Whether you have a few pounds or stones to lose or even if you simply want to be a little healthier, there are plenty of new and emerging diet and exercise trends to help you along the way.

If you want to lose weight then the fundamental principle is to burn off more calories than you consume. Negative calorie consumption helps you to lose weight and you can adjust your calorie intake to maintain a healthy weight once you have reached your goal.

Weight loss of no more than 2lb per week is recommended and it is worth remembering that sustaining a healthy weight is just as important as losing the pounds to begin with.

Natural nutrition is likely to be a key trend throughout this year and beyond, with more of a focus on eating more “good” foods, like fruit, vegetables, beans pulses and lean meats. Fruit, vegetables and other good foods are packed with nutrients and fibre which help you to stay fit and healthy without gaining extra pounds.

It may seem sensible to cut fats out of your diet when trying to shed some weight; but healthy fats – found in foods like nuts, oily fish and avocados – are essential for a healthy body, so make sure you know what you should and shouldn’t be removing from your diet!

The popularity of organic food is also testament to increased awareness of how food is produced. Organic foodstuffs are in high demand because they are free of pesticides, hormones and other additives, and integrating some organic items into your diet helps you along the road to wellbeing.

The simple act of writing down everything you eat and drink throughout the day makes you more aware of your eating habits and how much you are actually consuming, so it is predicted that food journals will remain popular.

Portion control is another hot topic and portion sizes in Britain – and many other countries – tends to be much larger than they should so it pays to accustom yourself with what you should be eating each day, and in what quantity.

Exercise remains at the forefront of overall fitness and “at home fitness” is becoming more popular as many people try to tighten their budgets without impacting their health.

As well as achieving a healthy body and mind, keeping yourself fit and strong can reap other benefits as well. Many life insurance companies take their customers’ lifestyles into consideration so keeping yourself in tip-top condition could help to lower insurance premiums.

It seems like every time you turn on the television they’re talking about the latest diet trend and newest scientific study that proves this or that helps you lose weight the most effectively. Then six months later you’re learning the diet is actually harmful and the newest diet is the way go because it’s the complete opposite. If the first diet tells you carbohydrates are evil and you should eat all protein the next diet will tell you carbs are good and too much protein is bad. It seems like you can never win. But not all diets are bad, in fact there are some really good health and fitness plans out there. Here are the latest dieting trends, whether or not they work for you is debatable because what works for one person may never work for another simply because of body chemistry. So the only way to know for sure if a diet will work is to try it.

The Biggest Loser Diet

Inspired by the hit television show which pits people against one another to lose the most weight in hopes of winning a huge cash prize, this diet focuses on daily meal plans, grocery shopping lists, fitness programs and keeping a journal to track your progress and keep you motivated. While at home you may not be competing to win a cash prize you can set your own goals and thus create a prize for yourself if you reach such and such a goal.

Macrobiotic Diet

This focuses on a simple meal plan system that consists only of organic foods such as whole grown oats, wheat, and fresh vegetables and fruit. According to the macrobiotic diet you are to avoid all processed food and within five days you can lose an average of five pounds as well as lower your cholesterol. The macrobiotic diet also claims to prevent and treat over two hundred illnesses and conditions. This is because of the natural products that promote natural healing and overall health from the inside out.

The Nutrisystem Diet

The Nutrisystem diet is just like that of the Weight Watchers, South Beach and Atkins type diets that focus on a certain percentage of daily intake coming from specified food groups. All these diets all have a line of products they promote and sell which are supposed to conform to these standards and make weight loss more effective and efficient. The problem with a lot of these is that the distribution of calories, fat and such don’t work for all body types. They are also quite expensive and hard to keep up with when out in the real world. The Nutrisystem diet focuses on a reduced calorie diet consisting of 60% carbs, 20% protein and 20% fat.

The Primal Diet

The primal diet is a diet that I actually agree with and do myself. The basis for the diet is that you should eat like a caveman from 10,000 years ago. All of the newer man made foods are contributing to our obesity and health problems.

Focus on lean meats like chicken, fish, pork and steak. Also you should lots of fruits and vegetables. Basically if it doesnt come from an animal or the ground, don’t eat it. Also stay away from all foods that are processed.

A raw food diet simply means consuming foods in their natural, unprocessed form. There are several obvious reasons why this is a good idea. Processing and cooking foods can remove much of the basic nutritional value properties inherent in the food. Over the years the conventional wisdom has been to cook pasta to al dente (medium) stage. It will have more calories than pasta cooked to the well done stage, but it will have much more of the nutritional value still intact.

The raw food diet means eating uncooked, unprocessed, organic and whole foods such as: fruits, seeds, nuts, vegetables, seaweeds, dried fruits legumes, etc. It refers to eating at least 75% of your diet uncooked. Cooking removes nutrition and flavor from fruits and vegetables. We need to eat more like our ancestors. They were healthier and more fit. They cooked very little, and surely didn’t process or cook fruits and vegetables. They ate them raw. They didn’t get water from a tap; it was natural, spring water. And they did not battle modern diseases like diabetes and cancer.

It makes intrinsic sense that our bodies were meant to eat more raw foods. Raw eating is more in harmony with our own metabolisms and with nature. The body was designed to work, and it needs work to remain efficient. That means we should get regular exercise on a long-term basis. It also means eating raw, natural foods that require more energy to digest. Eaten regularly, the obese epidemic in this country could become a thing of the past.

