out where your local Rosemary Conley Diet & Fitness classes are held here).



• Last, but by no means least, write down everything you eat and drink, every day. By doing so research has proven that you double your rate of progress. It just makes you more accountable than eating something and thinking ‘just one won’t hurt’ – but unfortunately, every little extra adds up.

Remember, we don’t become overweight overnight so be patient but when you do reach your goal, you will feel like a new person and every bit of effort will have been worth it.

Have a good day!

Champagne and Fresh Air

It’s Day 5 of our Austrian Activity Holiday and the sun is trying to shine. Our holiday guests are getting fitter by the day and the weight losses are mounting up.

Yesterday all of the guests went to Bregenz, a beautiful town situated on Lake Constance in Austria. Bregenz is famous for its open air theatre with the stage being suspended actually on the lake. It is a magnificent sight and the stage makes an appearance in the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, as the location for one of the big fight scenes.

Our group spent the day either taking a boat trip for lunch, shopping or just wondering around this beautiful town and by 5 o’clock everyone was back safely, positively buzzing after their enjoyable day.

Then it was time for our champagne cable car ride. The Lech tourist office have created a charming activity by converting one of the cable cars into a bar. Guests can sip champagne as the cable car slowly ascends the large mountain Rufikopf, enabling us to gaze in amazement at the magnificent views across the snow-capped mountain ranges, the beautiful summer meadows and enjoy an aerial view of our hotel and the small town of Lech. It is a charming way to enjoy the evening and the sun shone which made it even more spectacular. When we reached the top of the mountain we were able to get out and wander around in the cool, fresh evening air which is a tonic in itself. No wonder so many of our guests return year after year.

After the champagne it was time for dinner which is always exquisitely presented and totally delicious. We do feel very spoiled and it is hard to believe that the food is all low-fat and specially prepared for our group.

As we relaxed into the evening the nerves were beginning to emerge as Thursday evening is Concert Night! My colleague, Mary, is Concert organiser and she has managed to engage some 14 acts to perform from our group! I am getting nervous too as I still don’t know the words to the song that I am supposed to be singing (miming) in the finale!

Over the years our Concert has gained something of a reputation and many English guests, not in our group, deliberately book their holiday to coincide with our week so that they can come to our concert. No pressure then! The other guests (non English) who are also staying in the hotel find us all rather strange as we are having such a very happy time. We create so much laughter and activity. I wonder what they will think of us after tonight?

To think that last Saturday only a handful of our 37 guests knew each other and now they are all great buddies, having the holiday of a lifetime together. That’s why we keep on organising this trip. It really is too good to miss.

Fresh air and champagne? You just can’t beat it!

Making the effort on holiday!

We have been in Portugal for the last couple of weeks. The first week was holiday and the second was work-based as we have had our annual Think Tank. Our fellow directors fly out to join us for an enjoyable time together when we can mull over, discuss in detail and think outside the box for the future of the business, and decide where we are going to place our priorities over the next twelve months. It is extremely productive and over the last three years, since we started to do this in Portugal, the company has been transformed.

With guests comes the need to feed and entertain and inevitably more food and drink is on the menu than maybe it would be if Mike and I were just alone. But I have learned that weight can go on so quickly and yet it is so slow to go. I have worked hard this two weeks to lose a couple of pounds so that I can wear my summer-weight clothes and not feel there are too many bulges. I have cranked up my willpower and stayed focused. It has worked. I am going home today feeling slimmer than when I arrived and that feels good.

These are the five rules I have followed during these two weeks:

I’ve reduced my portion size by 20% at every meal
I have eaten low-fat foods and have substituted soy sauce instead of salad cream on salads
I have not eaten one Pringle or eaten any Haagen Dazs ice cream – (my usual holiday treats!)
I have done an aerobic workout three times and done some toning exercises on five occasions
Except for one evening when I overdid the Pimms, I have moderated my alcohol consumption

Just by making these small but important choices I have lost weight and I am very, very happy about it. It could so easily have been the opposite and I could have gained a couple of extra pounds or even more and then I would have been as miserable as sin.

