How To Stay Fit Despite Your Age
Various studies have shown that it is important to stay fit despite your age. If you are like so many women who had tried many diets and really don’t eat that much now but still don’t loose weight, the problem might be your age.
The fact is that if women wait to focus on fitness until they approach their 50s, they add another degree of difficulty to the process: menopause!
Estrogen is a so-called catabolic hormone, which means that one of its functions is to help us burn and use energy stores.
As estrogen walks out the door as women enter menopause, we are left with an intact storage function and less burning function.
It takes less energy for daily maintenance and therefore less food intake. Unless we burn more energy through smart activity, we are not likely to make progress on getting control of our bodies. And,
Do you think that just because you have celebrated life for a random number of years, you automatically must slow down or stop being active? Don’t let anyone ever tell you this!
The fact is that you are designed to move! Movement and activity are in your genes! We are built with strong extremities that respond to activity no matter what our chronological age.
One way to increase the overall activity in your life is to use the 10,000 step method. In this method, which originated in Japan, you monitor the activity you do during a day, making you conscious of the number of steps you take.
Then you try to increase your activity and number of steps. You need a pedometer, which you can buy in most sporting goods stores.
Wear the pedometer when you go out the door in the morning, and keep it on as you do your usual activities. When you go to bed at night, take it off and record the number of steps you took.
Do this for a week. I think you will be surprised to learn how much or how little you actually travel in one day using your own two feet to stay fit.
A sedentary person usually covers only 1,000 to 3, 000 steps per day between his house, car, workplace, errands, and back. This is not far enough to cause meaningful changes in your fitness level.
To become more fit and control chronic disease, we need take 10,000 steps a day. This would be about five miles of activity.
I found this was true for me. When I lived in New York and didn’t have a car, I would walk to work, the store, the gym, restaurants… everywhere I needed to go.
But I found that unless I actually went for a run, I didn’t accumulate 10,000 steps.
If you are going to use a pedometer and count your steps, don’t get discouraged. Ten thousand steps is a nice round number to aim for, but if your goal is only to prevent weight gain, you may not need to log that many steps.
You can build up gradually and be more active on some days than on others. What is important is that you are off the couch!
Want to know more about how to stay fit? Then, post your question below.
Yours truly for great health, mind and body,
Michelle, natural health advocate
March 01 2010 12:26 pm | Fitness