Shiver yourself Slim

Here at Khush HQ, we seem to spend the entire Winter willing the cold and grey to subside and for Spring and Summer to come around sooner and sooner. While we know winter weddings can be stunningly beautiful, the constant cold, rain and wind that takes your breath away can push most of us to the limit. All we want to do is stay indoors hugging the radiator and wait for the season to subside.

But a new study indicates that you should embrace the cold - especially if you're trying to shake off a few pounds ahead of the Big Day. Experiments show that ten to fifteen minutes of shivering is as effective as exercise in generating and burning the body's stores of brown fat.

Brown fat generates heat and burns calories when stimulated, thereby kick starting the metabolism. Babies have lots of brown fat to help them keep warm, but we tend to lose this sort of fat as we get older. Shivering in the cold triggers biochemical reactions within the body that change fat cells and boost  metabolism, in the same way that ­exercise does.

While we're not advocating moving to Antarctica or standing out in the cold for hours on end, why not try incorporating the outdoors into your wedding workout regime? Even something as small as walking to or home from work or strolling around your local park in the winter sunshine could get those brown cells charged up and firing away!