Tests to show how fit you are for your age By

Bunmi Sofola

No matter how inevitable ageing is, a lot of us want to prolong the process. Recently, a renowned
personal trainer, Robert Cartwright, and a chartered physiotherapist Sammy Margo came up with
simple tests and tips to find out if youre as healthy as you should be and what you can do if
youre not.

If youre in your 20sThe Test: Set a stopwatch on your mobile phone to two minutes and
count how many press-ups you can manage within this time. Afterwards try the same with sit-
ups. Finally, run for around one milethis can even include chasing your kids aroundand time
how long it takes.

Results: At this state most exercise shouldnt be a problem. On average, you should be able to do
30 press-ups in two minutes and 50 sit-ups. It should take 10 minutes or less to run one mile.

Improve your fitness: In your 20s, you should have lots of energy and its an important decade
for building good exercise habits while you are in good health and have time. Try to get into the
habit of mixing cardio and strength training. Good workouts include circuit classes, running,
cycling and lifting weights.

In your 30sThe Test: Run 1.5 miles at a comfortable pace, recording your distance on a
treadmill or on a fitnesstracker mobile app.

Results: In your 30s you might not have the energy that you had when you were in your 20s,
which means you will have to work harder, but ideally you should still be able to run 1.5 miles in
16 minutes or less.

Improve your fitness: Make an effort to still fit sport or exercise into your daily day-to-day life.
You could cycle to work or take your family swimming at the weekends. Flexibility decreases in
your 30s, so try to take part in a yoga session once a week too.

In your fortiesThe Test: Find a high step or block of about 12 inches. Step up unto the step and
off again, one foot at a time for three minutes. Then count the pulse in your wrist to measure
your heart rate.

Result: An average for a woman in her 40s to 60s should be 96-100 beat per minute.

Improve Your Fitness: It is normal for people to put on weight more easily in their 40s, but
boosting your physical activity can knock years off your body age. Try functional training, which
prepares your body for everyday tasks by simulating common movements you might do at home
or at work.

For example, doing squats help you to get up and out of a chair more easily or doing lunges helps
you lift more, run faster and improves your posture.
In your 50s-The Test: This exercise will test your muscle strength, balance flexibility and agility.
It is notoriously difficult, so it may take practise. Its not recommended for anyone with arthritic
knees. Stand in front of a mirror in comfortable clothes with no shoes on. Without using your
hands for support or kneeling on the way down, lower yourself into a cross-legged sitting
position on the floor. Then without using your hands, knees or arms for support, return to the
standing position. Score how you do out of 10, subtracting one point every time you have to use
a hand or knee for support, and half a point for every time you wobble or lose balance.

Results: You should aim to score eight or above.

Improve your fitness: You might start to get more aches and pain in this decade and your blood
pressure can increase, but exercise can help. Walk to places such as the shops instead of driving,
and aim to do 10,000 steps per day. Swimming, dancing or carrying out household chores such
as scrubbing the floor or mowing the lawn can help too.

OBESITY: Be healthy, not heavy By Sola Ogundipe

Obesity means having far too much body fat. Its about much more than your clothing size or
how you look. It can seriously affect your health. Your whole body feels it, from your joints to
your heart, blood pressure, blood sugar, and other systems. The extra fat cells produce
inflammation and various hormones, which boosts your odds of chronic medical conditions.

Obesity describes someone who is very overweight with a high degree of body fat. Being a little
overweight may not cause many noticeable problems, but once you are carrying a few extra
kilograms, you may develop symptoms that affect your daily life.

Are you obese?

Obesity is beyond being simply overweight. Its very common more than 1 in 5 adults are
obese. If youre one of them, you can work to lose weight. Although its not easy, dropping some
of those extra kilos maybe fewer than you think starts to turn things around for you.

Body Mass Index

The most widely used method to assess a persons weight is the body mass index (BMI), which
is your weight in kilograms divided by your height in metres squared. For adults, experts usually
define obesity based on body mass index. If your BMI is between 25 and 29, you would be
considered overweight; if between 30 and 40, you would be considered obese and if over 40, you
would be considered very obese.

What your BMI says

If two people weigh the same amount but one is taller than the other, the taller person will have a
lower BMI. To find your body mass index, plug your height and weight into a BMI calculator. If
your BMI is: Below 18.5 you are underweight. If it is 18.5-24.9 youre normal; 25-29.9 is
overweight and 30 or higher is obese. If youre obese, your doctor might talk about the
categories of obesity:

Obesity level l: BMI of 30-34.9

Obesity level ll: BMI of 35-39.9
Obesity level lll: BMI of 40 or higher (morbid) obesity

Problems with BMI

Body mass index doesnt tell the whole story about your body, though. Your BMI doesnt show
whether your weight is fat or muscle. If youre a super-fit athlete, your muscle might put you in
the overweight or obese range. Or, if youre elderly and have lost muscle mass over the
years, your BMI could be normal, but youre not in as good shape as you think. The formula also
doesnt show where your fat is located on your body. And it doesnt consider differences among
ethnic groups.

As obese children also tend to be obese in later life, it is important for parents to set the right
example for their children from an early age. If you are overweight or obese, visit your doctor to
find out if you are at increased risk of health problems, and how you can safely lose weight.

