Acton No, Biosig Yes

I've just spent a week in a hotel room in Acton, which really is one of the least important places in the country. From my window I could see such anti-climatic sights as the Carphone Warehouse head office, which standing proud in the drizzle next to the A40, welcoming our friends from Slough and Reading as they whizz into London in eager anticipation of an afternoon waiting on the slip-road listening to Chris Moyles.

Despite this backdrop, I had not been kicked out by my husband. Nor was I on holiday. I was spending time with Charles Poliquin, over from America, at a course for Biosignature Practitioners.

Biosig is great. Its principle is simple: take off your clothes, then let me pinch your flab with my callipers. Ok, not all your clothes. Just your t-shirt will do – I’ll let your body fat tell me what's been going on with your internals. Love handles, for instance, are the result of too many carbohydrates. A big stomach suggests a life of stress fatigue. Fat around the knees is the result of liver problems.

Since finding this out in 2005, I haven't had to faff around making my poor clients run on the treadmill if their problem is to do with their hormones. I can stop them having to neck handfuls of dangerous thyroid drugs or anti-depressants too. When I first incorporated Biosig into my training, I noticed that certain clients who often wept or complained about low energy suddenly perked up when they started taking enough magnesium (a supplement which is very dear to my heart, having rescued me from both fatigue and insomnia). This meant we could focus on their fitness, instead of blowing our noses into soggy tissues.

So, with their higher levels of pizzazz and my callipers to guide them, my clients find themselves more in control of their lives and much perkier too. Our work seems much simpler. If this means having to spend the odd week in a rainy Ramada hotel in suburbia, so be it...