If you are planning on going on holiday soon, try your very best to lose as much weight before you go and then when you are away, keep those good habits going and you too could go home even slimmer or, at least, weighing the same.

If you need help to lose weight between now and your holiday, check out our website. We can help you.

Can eating at the table help you to lose weight?

Years ago I remember meeting a rather intimidating woman who owned The Golden Door health spa in America during filming for ITV’s This Morning programme. She was emphatic that every meal should be treated as a banquet. ‘Always sit at a table which should be set beautifully. Use pretty dishes to enhance presentation and eat slowly. Enjoy the experience’, she insisted. Of course she was right but busy, everyday life gets in the way and in reality we don’t take our time. And eating in front of the television has become normality.

A recent study has highlighted the fact that if we eat while we are watching television, we will not feel so satisfied, we are more likely to snack later and we will not remember as clearly what we have actually eaten. The study found that women who ate lunch whilst watching TV later snacked on more biscuits than those who had eaten a similar lunch but who had not been watching TV while they ate it. This is an important finding for anyone trying to lose weight.

To lose weight we need to eat fewer calories than our body uses up during each day and we need to try every trick we can learn to help ourselves not fall by the wayside when that first hunger pang hits our stomach. Going for the biscuits is the worst thing we can do. We never eat just one as biscuits seem to set off an immediate craving for another one as soon as we eat the first mouthful! Then we’re tempted to eat the whole packet to get rid of the darn things!

So let’s learn from this study and start planning to eat away from the television and enjoy every mouthful of our food. Food needs to be kept in the right perspective as well as the right quantity and it should be enjoyed. Leaving the table after a meal is a signal that the meal is over and we should try and train our brains to not expect another meal until the appropriate time. The only exception to this is to eat a small ‘power snack’ of perhaps a couple of satsumas or a small pear mid morning and mid afternoon to keep our blood sugar levels up. If you can stick to this habit, it will help you to lose weight and if you increase your activity levels at the same time, you will lose weight significantly faster. If you need help sticking to your diet, visit our website: www.rosemaryconley.com.

Are your jeans making you fat?

I love wearing jeans. They are comfortable and fashionable, extremely versatile as they can be dressed up or down to look stunning. And they can be worn at any age with or without a belt, with flat shoes or the highest of heels and, of course, boots. The key is that they suit YOU as a unique individual and that they actually fit! This is where, unfortunately, wearing jeans can go pear-shaped.

Amazingly, some fashion designers are creating jeans with sewn-in mock tops of men's briefs so that they show above the waistband and the low-cut hipster jeans look as though they are falling off, whilst some girls' jeans now can be bought with a sewn-in mock thong top appearing above the jeans!

I am the wrong age to comment on whether this is attractive, acceptable or appropriate but my biggest problem is that, with a growing incidence of obesity, particularly with the young, most teenagers who insist on wearing jeans that are simply too small for them are creating a muffin-top of overhanging flesh. Maybe they like to look like that. Perhaps showing a 'muffin-top' is cool? I am yet to find anyone who thinks it is attractive. But there is a serious side to this fashion habit that probably many folk don’t realise.

When we continually wear an item of clothing that fits or ‘digs-in’ in a certain position, the fat that we all have around our body is squeezed out of the way. To check this out just take off your wedding ring and see the indentation made by your ring on your finger. It is because of this that women have a little fat showing above and below their bra strap and men have ‘love handles’ above where their trousers sit. This is unavoidable as we have to wear clothes that ‘rest’ on certain areas of our body,. If women wear a full brief or pant all the time, (it doesn’t apply if you wear a thong), they will see an indentation on the cheeks of their backside where the elastic around the top of the legs usually digs in a little. As a result they won’t like the shape of their bottom when they see themselves undressed. Wearing a thong will eliminate this over time. So, back to the tight-fitting hipster jeans.

Wearing low-cut jeans will have the effect of pushing abdominal fat upwards. The low-cut style necessitates that the jeans are tight fitting (or they would fall down) and the result is the creation of a muffin-top overhang. Wear this style of jean very regularly, and your accumulation of fat above the hip-band will be there, even when you take them off, and it will reshape your figure and reduce the slimness of your waist and make your stomach fatter. After all, the fat has nowhere else to go.