New brain cell development, improved cognition and memory. Exercise stimulates the formation of new brain cells. Researchers found that the areas of the brain that are stimulated through exercise are responsible for memory and learning. For instance, older adults who engage in regular physical activity have better performances in tests implying decision-making process, memory and problem solving.

Heart Disease and Stroke. Daily physical activity can help prevent heart disease and stroke by strengthening your heart muscle, lowering your blood pressure, raising your high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels (good cholesterol) and lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels (bad cholesterol), improving blood flow, and increasing your heart’s working capacity. Optimizing each of these factors can provide additional benefits of decreasing the risk for Peripheral Vascular Disease.

Cholesterol lowering effect. Exercise itself does not burn off cholesterol like it does with fat, however, exercise favorably influences blood cholesterol levels by decreasing LDL (bad) cholesterol, triglycerides and total cholesterol and increasing HDL (good) cholesterol.

Physical activity helps to reduce body fat by building or preserving muscle mass and improving the body’s ability to use calories. When physical activity is combined with proper nutrition, it can help control weight and prevent obesity, a major risk factor for many diseases.

Exercise has also been found to increase levels of “brain-derived neurotrophic factor” (BDNF). This substance is thought to improve mood, and it may play a role in the beneficial effects of exercise. BDNF’s primary role seems to be to help brain cells survive longer; so this may also explain some of the beneficial effects of exercise on dementia

Among the symptoms of depression are feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. Physical exercise often leads to a sense of accomplishment that can increase good feelings about yourself when you need it most. Exercise can also help you feel better about your appearance and your self-worth. Meeting small goals is an excellent way to start boosting self-confidence with the feeling of accomplishment you take in completing challenges.

The health benefits of exercise are explicable in terms of favourable physiological, psychological, and biochemical changes and improvements in function. Their scope is greater than has been supposed. Motivating sedentary people to pursue these benefits is not straightforward. They are reluctant to undertake even moderate exercise, and they become immediately aware of their limited tolerance for physical work and the discomfort that it provokes. It takes several weeks of regular exercise to see an improvement in their capacity for effort and for there to be a training effect.

It was found that exercise had the strongest effect on boosting patients’ physical function, such as improving their ability to climb stairs or walk a certain distance. It improved patients’ body composition, increasing the percentage of lean muscle mass to total weight. Exercise reduced some symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting and pain, and modest improvements were seen in fatigue, mood and quality of life. Given the relatively small benefits for exercise identified by their analysis, the researchers suggest combining exercise with other inventions designed to improve cancer patients’ physical and mental health.

Such high premiums can leave policyholders who end up not making claims wondering whether they can justify their outlay, which is why so many older people are being attracted to PMI policies that offer the chance to receive a substantial discount in return for a high “excess” – the first part of the claims bill that policyholders pay themselves.

Those going this route are advised to place the equivalent of the excess value – possibly from their pension lump sum – in a bank account specifically earmarked for their health needs. In the event of a claim this can be used to pay the excess but, if no claims are necessary, it remains in the policyholder’s bank account as opposed to the insurer’s one.

One such policy, WPA’s Active Health, aimed at the over 55′s, can offer premium discounts of around 80% for those who take a ?5,000 excess. Spectacular savings can also be realised by those who take the other option of a ?3,000 excess. For example, WPA account manager Tina Kemp recently achieved a joint annual premium of ?1,400 for a couple, both aged 64, who had been paying ?7,000 a year for standard PMI.

She says “Active Health is proving especially attractive with older high net worth individuals as they are just as keen to be prudent nowadays as we all are. I get referrals from policyholders who have been pleased with my advice because I know all my 1,000 policyholders personally and contact them regularly to see whether they need any help.
“One of main benefits of dealing with WPA is that you get on-going support. As a not-for-profit association, we concentrate on our customers interests rather than the shareholders. So at renewal I will enquire whether their policy needs tweaking and, if a policyholder has been treated in A&E, I can even remind them that they are entitled to claim back ?100 a night for NHS treatment.

“I don’t know any other insurer that helps with claims “continues Tina. “We will even advise people not to switch to WPA when it’s not in their interests. Active Health, which provides annual cover of up to ?150,000, is unusual in having no upper age limit for joining and in offering an excess that operates on a “rolling basis”. This means that, once your treatment costs exceed your excess limit within a 12 month period, WPA will cover the cost of all treatment for a further 12 months – this works well as most conditions are resolved within 12 months and even then the excess applied is per year and not per condition. Many other policies, however, require you to pay the excess twice if the claim continues across the policy renewal date, and some also make you pay an excess per claim – with WPA you pay on a rolling basis of per person per year.

A further advantage of Active Health is that policyholders can include additional “emergency abroad” cover for up to 70 days per trip – subject to an annual maximum of 180 days and ?500,000. This extension, which can be ideal for those who regularly visit overseas holiday homes, provides treatment for medical emergencies and for evacuation/repatriation via air ambulance – even for members of immediate family who are not actually policyholders. Most travel insurance each year start again and cease to cover an existing serious medical condition, with Active Health you have the confidence of being covered for medical conditions that arise once you join Active Health – without the medical clock starting again each year at renewal.