Welcome to our first entry of the New Year, I do hope you enjoy and become one of our regular readers and commenters!

To kick off, as January is the month for new beginnings – if you have recently got engaged a big congratulations!

You’re probably feeling pretty overwhelmed right now, but if you’re like many of us who have indulged over Christmas getting your body back in shape this month is high on your priority list, whether you are getting married now or much later in the year.

That’s why I thought we should revisit a topic that I posted back in April on fad dieting and exercise. The post gave me the opportunity to speak to  Charlene Hustsebaut, co-founder of Positively Slim an online exercise and nutrition portal and Jacqui Agyepong an Olympic personal trainer about realistic goals for getting in shape for your wedding.

In our interviews we covered so much I couldn’t fit it all in so this time I wanted to highlight all those other practical tips left out the first time around to help you accomplish your wedding fitness goals.

To listen in full to what the girls had to say head to the Butterfly Journal podcast at www.pierrecarr.com/podcast it really only takes less than a minute to do, and  with an online portal that provides downloadable e-books, audio and video for busy professionals, you’ll hear that Charlene is a great believer in timing – giving yourself enough time to lose weight and not looking for a quick fix.

Whilst Jacqui a former Olympic athlete has a more back to basics approach, which means rather than trying to change your lifestyle to fit exercise in (which we can all admit we are prone to doing) we should build exercise into our everyday tasks. If that means getting off the bus a couple of stops before or leaving your car at home to do some walking instead then that’s what you need to do.

Whilst both women cover different aspects of exercise and fitness both of them have a realistic approach and no quick fixes come into the equation which I also believe is best.

Well I hope you find what Jacqui and Charlene say in the podcast useful as I definitely found it extremely fun to do and very informative.

I look forward to reading your thoughts and comments.

Michelle