Posts filed under 'Fitness'
It looks like I’m not the only one who tries to keep fit and healthy, as apparently the British are spending £1.4 billion pounds (close to $2bn) each year on gym memberships and eating healthily.
I find it encouraging that so many people are taking their health and fitness seriously, however there seems to be a polarity developing in the UK society, at least, if not elsewhere.
On the one hand, we have this level of spending on health clubs and good diet and on the other hand we have increased obesity followed by increases in related conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
Of course many people cannot afford expensive gym fees and costly healthy foods, however if we could only find a way to raise the general levels of health and fitness, then I’m sure that a wave of other benefits would follow.
Our range of articles and blogs about how Yoga can dramatically improve some people’s conditions, some quite serious, and how it makes you feel less stressed, show that this is a way of improving health without incurring high costs.
The trouble is it takes time, determination and commitment, and thats at the root of the problem.
It makes me smile when I park in the car park at my gym. There are parking spaces available now, however in January and February all those new year resolutions materialise in an overflowing car park.
Perhaps that 1.4 billion pounds is mostly spent in those few months directly after Christmas when resolutions are at their strongest.
October 3rd, 2006
Written By: chris
I’m away on vacation with my family in the South West of England this week and eating “holiday type” food and being more sedentary than usual, as there is no opportunity to go to a gym down here, I was starting to feel like some exercise.
We spent the day at the wonderful Saunton sands beach, today and by early afternoon I really was feeling like doing something active. The three miles of flat sandy beach beckoned so I couldn’t resist just setting off for a run.
No high technology running shoes, or treadmills festooned with heart rate monitors, incline controls and fine speed adjustments - this was just me running barefoot along a beautiful sandy beach on a hot and sunny day.
It was magnificent!
I probably only ran for 2.5 miles in total, but just jogging along the waters edge, past the group of people who had found a stranded lobster, along further until the place where I started was just a shimmering apparition in the heat haze and onto totally deserted beach, I felt that this was what being reasonably fit is all about.
The ability to just take off like that without fear of health issues, without help from technology, without getting out of breath.
Exercise for exercise’s sake.
June 30th, 2006
Written By: chris
For those that have never been to the gym before, the first time can be a really intimidating one. Especially if you are trying to get into shape by shedding a few pounds. Intimidating not because the crowd there are unfriendly. Not at all. Intimidating because suddenly you find yourself in another planet of superfit men and women, bulging biceps, washboard abs, and toned bodies.
I remember my first visit to the gym. I felt like the hunchback of Notre Dame at the post-Oscar party. As the guest relations executive showed me through the three floors that made up the gym, all I did was gape, stare, and wonder ‘are those muscles for real?’ ‘Is that a real human body?’ Wherever I turned, that is all I could see - supremely fit men and women in various stages of exercise - some grunting and straining with the coach screaming ‘get that weight up, dawg!’, ‘5 more reps, come on!’ ‘beautiful women toning up their bodies to the nth level of fitness. Youngsters exercising away in a bid to get the 6-packs…
My first impulse was to run out. For a moment I felt that they were all sneering and laughing ‘Hey! Here comes Fat Lucy’ or whatever name they must have conjured up in those nanoseconds when their eyes gave the onceover at the misshapen body structure that answered to my name…
But I didn’t run. Because I was quite determined to get on level terms with at least some of these people… And I am glad I didn’t. Because I found out that nobody laughed. Not when they saw that the person with that ruined body was serious about setting it right. And I found out that they respected you for having the courage to accept that things had gone wrong and you were going to do whatever it takes to set them back right.
I made a lot of good friends, and lost most of those extra pounds.
But that was then. Complacency overcame determination, and now here I am. I am onto jogging, and have decided to restart my gym workouts. But this time its without the trepidation. Which is good and bad. Good because I am not having any sleepless nights thinking whom to bequeath my not-so-small amount of junk in the event I die of shame on the first day. And bad because it has made me complacent, that I can lose weight anyways, no big deal. And complacence was what got me to this state back, in the first place…
June 22nd, 2006
Written By: daisy
There has been a “10,000 steps a day” campaign running in the UK over the last few years, which has boosted people’s awareness of exercise and the amounts required on a daily basis to make a difference to their health.
To monitor the number of steps, many companies were selling belt worn pedometers, and at one point, they were even given away with a breakfast cereal.
Even now, a couple of years into the campaign, you can still see people wearing pedometers on their belts as they go about their daily business.
This is encouraging and I’m sure that its helping many people improve their general health and fitness, however there is now a bombshell - many, if not all, of these cheap pedometers are inaccurate and overestimate the number of steps taken.
Its probably not a surprise, as these are very cheap devices, and I have wondered how many people took the trouble to calibrate these devices to their average step length in the first place (I didn’t when I wore one briefly).
At least the campaign is making people fitter and healthier and that is a good thing, even if they have to walk further each day as a result of these findings.
