Welcome to our "Back to Work" September newsletter. It certainly feels as though the summer is over and based on the way our telephone has become a hot line over the last week, it's clear there is a psychological back to business happening amongst our customers. I'm delighted to announce that we are about to publish a brand new diary-style behaviour change resource for physical activity "A More Active Lifestyle" and we have just delivered our first Day II of Psychology of Health Behaviour workshop. Details of both are given below.

Body Volume Index - A Valuable Obesity Tool

15 years ago, as a Systems Engineering Undergraduate at BAE Systems, I spent the summer at Warton in Lancashire working with the Cockpit Group on Eurofighter Typhoon. This might sound like leading-edge stuff (and some of it was) but I spent the majority of my time in possibly BAE's least high tech laboratory. I was conducting studies that related to the body shapes and sizes of aircrew because, as you can imagine, they have a significant impact on the cockpit design of a fast jet.

My laboratory was a corner of an old changing room which had a level wooden seat and a great big chart on both walls which looked like massive graph paper. One at a time we would invite a subject to sit and stand and reach in a variety of ways so we could mark and measure them with pens and tape measures. It gave us a good overall idea of key dimensions we needed to work with and it was my first introduction to working with the many physical varieties that exist across humans.

Over the last 5 years I've worked mostly in the field of obesity, developing our Community Fit Club programme and resources and co-writing Department of Health guidance on childhood obesity and during this time I have developed a love-hate relationship with BMI. Body Mass Index is the most widely used measure of obesity here in the UK and it is very useful in highlighting population change, which is it, at an alarming rate.

However, the behaviour change which will combat obesity must be done at an individual level, and here BMI is moderately useless. It's a crude calculation using two simple dimensions, height and weight. Height, is assumed not to change - but it does by more than half an inch depending on the time of day. Weight is easy to measure in an instant but tells you nothing of what is going on inside the body.

There are a number of techniques for getting a better idea of body composition, such as body fat scales, waist circumference, waist to hip ratio, caliper measurements and even submerging subjects into water tanks. They all have a compromise somewhere, from instrusiveness, time taken to the accuracy of the readings.

For about the last 10 years, a new technology has been emerging that looks set to change the way we take body measurements in the future and it would certainly have been handy to have at BAE Systems all those years ago. New body scanners which take 3D measurements of human subjects have been developed and are being used to determine body shapes of people of all ages.

So far it has been used to help clothing manufacturers make clothes in size rolls that fit us better. It is also enabling organisations to better understand the physical size and development of children and young people for given ages. The data from these devices will contribute to better design of the human environment for transport, offices, furniture and equipment. In the future it is likely to be used to better determine levels of obesity, especially childhood obesity.

To find out more, check out Shape GB at http://www.shapegb.org/home

A New Physical Activity Resource

As you know, at Hampson Solutions we publish high quality resources for behaviour change and our “My Weight Loss Workbook” and “Achieving a Work-Life Balance” diaries have now been used by thousands of people to support them towards a healthier and happier lifestyle. We are about to publish a brand new workbook called “A More Active Lifestyle” which at 46 pages is a bit shorter than our previous publications but focuses purely on helping people to become more active. It is written in our trademark diary style with behaviour change tools, worksheets and 6 weekly lifestyle challenges. We go to print on this resource on the 16th September 2011 and we are still taking pre-orders, where our customers are able to enjoy the best possible price. If you would like to view a few sample pages of the new book, please email me at denise@hampsonsolutions.co.uk.

If you have any questions about this presentation, please contact us.

We recently delivered our first Day II for Psychology of Health Behaviour and with great feedback from delegates. A Day II has been soemthing we've been regularly asked for and we've thought about it and planned for it for many months. With our Day I being so successful we wanted to make sure we didn't compromise on content or quality and we wanted to keep our ideas fresh and useable.

Day II is for delegates who have already attended our existing Psychology of Health Behaviour workshops. We start with a short review of Day I and then take our ideas further and explore them in more detail. It includes new marketing tasks, a longer look at the "experience pathway" and a new section on groupthink vs individual behaviour. If you are interested in attending or finding out more about the Day II Psychology of Health Behaviour, then please email me at denise@hampsonsolutions.co.uk and I will keep you informed of when we will be delivering this workshop in your region.

Hampson Solutions Ltd, Commodore House, 51 Conway Road, Colwyn Bay, Conwy LL29 7AW
Tel: 01492 530700 | Mobile: 07727 642846 | Fax: 01492 517815
Email: denise@hampsonsolutions.co.uk | Web: www.hampsonsolutions.co.uk

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