By, Alan Jackson, Director of Discovery Learning and Weight Management Centre

I wanted to share my experiences of writing this course with others and in particular weight management students and practitioners. I hope that it is both helpful and interesting for students to understand the process of developing a new training course; after all without the student this organisation is nothing.  Developing this course has been perhaps the most interesting, challenging and technically complex piece of work that I have ever undertaken and has been an enormous learning experience for me.  I consider myself still to be a student of weight and obesity management and I don’t expect this to change whilst I continue to work in this arena.

The subject of obesity is enormous and the large amount of established data alongside the vast emerging new information at times has seemed overwhelming.  Deciphering all of this information, putting it into the context of current scientific opinion and then converting it into manageable and usable information for the weight management practitioner, has been and remains an absolute mission for me and the many other superb researchers and practitioners that have worked on the development of this course with me – I salute them all.

In terms of the rapidly emerging data, some of the animal models are providing perhaps the most intriguing insights into the biology of the adipocyte and its function and interaction with the brain, central nervous system and other tissues.  Glimpses into the development of obesity in the very early programming years (first few weeks of life) also offer very real opportunities for human behavioural intervention into the obesity epidemic.  The whole social, economic, cultural, political, environmental matrix presents an enormous challenge to society – where to we want to go with this, and how far are we prepared to change the landscape?

I continue to wait with baited breath as Obesity Reviews and International Journal of Obesity drop through the door with the latest collection of reviews and journals, and consider how this month’s offerings will impact what has been previously written and hypothesized. Invariably it leads to alterations, additions, amendments, updates and sometimes a complete review of a previously established understanding. There are still some huge questions to be answered and it is this that keeps me burning the midnight oil and as interested now as 10 years ago when I set up Weight Management Centre Ltd.

I suppose this represents the ‘living’ nature of this course and in particular the student reference manual.  It is exciting to work on something so dynamic, and researching, writing and delivering this course has often felt like a race – often a sprint, always a marathon.  It really is a work in progress and it absolutely must remain this way if it is to be relevant to the student and weight management practitioner.  The most enjoyable aspect of putting this course together by far has been converting all of the experiences and interactions gained into bite sized manageable learning packages.  For myself and the other weight management practitioners that work with me on delivering obesity and weight management programmes to thousands of adults and children I know that I speak for the entire team when I say that there is nothing more rewarding that to receive a Xmas card from a family who will forever be in your debt because of the difference that your work has made to their lives.

This piece of work represents a ten year labour of love and the more I have learned, the more I appreciate how little I know; and how little is known about this fascinating and absorbing subject.  I hope that this piece will stimulate a similar hunger in you to join me on this exploration into the relative unknown and that together we can help to ameliorate the terrible burden that obesity is placing upon our communities and most significantly on our children.

I hope that more than anything this course represents a small opportunity for turning back the obesity epidemic in the UK, and that perhaps you will become one of the foot soldiers in this monumental battle. Above all else, keep looking, keep learning and keep asking why – because knowledge matters!

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By, Andrea Hughes, Discovery Learning Sales Team

Up, down, up, down, push, squeeze, up, down and lift! Sound like the latest exercise to music class? Well, it’s not, but it still offered me a great workout.  I moved last weekend! And it was the greatest workout I’ve done in a long time.  I was sorer after moving than I have been from gym lately!

I packed the few days before to be ready to go.  I’m usually not exactly well known for my preparedness, but I only booked a moving van for three hours and I knew that I would have to hustle in order to get everything done.  After shamelessly begging various friends for help, one finally came through and offered her car as backup.  The car was great help but we still only had 3 people to move a lot of stuff from the second floor of a house to a first floor flat.  So, loads of stairs! I figured with 26 stairs at the house and 15 at the flat, combined with about 13 and 20 trips respectively, I climbed about 638 stairs that day! That’s not even counting the down bit (also known as resting to some people).

Running up and down stairs wasn’t the only running I was doing that weekend.  We inconveniently couldn’t find parking in front of the flat and were forced to park the car and the van all the way down the road.  Constrained by the three-hour van rental time, I was running to and from the van and managed to get my heart rate up to 155—albeit for only a few minutes.  It still counts! I could definitely feel all that cardio in my legs the next day anyway.

Apart from all the cardio, the obvious workout was the weights.  I lifted some heavy boxes (with my legs not my back!) and tried to carry as much as I could in one go so as to avoid all the evil stairs! I think the weight being in the form of a heavy box helped me because I couldn’t tell how much it was so I couldn’t discourage myself from trying to lift it—like at the gym when I think, ‘oh, there’s no way I can lift that.’  I could definitely feel the effort for a few days after in my arms.

Apart from a few scrapes and bruises, I felt really good after the move.  It was high-stress, but I made it in three hours, despite everyone at the Discovery Learning office telling me there was no way I would do it.  Even though it was a good workout, I think I much prefer the gym to moving any day! My advice about moving is to look at it as a workout so it’s not so stressful.  I’m not in a hurry to do it again any time soon, though; I’m just going to up the weights in my training now!

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