You don’t need to train like an Olympian to be fit and healthy

In the world of health and fitness, the most difficult resolve to maintain is using the gym; I know this from the falloff at this time of year when I owned a gym. If the gym works for you,- good for you. The rest of you, come with me please.

The good news is that you don’t have to train until it hurts in order to be fit and healthy – in fact it is dog easy. Furthermore, because it is so easy, you will enjoy it and stay the course for that reason. The course is a lifetime journey and, like all journeys, it starts with the first step. Forget all those gut-wrenching training exercises for losing weight and being healthy; I am going to tell you how it works. This is not from some expert online, or anything we read in a book, but from what I found out by myself.

Newfangled diets won’t work; fistfuls of pills bought online won’t work; and health supplements are another waste of good money. All you have to do is to cultivate a lifestyle that gives you aerobic exercise as a habit in your everyday life.

For a start, your body in its original state is not formed by gyms, but by natural duties like walking, climbing, lifting, chasing, stretching and such necessitates that we put effort into to service our daily routines.

So you don’t need to train like a professional athlete. This is as good a place as any to throw in that you need to stop searching for the perfect body. Do some physical activity principally for the enjoyment it brings and, believe me, the rest will follow.

Here are a few examples I have seen working in losing weight.

When our first line-dance teacher at the Squash and Leisure Centre left with copies of my tapes, we drafted in as replacement a young enthusiast who just loved the music and the rhythm. Carmel was rather plump, with a lovely jolly personality. Anyway, doing five classes a week, Carmel lost 2 stone (over 12kg) in six weeks. So this first example shows what any kind of dancing can do for you.

In one of my other lives, I had a herd of dairy cows. We supplied the creamery and from the time the cows dried off in mid-November until they started calving at the end of January, I would put on nearly a stone weight over Christmas. I knew nothing about aerobic exercise, but I could never understand how the weight fell off as soon as I started milking again. Feeding calves, cleaning out sheds, carrying a few bales of hay… no heavy work… just moving my body parts at a steady rate.

I opened a pub in Spain in June 1999. Short staffed and learning as we went, I was on my feet and on the move from early morning until early the next morning. No heavy lifting or straining – just being off my butt. When I came home and weighed myself in September, I found that I was lighter than at any time since I was 17.

One more; up until two years ago, I did a bit of hobby farming with a prized herd of Dexter cattle. The cows were outdoors all year round and there was no hard work… but I was walking and moving and active all day. When events caused me to part with my beloved Dexters, I put on 8kg over the next few months. I have since got rid of most that from doing my daily walk and not stuffing my face before I go to bed.

I always use stairs instead of lifts and park the car a bit away from where my destination is because ‘everything counts’. My advice is to be patient and don’t expect quick results. The slower your excess weight comes off, the slower it will be inclined to climb back on.

This piece is not intended to be ‘my story’ or ‘the great me’; I just wish to reassure you that you don’t have to torture yourself in order to be fit, happy and enjoy peace of mind. Nor do you need to buy a pub or start milking cows!

Don’t let anybody tell you that you won’t lose weight from walking; you will – and what it does for your head is priceless. You don’t have to do your entire daily walk in one go. I average around four miles a day – or 10,000 steps, if you’re into that! But most importantly, I keep moving; doing little bits and pieces around the yard and garden.

And one more thing; your brain is a muscle that needs exercise as well. Half of your fitness programme is from the neck up.

All I take is a tablespoonful of cod liver oil every morning – that’s it. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that one, because if I die in the next year or so, the Lads will be saying, ‘there yar now… that’s yer cod liver oil for you!’

Don’t Forget

A smile is the shortest distance between two people.