Bounts lets you trade points (known as “bounts”) for vouchers from loads of well known stores, like Sainsbury’s, Amazon, Argos, Pizza Express, Next, M&S, Curry’s, River Island, John Lewis Group, Morrisons etc. A £5 voucher costs 1,389 bounts.

So how do you earn bounts? Well different devices and different activities allow you to claims points. My only activity is walking, so in my case a free membership pays 5 bounts for 7,000 steps, 5 bounts for a 20 minute walk (you need an approved GPS enabled device for this reward). So that’s a maximum of 10 bounts per day. Not many you say, so here’s how to pump things up. Join up with my referral code subscribe54721 and you’ll get 100 bounts (don’t sign up via the Facebook link or it won’t work). Let Bounts tweet via a Twitter account you own and get 5 bounts per day. There’s also Reward Wheel which you get free spins on. Don’t expect to win much on this, though I did win 1,000 bounts just a week after I joined. This was follow soon afterwards with 50 bounts, but otherwise if I have won it’s usually just 5 bounts.

But if you’re into activity you can become a premium+ member (£14.99/year or £1.49/month) and earn 20 bounts for each 7,000 steps up to 60 bounts (3 x 7,000 steps) and 20 bounts per 20 min walk up to 60 bounts (3 x 20 min walk – must be at least 1 hour between walks and at least 4kmph average speed). So with the Twitter bounts that’s 125 bouts per day, which quickly adds up to 1,000 bounts in 8 days. You get loads more spins on the Reward Wheel too. All in all you could earn a £5 voucher every 11 days or around £160 a year. Of course it may be harder to keep up the regime in the winter, which is where monthly premium+ membership may be a good idea.

If you don’t have an activity tracker you get get started by using a smartphone. There’s also an app on Android and ios. Cycling, running and other activities can be tracked via apps like Strava, Runkeeper and Swimtag. You can check out the list here.

Just to get a reality check, 1000 steps is about 0.5 miles, so you need to be walking a little over 10 miles a day to get to this level, but if you’re like me and own a Border Collie, it’s really not that difficult. My plan is to make it pay for the Fenix 3, but in reality I will be doing well if I get a new pair of walking boots each year from it. That’s if they don’t go bust and I lose my £14.99 first. I’ll certainly be claiming back my first £15 asap.

Allergic Asthma is triggered by unknown stimulants, the most common being the likes of dust mites, cat hair, grass, pollen etc. but can be almost anything. The allergy causes thick mucus to form which blocks the airways, again leaving the sufferer out of breath. After years of to-ing and fro-ing between ENT consultants and chest consultants I was eventually diagnosed with Allergic Asthma around 2007. After a couple of years or so my case was justified by my consultant for me to be put on a new drug called Xolair which is an antibody which helps decrease allergic responses in the body. In my case Xolair is administered via three injections every two weeks. Not great, but better than the alternative, which is nothing.

Before I was on Xolair I often needed a course of aural steroids to get things under control, but still things weren’t great. Four months ago I decided to get fit (see my Getting in Shape post). Very quickly I lost 2.5 stones through calorie counting, but more importantly by significant daily exercise. I’ve never been able to run due to the asthma, but I love hill walking. My standard daily walk is 5 miles and has me climbing about 1000′. At weekends and holidays I usually do significantly more. I was about 1 stone over the upper limit of my ideal weight, so now I’m well within the range. Weight just fell off and after only a few weeks I had to go and get all new trousers as all of my old trousers were way too big. My belly disappeared. But most importantly my asthma improved.

My standard route (6 days a week) has a steady incline for about 1.5 miles which goes up 800′. At first I struggled to get up it without stopping. I was gasping for breath. I couldn’t talk. I got to a significant corner 2/3 of the way up and caught my breath. Shortly afterwards I challenged myself to get all the way to the top without stopping. After a couple of weeks I realized that I was no longer gasping like I used to and now I can chat all the way up on the rare occasion I have human company. You should know that I’ve always done a lot of walking, though I’ve really had to push myself in the past due to the asthma, so this was great. Today I went walking in the Brecon Beacons with my son. On our 14 mile walk (with over 3000′ ascent) I couldn’t help but notice how I had to keep waiting for him. Climbing up Pen y Fan other seasoned walkers were stopping periodically for breath, but I had no such problem. When I spoke to my consultant and told him of my revelation he wasn’t surprised, but said that exercise is a great help for asthma. I only wish someone had told me that. Anyway, that’s why I am writing this. If you suffer from this debilitating condition I urge you to give it a serious go. Find a physical activity that you enjoy and really push yourself. For me it was hill walking, but if you don’t live in a hilly area or just don’t like this activity, then find another. You need something that you can do very regularly and something that’s aerobic. Riding a bike, running, going down the gym or an exercise bike at home are some obvious choices.

