AS sure is eggs is eggs, along with the New Year’s resolutions come the celebrity fitness videos!

And the onslaught of the newly honed and toned has-been soap stars’ revolutionary workout regime has well and truly started.

God help us all!

For 2008, forget Janice Battersby’s 2007 workout.

This year it is all about dancing it off with Vicky Binns!

And if you have no idea who this soap star is you can always opt for rival soap Eastenders latest dieter Natalie Cassidy (aka as Sonia Jackson!) for fitness guidance. Pleeeeasse!

Now I am not against anything that encourages people to get active.

In fact I welcome anything that gets people exercising and just as importantly enjoying doing so.

But these videos really do get my goat.

There may not be anything technically wrong in the exercises they promote but all they are really about is making BIG FAT PROFITS!

And to get all those January joiners parting with their cash these celebrity videos have to promise rapid fitness gains, overnight dramatic weight loss and abdominals that I could only ever dream of.

Long term weight loss is made slowly and steadily which is why good trainers and gym instructors change your program every eight weeks or so, making sure that you keep on progressing.

There is no way that these celebrities have dropped six dress sizes simply by doing their own video workout.

They will have been in the gym for months with their own trainers, studiously watching what they eat and working hard to get the body that will sell their DVD to the masses.

And that is what I object to.

They are more hype than health and simply appeal to those desperate to lose weight in the easiest way possible.

Why can’t they be honest?

There is no way simply by doing their video every day you are going to get the results that they claim they achieved through that workout.

Why not say? “If you do my video religiously for an hour five times a week, reduce your fat intake and reduce the number of calories you consume you could lose weight. But after a while you will reach a plateau and will then have to re-evaluate and vary your training programme.”

And who is there to make sure that these home exercisers are dong their exercises correctly? And who is there to check that the person buying the video is actually physically up to doing it?

I just hope people who are tempted by the WAG workout or similar will be realistic and use the videos as a tool to help them achieve their overall aim - rather than the solution to losing weight.

Those who set their sights too high and see these videos as a way to gain the body beautiful will inevitably become disappointed as they are not shedding the pounds as quickly as they had been promised.

Maybe that is why so many of these DVDs simply end up at car boot sales.

PS: In case you were wondering Vicky Binns is Molly Compton in Coronation Street. Hope that has cleared that up. And in case you were wondering Molly Crompton is Tyrone’s girlfriend.

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