How to lose your spare tyre

By madams

I'VE watched it grow like an unwanted child in my belly, a swelling around my stomach that has gradually turned into a spare tyre of blubber circumnavigating my waist.

Too many beers, biscuits and curries have proved my downfall, and something must be done before it's too late.

It's not even as if I don't make an effort to keep trim, visiting the gym for a pretty arduous workout at least three times a week, but my love of the bad things in life and a general malaise which comes with being deskbound at work has taken its grim toll.

No matter how many sit-ups or crunches I endure, how long I spend on the crosstrainer, or how many miles I travel on the rowing machine, my gut just doesn't seem to shift.

So when I heard about an opportunity to lose my spare tyre with nowhere near as much effort, I leapt at the chance to get rid of my bulging burden and be able to see my toes again.

The Vacunaut is an innovative body-shaping device invented by Austrian company Hypoxi International. The treatment has been around since 2002, but is still pretty new to the UK, despite featuring on GMTV and How to Look Good Naked.

The Vacunaut works by actively tackling the problem of belly fat by increasing the skin temperature and circulation in this region. This intensifies the blood circulation in the fat tissues, and accelerates the transportation of fatty acids to the muscles exercised.

The result is the concentrated breakdown of fat in the stomach and hips, and it also gives the muscles in these areas an extremely effective exercise workout.

All sounds good, I thought, but what does it involve me actually doing? After all, I'm sweating and straining down the gym on a regular basis, and that doesn't seem to help...

Arriving at Silhouette Diet and Fitness in Woodham Mortimer, just outside of Danbury, I was greeted by advisor Bert, who handed over a skin-tight lycra bodysuit which left nothing to the imagination and asked me to get changed.

Rigged up to a heart monitor, I climbed into an apparatus which looked like a cross between a wet suit and a tyre inflator, with three cables running from my stomach to a complicated looking pump device.

Excess air was sucked out of the suit and I climbed on board a running machine to build up a good heart rate. Then the sucking and squeezing began...

Aerobic exercise in the Vacunaut suit guarantees that fatty acids from the stomach and hip areas specifically are used for energy production, with a network of 122 chambers in the suit producing both low and high pressure in those regions.

The low pressure sucks the blood into the affected skin and fat tissues where it is enriched with the required amount of fat, and then the change from low to high pressure accelerates the transport of the fat-enriched blood to the muscles exercised.

So as I briskly walked on the running machine, the Vacunaut suit got to work. The sensation is similar to when you have your blood pressure taken, only across the whole of your belly, but the walking pace was comfortable, even with changes in incline, and the half-hour of this first session passed swiftly.

Ladies carrying a bit too much baggage around the bum, hips and thighs should know that there is a similar treatment targeting these areas, simply called the Hypoxi, which doesn't involve all the aerobic exercise so is a lot easier!

A Vacunaut course lasts for 12 sessions over four weeks, but the programme also involves maintaining a healthy, well-balanced diet.

Most of this is common sense: drinking lots of water, avoiding eating after 7pm, limiting alcohol and reducing caffeine and so on. But on days when I have a Vacunaut session I can't eat carbohydrates for four hours afterwards, as your metabolism stays high for six to eight hours later. You also need to have a protein meal immediately afterwards to speed up muscle repair.

All of this information is relayed on the day, and backed up with documentation and check-up chats, so there's no excuse not to follow the regime. If you cheat, they say, you only cheat yourself.

So one session down, 11 to go. You can find out how I get on in a month's time, but if you want to find out more about the treatment now, visit www.silhouette-diet-fitness.co.uk or call 01245 226257.