The Healthy Weight Clinic at Macquarie University provides a one-stop-shop for people looking for a comprehensive healthy weight program created collaboratively with an endocrinologist, dietician and exercise physiologist.

The Clinic is the first of its kind in Sydney’s private sector to provide this approach to health and weight management.

While the clinicians design individually tailored weight loss programs for each patient, the Clinic’s Exercise Physiologist, Joanna Jacques, and Dietician, Juliana Chen, were able to share these top tips to improve overall health:

• A sedentary lifestyle such as sitting at a desk for 10 hours a day can cancel out the benefits of a 45-minute boot camp session. So, set a timer and get up from your desk and move every hour.
• Set small achievable goals like getting up each hour or walking to get lunch.
• Motivators like ‘living longer for my kids’ are better than ‘getting a bikini body for summer’.
• Break the dieting mentality – yo-yo dieting does not work long term. If you’re serious about change, you have to see it as a lifestyle change, rather than a temporary fad.
• Only 5-10 per cent of weight can be lost through lifestyle changes, anything more than that and anything more than 0.5kg-1kg weight loss per week is not healthy and sustainable.
• We are not perfect in other areas of our lives; we need not to strive for perfection when it comes to eating. Healthy eating still provides room for us to enjoy our favourite cakes, chocolates, chips or whatever else takes your fancy. But we do so in moderated portions and not every day.
• Eat more veggies! Only 7 per cent of Australians eat the recommended five serves of vegetables per day.
• Failure is often due to a lack of planning, goal-setting and follow through.

If you or a family member are interested in discussing your health with the team, visit the Healthy Weight Clinic.