Yesterday's Horizon programme on BBC2 talked about how most of us take up exercise to lose weight, but on its own it doesn't work. They showed that jogging for 15 minutes at 6mph uses up 16 calories. But a pound of unwanted fat is 3,500 calories. Most of us just don't have the time and the rest of us just don't want to exercise like this.

But there were some helpful suggestions. Maintaining a high calorie output just doing normal stuff can expend an extra 500 calories a day. So, if you walk instead of using the lift, stand instead of sitting, fidget instead of staying still, your body starts to use up extra calories even when you are asleep. For most of us, this seems a realistic approach. It is about being inefficient and wasting bodily energy, where most of our lives aim for efficiency (like using the remote instead of getting up to switch over).

I have blogged about these things many times. But the programme offered something new and interesting.

They showed that this kind of low level persistent activity can help us to move fat out of our bloodstream where it can clog our arteries and into our muscles where it can be used up.So it can protect against heart attacks and strokes. And that a few short bursts of high intensity exercise (HIT) is as effective as many hours on the treadmill. A Scottish researcher at Birmingham University (there was some nice footage of Glasgow in the programme!) shows that 3 minutes a week of HIT is all you need. Anything where you are working hard, for 3 shots of 20 seconds, in fact so hard that you are yelling to help you work harder, does the trick. And the trick is to get the fat stores in your muscles released so that the brain demands more energy from the fat stores around the organs. This can protect against diabetes and cardivascular disease.

The fat around our organs (fat above the waist) is the problematic fat. Hip and thigh fat on the other hand can be quite protective of good he

So after the programme I did 3 bursts on the exercise bike and will do the same 3 times a week for a month and see if I feel better.

Even the stars don't match up to their pictures in the magazines and other advertising. Women's daily exposure to "images of perfection" is linked to depression, insecurity and eating disorders, says a study by 40 doctors, psychologists and academics. It makes us mentally ill. (And dieting to try reach these impossible peaks of perfection makes us physically ill.)

"Kate Winslet's famous curves have been trimmed for a front cover and Keira Knightley's bust enlarged for a film poster. Madonna's biceps have been reduced for a magazine portrait, while veteran model Twiggy's wrinkles vanished in an advertisement for anti-ageing cream.The technique of flattening tummies, shaping thighs, removing laughter lines and adding extra gloss to hair is now commonplace among photographers attempting to produce perfect images of the body beautiful". This text was from the Independent newspaper. The French are trying to ban airbrushing. And in South America, they are trying to ban Barbie for the same reasons - unrealistic images of women make them ill.

What is the moral here? These images we see in the media are not real people. Even the stars, who spend all day working on looking wonderful, need to be airbrushed to look this good. They have become brands, products. A few years ago, Joan Collins said that maintaining her slim shape, lovely face and huge hair was her work, her job, and she devoted most of the day to preparing herself for going out to be seen.

This is unachievable for the rest of us. We shouldn't waste our lives trying.

The reasons men and women give for taking exercise have been shown to be different. Research show that when exercising for health reasons (to get stronger, more supple, fitter) self-esteem is high for both sexes.

Women's motivation for exercise is more often related to weight and shape reasons than men. As I have said before, exercising for these reasons is linked to disordered eating and this research supports this. "Overall activity level was related to greater eating disturbance for women". These terms, disordered eating, eating disturbance, tend to be correlated to or result in low self-esteem, increased weight and for some, serious eating disorders.

For both genders, exercising for weight loss, tone, and attractiveness reasons was highly correlated with measures of disturbance. The researchers note that these motivations for exercise "can be used to identify people who might develop eating disorders and/or body image disturbance".

Exercising for health is great. But it is not the most effective way to lose weight if that is your goal. It brings with it a range of potential concerns. With hypnotherapy, you can learn to accept your shape the way you are, and at the same time, learn some effective ways to manage a healthy weight. Losing weight without these risks.

We often worry that other people think we are fat, when in fact they are not bothered one way or the other. The result of this belief though makes us self-conscious and feel that we ought to lose weight in order to meet the expectations of other people. And when we fail, we feel we have let them down, as well as feeling that we have failed ourselves.

Recent research sought to examine the role women's husbands may play in determining their body satisfaction. 172 (mean age = 37.53 years) European American women were assessed (using the Body Figure Rating Scale) for their own body satisfaction, their perceptions of their husbands' satisfaction with their bodies, and their husbands' actual satisfaction with their bodies. The women's weight status was assessed using body mass index (BMI). Results indicated that wives were much more dissatisfied with their bodies than were their husbands and that wives thought their husbands were much more dissatisfied with their bodies than the husbands actually were.

Another result of the study suggested that the wives' BMI didn't affect their husband's satisfaction with their wives bodies nearly as much as the women themselves. They were much more concerned about their being fat and felt their husbands shared this concern.

What can we make of this? Women as a whole are pretty tough on themselves in relation to their weight and shape. We tend to project this dissatisfaction onto other people and then imagine them thinking hurtful thoughts. It is another way of beating ourselves up.

If you are overweight, it is a great idea to lose weight. But do it for the good of your health, rather than to achieve some imaginary goal of pleasing someone else.

When Rubens was painting, voluptuous women were considered beautiful. Attractiveness stereotypes have been with us for centuries, but the particular ideal changes with fashion. The current beauty ideal is unrealistically thin. Using younger and younger models, with immature body shapes, demonstrates how unrealistic it is. And as the beauty ideal gets thinner, real women have been getting bigger. So the difference between ideal and actual just keeps growing.

In times of famine, people tend to get thin. When food is freely available, people get fat. We in the Western world have easy access to plentiful supplies of the widest range of palatable foods at very low prices. Thus the social pressure to achieve unrealistically thin bodies is even harder because at the same time we are receiving messages to eat. Particularly messages to eat for fun.

To help you maintain a healthy body image in a healthy body, try hypnosis.

If you have thin hips and a big belly — the famous muffin top — you’re probably more at risk for disease than someone with a big bum and a small waist. And while you can't change your natural shape, muffin tops benefit from exercise to get rid of the fat around the waist. Read on to find out how muffin tops affect health.

Exercise really helps if this is your type.