This is the straightforward weight reduction trick I might advocate to any lady over 50 who needs to burn energy and tone up – with out figuring out or consuming much less: KERRY POTTER

Who would not say no to burning extra energy, losing a few pounds and firming up with out even altering your day by day routine?

As a health editor and unbearable gymnasium bunny, I’ve tried a whole bunch of traits, devices and equipment over the previous 20 years, from working backwards (bizarre) to being locked in a coffin-like hyperbaric oxygen chamber (scary).

But there’s one little bit of equipment, neither counter-intuitive nor high-tech, that is booming in reputation. Starting at simply £20, the common-or-garden weighted vest is your secret weapon.

I first began clocking individuals sporting them whereas strolling on the agricultural trails the place I dwell in Oxfordshire. Then they had been throughout my Instagram feed, too – successful with well being and ­health influencers, in addition to celebrities equivalent to Davina McCall and sweetness entrepreneur Liz Earle.

You may even put on them round the home whereas doing the washing, hoovering or simply pootling backwards and forwards to the kitchen.

So can this humorous little waistcoat actually enable you to burn extra energy and construct power whilst you go about your day by day life?

I’ve simply turned 50 and have been sporting one for about two years, and I give it a really enthusiastic thumbs-up.

‘Carrying the additional load raises your coronary heart charge, which makes you burn extra energy,’ says health coach Kate Rowe-Ham. ‘Plus, it helps with constructing power, too – it will increase your bone density, which is essential for peri and post-menopausal girls.’

The information appears to bear out these advantages, too. A examine within the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise confirmed sporting a weighted vest can improve calorie burn by as much as 40 per cent.

This determine will rely on the load carried and the depth of your motion, however for those who do a day by day hour-long stroll that usually burns 200 energy, you possibly can burn 80 extra with a vest. Over the course of per week, that is an additional 560 energy.

‘If you do your standard degree of motion however simply add within the vest, you’ll completely reduce weight,’ says Rowe-Ham. ‘But it’s good to maintain upping the ante to see the outcomes, so slowly improve the load you carry.’

Vests vary from 3-30kg and plenty of are adjustable – permitting you so as to add 1kg weight blocks or pouches to their entrance or again pockets.

Decathlon’s fundamental mannequin (£24.99, decathlon.co.uk) goes as much as 5kg, whereas Rowe-Ham’s vest of selection, by Mirafit (£49.95 mirafit.co.uk), is available in ten, 20 or 30kg choices. I selected one from Davina McCall’s collaboration with Argos – she calls a weighted vest a key a part of her ‘health device equipment’ – which is a manageable 3kg (£22, argos.co.uk).

Experts advise beginning with a vest that is 5-10 per cent of your physique weight, and 3kg is simply over 5 per cent of mine (I’m 58kg). This is heavy sufficient that I discover the elevated depth once I stroll, particularly in my thighs.

Interestingly, my Oura well being tracker, which measures coronary heart charge will increase, all the time logs my vest-wearing walks as ‘intense’ exercises, whereas the vest-free ones are all the time ‘average’.

I additionally burn bang on 40 per cent extra energy once I put on the vest.

With two kids and a busy profession as a contract journalist, some days the one free time I’ve to train is a brisk 20-minute stroll ­throughout my lunch break.

Without the vest, my tracker confirms I burn 50 energy, however doing the identical stroll within the vest, on the similar tempo, burns 70.

I really like that I can ­turbocharge my humble stroll with out allocating any further time. It would not really feel like I’m ­making an excessive amount of further effort, both.

The vest is not so heavy that it feels prefer it’s dragging me down – it is on a par with carrying a few baggage of groceries however with the load evenly distributed round your torso. There’s no pressure on my decrease again or joints, and my fingers are free.

What’s extra, I really feel stronger. I discover that I’m constantly hitting private bests lifting weights within the gymnasium and I can lug big terracotta plant pots and baggage of gravel round my backyard with out asking for assist.

A number of notes of warning: the weighted vest works greatest while you put on it whereas doing chores (I really like that it provides one thing as boring as housekeeping a well being profit) or whereas strolling.

The vest completely doesn’t work if you’re simply sitting down. That, I’m afraid, is wishful, non-calorie-burning considering.

Conversely, it is not nice for higher-impact actions: I attempted mine when taking part in tennis and it impeded my serve; I went for a run in it and gave up after three minutes because it was too exhausting; and it ruined my steadiness and damage my knees once I wore it to elevate weights within the gymnasium.

Unless you cover it beneath a coat, you do should cope with each different individual you meet asking you what on earth you are sporting.

Minor quibbles apart, I put on mine virtually day-after-day.

Having tried each health fad going, on the subject of an accessible, reasonably priced and low-effort well being enhance, the weighted vest is my number-one advice.