June 21st, 2006
Written By: chris
Well it had to be done. Once I’d seen the body mass index chart lying on a desk at the gym, I just had to have a look at it.
I’m pretty fit, I thought, I’m sure I’ll be in the “normal healthy range”.
Oh dear!
I’m about 5′10″ so with trembling hands I followed the line on the graph for my weight. Past the normal range and into the dreaded overweight part of the graph!
I weigh 85kg so as I had crossed into the overweight section at 80Kgs, this meant that I was 5 kilos overweight! Not five pounds - 5 kilos, which is about 12 pounds!
I tracked down a senior gym instructor and had a chat with him about it. Don’t worry, he said. Someone who is in the ideal BMI range is going to be pretty skinny - probably with the physique of a long distance runner.
As I do a lot of swimming and muscles are heavy components of the body, I am very unlikely to be in the ideal BMI range.
Phew, but I reckon that not all of those 12 pounds are muscles, so if I see a meter lying around that measures percentage body fat, I’ll probably leave that well alone!
June 20th, 2006
Written By: chris
Nowadays, the days just pass me by. It is Monday morning, and I have that familiar blue feeling. 5 days of hard work await, and I am wondering just how long it is going to take for these 5 days to pass. Which is a funny thought, because 5 days should take… 5 days! But on a Monday morning, 5 days seem like eternity.
A whirr, a flash, and poof! suddenly it is Friday evening! Where did the time go? How did the days pass? I am wondering if I got caught in some kind of time warp. But that isn’t what it is.
It is just that we are too busy with our lives to notice it sail by us. We work hard, and we work long. Some of us are lazy and don’t work at all, some of us are awfully rich, and don’t need to work, but those are different stories for another time.
Let me talk about me this time.
I realized that in the speed at which I am runing ahead through life, I have lost the time I used to take out to exercise. I look at myself, and what I see saddens me. Gone is the superfit look that I had until about a couple of years back. The toned body is now soft and fleshy. There is a hint of fat across the landscape, and it sets alarm bells ringing. I resolve to resolutely work out again.
I set the alarm to 5:00 a.m. I am going to jog slowly (which means walk slightly fast) for a mile or so. That should be good enough for starters. I go to bed, awaiting the morning and, at the same time, dreading the hard labor.
It is 7:00 a.m. and the sun is shining. Arrgh! I overslept again, as usual. I curse myself, my lack of commitment to my health and well-being. Over a slightly large breakfast, I think probably 1 mile at 5:00 a.m. was a harsh choice anyway. Tomorrow! I tell myself. Just wait and see.
Tomorrow I’ll try yoga…
June 15th, 2006
Written By: daisy
I might as well admit it. I go to the local sports club most weekdays.
Working from home, spending most of my time at the computer, means that I need a break and I want to be active, so going to the club is ideal.
I swim a fair bit (a mile twice a week) and on other weekday visits I jog/run on the treadmill. I also endure other tortures on the cross trainer and exercise bikes.
On the treadmill I run for 25 minutes on an incline of about three percent, which is fine for the level of fitness I’m happy with.
Mostly I find that I’m anxiously watching the timer on the treadmill to see how long I’ve got left for that exercise. 2.5 minutes gone, great I’m a tenth of the way through! Ten minutes - fantastic almost half way there. It’s like my brain is focussing on powering my body along, almost step by step, minute by minute.
This morning was different.
Almost as soon as I set off on the treadmill, my mind drifted off thinking about this and that. I suddenly looked down at the timer and was amazed to see that I was at the thirteen minute mark already. Where had the time gone?
Back to the mental drifting until I saw that I had gone nineteen minutes, almost in the blink of the eye.
I wasn’t tiring, counting down the minutes to the end point at 25 minutes. I wasn’t willing my legs to get to the end of the exercise. I was motoring, my body working like clockwork, allowing my mind to drift away.
At 25 minutes, all was well so I carried on.
30 minutes and it was only common sense that made me stop. I could easily have carried on for I don’t know how long.
Ten years ago, I used to run most days for about 4 miles through a heavily wooded and very hilly army training area. I was very fit and almost invariably I’d get to the end of the run and suddenly almost wake up. I was at the end of the run already - where had I been, mentally, for the past forty five minutes?
Its a fantastic experience to have your body working in a well honed way, all systems working together, creating an effortless physical harmony that allows you to almost seperate your mind from your body.
I’m not sure what causes this state, but I think it only happens when you achieve a level of fitness that optimises the cardiovascular system to the physical exertion so that your muscles are therefore working optimally under those conditions too.
You are not forcing anything so your mind is free to wander at will rather than be required to keep things together.
I used to be able to tell if I was starting to go down ill, or I was tired, as my mind wouldn’t “fly away” whilst running. It seemed to be continually engaged in managing the physical systems - step by step, minute by minute.
So today was pleasing - maybe I’m getting pretty fit again!
June 14th, 2006
Written By: chris
