“Most people know so little about exercise and what a good workout should include that they take everything on trust. However, for as long as anyone can call themselves a trainer and tout for business then the horrific possibility remains of a client being robbed, molested or even raped.”There are no rules and regulations in the fitness industry,” says Mike Imlach, a personal trainer with a decade of practical experience backed up by a sports science degree and follow-on qualifications. There has not been a reported case of someone masquerading as a trainer in order to gain access to a workplace or home. You decide to look elsewhere.The final, nightmare, scenario has yet to happen. You suffer an unstructured and ill-taught workout, and ache for days afterwards. If quizzed, they may suggest that the hours spent honing their physique are ample preparation for imparting skills to others – a belief no one in the fitness business would support. Many body builders, strong on pec development but lacking all-round technical knowledge, advertise their services as trainers.

You enjoy a great workout, happily part with pounds 30, and arrange to meet again in three days’ time.The second possible outcome is that you will have picked one of the unknown number of trainers offering no insurance cover or first-aid ability, and claiming qualifications which are either irrelevant or non-existent. First, and most likely, is that you will have chosen as your fitness mentor a bright and enthusiastic individual, committed to helping you make the best of your body, and bearing a sheaf of certificates which testify to professional competence. It’s only when you’ve let him in, and the door’s closed, that you realise you are now alone with a man you have never met before.
Three things could happen. You liked the sound of “qualified instructor, home visits”, and booked an appointment in the hope that intensive tuition might bolster your enthusiasm for exercise

And here he is. You saw the advert on the leisure centre noticeboard, after you’d finished another half-hearted wander round the weights room. It Is Six o’clock in the evening, and you have raced home from the office to be sure of an empty house for your first session with a personal trainer.

It is always a difficult message to get across to people that there is no such thing as ‘bad’ food, only a bad diet, so to that extent you can eat sugar and cakes and high calorie foods as long as you have a balanced diet.”. But there is an enormous variety of diet and calorie reduced products and some are much better than others. Can we really stay slim and healthy if we just get cool about food and stop worrying? “In general terms,” says Laura Ellis at the British Nutrition Foundation, “if you’re choosing lower sugar, lower fat products, you will obviously be reducing your calorific intake and may lose weight. “Most of the fat and sugar in people’s diets comes from eating too many processed foods, not from eating natural foods like butter.”It all sounds a little too good to be true. “Anyone who prefers margarine because it spreads straight from the fridge, please get a life.” Dietician Julie Dean agrees. “I suggest avoiding processed, packaged, tasteless chemicals fobbed off as food and stick to tried and tested natural products,” continues Dr Feelgood. Accordingly, while actual butter sales are not up, in 1996 it marginally increased its market share over the supposedly healthier rival margarine.Some experts think that with so much conflicting health evidence, we are safest with what we know.

The health onslaught against butter has indeed eased off – particularly amid health fears about margarines’ transfatty acids and the safety of an overload of polyunsaturates. Recent research collated by the National Dairy Council (admittedly not without a vested interest) suggested that full-fat dairy products such as milk and cheese may offer more protection against cancer than their leaner counterparts. What is wrong with sugar? It’s a perfectly natural foodstuff.”"Butter is back,” rejoiced Dr Feelgood, anonymous GP writer for Eat Soup, in the last issue. “Sugar, for example, has had a very bad press, most of which is probably quite unjustified. But all within a balance.”So after years of one report after another suggesting radical changes to the diet, Black agrees that a more relaxed attitude may be more sensible. Basic dietary advice remains that we should increase complex carbohydrates and fruit and veg, and cut down on fat.

The ‘official tilted plate’, the Health Education Authority tool which showed the proportions of the various foods we should eat, included a proportion of fats and sweets. “You’re not going to give yourself a heart attack by having a blow-out of over-indulging once in a while. “If you go to regions of France, where they eat large amounts of goose fat, they don’t suffer excess obesity or heart disease because they are in a balance.”So can we stop worrying and start tucking in? Should we forget about “light”, “low sugar” and “virtually fat free” and follow our inclinations instead? According to Alison Black, senior scientific officer at the Medical Research Council’s Dunn Clinical Nutrition Centre, the consumer has been overloaded with conflicting advice and is better off sticking to a sensible balance – which includes indulgence. “If you are relaxed and eating whatever your body feels like, then the diet will level out,” believes David Lancaster, editor of lads’ food magazine Eat Soup. The new thinkers claim that if we eat natural products in a balanced, harmonious way and enjoy it, there is nothing to worry about.