My peak flow has gone up significantly, I can climb hills like never before, the belly has gone, I comfortably fit skinny jeans (now that’s a first for me), my waist is 3″ less and I feel great. I probably would have lost more weight if it were not for Christmas and my new found hobby of baking bread. My wife has also majorly got into baking cakes, but even all of this high calorie food is not causing a problem. I still get mucus, but it is cleared pretty easily whilst exercising. My dog loves me more than he ever did before and the same goes for the wife!

My wife showed me the myfitnesspal calorie counter, an Android app which makes counting calories very easy. You are firstly given a target number of calories you can consume each day which is dependent on your height, age, gender, job type and goals. The app is basically a calender/spreadsheet for meals allowing quick look-up of pretty much any food item you can imagine. You can also scan package bar codes too. The app could be improved, but it’s a huge help.

I was shocked to find how calorific many of my regular foods were:

• Bread. I lived on the stuff. It’s terrible but I have to have it. About 150kcal per slice. I eat homemade bread, so a sliced loaf is probably lower in calories purely because slices are smaller.
• Pizza (the homemade variety again). My son’s favourite. With half the flour of a loaf it’s not surprising it’s bad, but 800kcal per person before you put on the toppings is serious stuff. I won’t miss it too much and I can easily make a smaller one for my son.
• Rice and pasta. I love my carbs. Basmati rice isn’t quite as bad as long grain, so I’ll be making a huge batch of vegetable curry soon.
• Cheese. This is another one that I ate far too much of, but not too hard to cut down on. Two slices of cheese on toast use half my daily calorie allowance!
• Chinese and Indian takeaway (always accompanied by a lager or two). Don’t even think about it unless you’ve been highly active all day. It’s very difficult to know the true number of calories too.

On the other side of the coin potatoes and wine weren’t quite as bad as I thought they would be, though I have cut my wine intake considerably. I got into Green Smoothies earlier this year, so that’s a great breakfast and fulfills most of my 5-a-day (I know it needs to be at least 7-a-day) before I start work. Pineapple, strawberries, tuna are great. I tried Quorn for the first time in my life. The mince replacement was edible, but the chicken cube one was horrible. The texture is more like mushroom than chicken, which is not surprising given that it is an edible fungus.

I also decided to increase my midweek walking dramatically. I live in a hilly area so it’s ideal. I mainly work from home, so I’m making time for a lunch break every day if possible. My main route is 3 miles and heads up about 650′. That’s 1.3 miles of good climb and really gets the heart pumping before a short flat section and then back down again. I have an elongated 5.25 mile version of the walk that I like to do in the early evening if work gets in the way of my lunchtime blast. I try to push up the hill as fast as I can.

Dieting alone will work I guess, but exercise should speed things up dramatically. You can also add your burned calories to your daily allowance, so if you’re getting low on points you will be strongly motivated to exercise. I only ever dip very lightly into my exercise calories as I want to lose the weight.

I can never get enough of gadgets, so I bought a heart rate monitor (HRM). These strap across your chest (you can’t see them under clothing) and talk to your Android (or other OS) phone. Apps such as Endomondo and mapmywalk will connect to the HRM via Bluetooth and your heart rate is monitored which in turn calculates your calories burned. My 3 mile route burns about 700kcal and my 5.5 mile route burns about 1150kcal, so on top of my 1360kcal allowance I could eat/drink very well if I wanted to. The calories burned will drop as I get fitter.

At weekends I always walk around 12-15 miles and usually on pretty tough terrain. Last weekend was my first weekend with the HRM and a 12 mile walk in the Brecon Beacons starting with a 2000′ climb over the first 2 miles (that’s about as tough as it gets for me) burned well over 4000kcal. I do have to ask myself how I ever managed to get overweight burning this amount of calories each weekend, but it just goes to show how much over-eating I was clearly doing.

I’m about 3.5 weeks into the regime now. A terrible cold shortly after I started didn’t help as a bad chest made the walking difficult. I’ve lost just over a stone and am now almost in the accepted weight band for my height/age. I plan to lose a couple more stone, hopefully by Christmas, but it may take longer. After such a short time I’m already feeling much better about myself. Today I started to jog on the downhill sections. I’ve never been able to run due to allergic asthma , but this is my long term goal. My dog Bob is loving it too. He’s 9 years old now, but when the wife isn’t at work he’s out most of the day with one or other of us and we all walk together once or twice a week. As Errol Brown once said, “Everyone’s a winner baby, that’s no lie!”