So what is the answer? Losing some weight will help as if you lose the fat it can’t be squeezed around as much. Vary the style of your underwear and wearing a thong is actually very comfortable once you get used to it – just buy the size bigger than you would wear with a normal pant. If you want to wear hipster jeans, just don’t wear them all the time. Ideally, vary the hip/waist band height with differently fitting jeans. And lastly, regularly undertake some aerobic exercise which will help burn body fat and do some stomach flattening exercises so that you tone up that area.

Check out our website for details of my DVDs or our diet and fitness classes which will help you achieve that.

Losing weight and achieving a healthier, fitter, body.

Friday was a fantastic day for us at the Roadshow in Swansea. It was an action packed day filled with enthusiasm and excitement, and total optimism towards achieving a healthier, fitter, body.

At the end of the day more than thirty people stood on the stage having lost varying amounts of weight from 3 stone upwards with several losing as much as seven, eight or nine stone. (This wonderful group did not include our slimmers of the year who had lost 30 stone between them and had come on the stage earlier that day).

Losing weight and getting fitter is 25% knowledge, 25% action, and 50% attitude and motivation. What was generated on Friday was a massive wave of motivation that will stoke up the willpower stores of the wonderful women who attended. I guarantee that those people will lose weight this week and will feel fired up to lose weight for the summer. If you are able to join us, the next Roadshow will be held in Fife on Friday 15th May.

Losing weight for your holidays is not about sticking to a rigid diet for 2 weeks prior to your departure but much more a 3-4 months transition from unhealthy habits to a concerted change in lifestyle towards a healthier and more active regime.

Attending a class such as a Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness class is without doubt the most effective option available as we combine diet and fitness in the same class. Having said that, a lady stood on the stage on Friday who had lost 4 stone with our online club, http://www.rosemaryconleyonline.com/. She looked fantastic and will be appearing in our magazine at some point in the future.

So if you want to get in shape for your holiday this year start making some positive decisions to get you on the right track.

We really do have the winning formula and want to help you achieve your goals. You’ll be so glad that you did.

Airline seats are not designed for the overweight.

Today I flew out to Portugal from East Midlands Airport. All went well, the plane was full and on time. Well done Easyjet. But I really feel for anyone who is dramatically overweight. Flying must be one of the most uncomfortable and stressful experiences.

I find low-cost air travel to be brilliant and I'm happy with the 'no frills' policy. The space between the seats is fine for a small person like me who is 5' 2" and weighs 8 stone but imagine if I weighed 16 stone. How on earth would I cope? How would I get in the loo cubicle?

Last week Slimmer of the Year Gill Butcher spoke at the Vitality Show about how she dreaded flying when she weighed 20st 12 lbs. I can understand what a relief it must be to have lost 10 stone and for Gill to now enjoy the experience. Losing weight is truly life changing in so many ways and we sometimes forget the everyday experiences that can cause us stress. If you are going away this year, there's no time like the present to make a start to becoming a smaller you for a more comfortable flight! If you need any help, go to our web site www.rosemaryconley.com

Polypill not the only answer to improving our health

So there’s a new tablet called the polypill to be launched to help reduce our risk of stroke/heart disease and lots more. Of course this is good news but in the time that it takes for this pill to be launched, we as a nation can dramatically reduce our risk of heart disease, developing type 2 diabetes and cancer and reduce our risk of stroke by making a few simple changes to our lifestyle. Even a 10% weight reduction if we are overweight or obese will effect dramatic improvements to our health and this can be achieved by eating less fat, taking more exercise and moderating our alcohol consumption. I firmly believe that we should take responsible steps ourselves to save our lives rather than take a pill.

The benefits to our self-esteem when we lose weight are dramatic and there is no doubt that the products and services that we offer within our organisation are helping thousands of people on a daily basis. It was so heart-warming to meet so many successful slimmers who came to our Stand at the Vitality Show last weekend. If you need help, log on to