Can you get fit after 40?

Digging the garden, walking, swimming, all good exercise, and all great for stamina for plodding along. None of them will make you be able to play commandos in the paintball arena

 

All those things are great general activities but weight-training and other fitness training targets muscles in a safe and controlled way to develop them, and should consistently improve aerobic capacity. Occasional digging sessions are more likely to cause damage to weak and untrained muscles, sadly, and the best results will be achieved by a planned exercise programme.

Fileyboy, you seem to be getting away with it very well, what's your digging secret?

 

Where we first lived My mum had big garden front and back way ,dad die at the early age of 37,she us to try and keep it tidy.I started to help when I was about 8 and a old gentleman came one night when he saw me trying to dig,brought his spade and said "come on lad lets have this done right" and showed me how to carry on.I looked after this garden for 20+years until she move into a council bungalow,by this time I was married and came to live in Filey,found out about the allotments and put my name down for one,got I 6 months later and been digging ever since.His advice to me as an 8 year old was " when you feel like you have done enough,stop 10mins earlier and come back tomorrow.At 76 I still follow that advice and still enjoy my allotment

 

Ah, start young, then. Hope you enjoy it for many more years to come.

 

starting back to the gym again, on my diet again. My Key west, Fl trip in May. Got to look good in shorts and swimsuite.

 

After scoffing all too many QS over the holidays, I am back on the static bike again with rain season upon us ... just starting with 5kms per day on easy due to my OA of the knees. Weight is basically A-OK but have my first appointment next week with a family doctor in the village/town nearby just for initial consultation so want to be 'sort of' fit and will be drinking my beetroot juice daily aforehand!

 

OK, here are my role models.

 

Get a good exercise and diet app for your mobile and log everything you eat and all the activity you do daily. Keep within the calories boundary and exercise regularly and very importantly lose the weight slowly but steadily. You should be able to keep it in check better that way.

Yes as has been said countless times above, age is no boundary to fitness. Where there's a will there's a way.

I miss exercising regularly due to work recently - but will train again this Thursday then on the weekend.

I am 46 nearly and weigh 10 stones at 5'4 tall so keeping within the healthy weight bracket as best I can.

My tip is dont' make an event of a meal. I eat standing up and eat only what I can fit in a bowl. After 2 hours if I am hungry again, have another small meal. You don't want to stretch your stomach with large amounts of food.

Also avoid anything with Fructose and worse of all corn syrup (the cause of obesity in the USA).

Best wishes.

 

Isn't fructose the sugar that occurs naturally in fresh fruit?

 

Yes sorry I meant Aspartame and Fructose corn syrup

 

There was a programme on either BBC or Channel 4 exploring obesity in America and it turns out fructose corn syrup, a relatively new man made sweetener, is strongly linked with the body's inability to get rid of the "type" of fatty deposits it makes in the human body. Fatty deposits created by such sweeteners is difficult if not impossible for the body to clear out. They are like permanent toxins.

I have sugar in my tea daily and I stick to what I know - natural sugar, preferably raw molassess sugar.

 

I don't eat/have sugar in general (only herbal/Earl Grey tea as it comes, rarely coffee, no cakes but occasionally a breakdown with a few biccies) ... except ... I cannot resist wine gums or some liquorice or mints ...

 

Cancel my visit in July :-)

Jack McH