Underlying causes for obesity

*certain medicine or a medical condition that causes weight gain,

*your lifestyle particularly your diet and how much physical activity you do, and also whether
you smoke, and how much alcohol you drink

*how you feel about being overweight for example, if you are feeling depressed about it or
how motivated you are to lose weight

*family history of obesity and other health conditions, such as diabetes

As well as calculating your BMI, your doctor may also perform tests including measuring your
blood pressure, the distance around your waist, as well as glucose (sugar) and lipid (fat) levels in
your blood.

Obesity vs overweight

Being obese is different from being overweight. Obesity is an important condition which causes
significant morbidity and mortality through increased rates of type 2 diabetes mellitus and heart
disease, amongst other conditions. It can also cause sleep disturbances and lead to reduced
fertility rates.

Obesity and pain

There now appears to be a strong link between obesity and pain. Studies show that obese people
are much more likely to feel light to intense pain in many parts of the body. Scientists do not
understand exactly how or why obesity causes pain, but it is clear that weight loss can help
reduce pain and improve quality of life for obese patients.

Check your Waist Size

Another useful method is to measure around your waist. Men whose waist measurement is 40
inches or 94 cm or more and women whose waist measurment is 35 inches or 80 cm or more are
more likely to develop obesity-related health problems, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and
some types of cancer.

If your waist is more than 35 inches around and youre a woman, or if its more than 40 inches
and youre a man, you might have too much belly fat. Carrying extra fat around your stomach is
unhealthy, no matter what your BMI is.

The Edmonton Scale

There are five stages:

Stage 0: You dont have any health problems related to your weight.

Stage 1: Any weight-related health problems are mild (such as borderline high blood pressure or
occasional aches and pains).

Stage 2: You have an obesity-related chronic disease, such as high blood pressure, type 2
diabetes, sleep apnea, or osteoarthritis, and you have moderate problems doing daily activities or
feeling well.

Stage 3: Youve had serious weight-related problems, such as a heart attack, heart failure, stroke,
or other conditions.

Stage 4: This is the most severe level of weight-related chronic health conditions, which are
extreme and life-threatening..

What obesity does to your body

The risks go up and up as BMI increases. Obesity puts extra stress on your bones, joints, and
organs, making them work harder than they should. Too much body fat raises your blood
pressure and cholesterol, and makes heart disease and stroke more likely. It also worsens
conditions like osteoarthritis, back pain, asthma, and sleep apnea.

Too much fat causes inflammation that can damage cells. Obesity is also linked to several types
of cancers. It can also make your body respond less well to insulin, which controls your blood
sugar. Over time, that can lead to type 2 diabetes.
The weight makes it harder to be active, too. Carrying around extra pounds takes extra energy, so
it can be difficult for obese people to exercise.

What helps

If youve tried to lose weight before, you know its much easier said than done. Its not just
about willpower, and the solutions go way beyond counting calories, fat grams, or carbs. What
you eat and how active you are affects your whole day. Youll need to makeover the habits that
go into your meals, snacks, and activities.

Thats a huge commitment. Take it one small step at a time. You can build on successes. Dont
try to do too much, too soon. If you often eat for emotional reasons, youll need to find other
ways to handle the feelings that usually make you eat. Consider talking with a counselor. She can
help you make those shifts in how you think, and how you relate to food and to your body.

Meanwhile, your body might resist your weight-loss efforts. If someone does lose 20 or 30
pounds, their metabolism goes down and they start to burn fewer calories. Our bodies are
designed to regain weight, so its much easier to prevent obesity than to treat it.

Making changes

Before you start to make changes, write down everything you eat and drink for a few days. This
can help you decide what you need to change about your diet.

Most people, at any weight, need to eat more fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins. They also need
to cut out junk food and sugary drinks.

Being active is also key. Any kind of movement helps, and you dont have to go to a gym. Ask
your doctor whats OK for you to do. A certified personal trainer can help you plan a workout
that fits your needs.

If you find that you need more help than diet and exercise, talk with your doctor. Certain
prescription drugs are approved for weight loss. They curb your appetite or prevent your body
from absorbing fat. Youll still need to watch what you eat and be active.

Weight loss surgery can help people lose large amounts of weight. But its not right for
everyone, and it does have risks. You wont be able to eat like you used to, you might need to
take vitamins to meet your nutritional needs, and youll need to work on diet and exercise to
keep up the results.

Keep your perspective

If it all seems like too much to take on, or if your past tries to lose weight make you wonder if it
will ever happen for you, take a moment to challenge those thoughts. Its not about being a
certain size. Its about small steps that add up to better health over time. If you lose as little as 5-
10 per cent of your weight, it starts to make a positive difference. Focus on what is possible for
you and what you can commit to, even if its just for right now. You can make the decision again
tomorrow and build your way to where you want to be, day by day.

Rapid ageing: The anti-dote - Vanguard

News
Its normal in this age to expect scientific proof of anything and everything.

If science has a stand-point on something we want to know it. We

are encouraged to do or not to do. This means we live our day to day lives with a lot more
confidence. We do not have to tread too gingerly as if in total darkness.

One of the things we should all know by now, if we dont already is the proven fact that exercise
can reverse the hand of the clock. Exercise can make you feel younger and live life fuller.

Try and introduce a daily exercise discipline into your life. Early morning is best for some. Well,
temperaments differ. In this case suit yourself. What time you exercise should not matter much.
The practice is the thing.

For me the total lack of need for any tool is what I find most appealing about yoga.

Once youve picked up the techniques to performing a few of them all what youll ever need for
practice is just a little space and enthusiasm hinged to the knowledge that youre doing yourself a
great favour.

Dont dwell on the negative thoughts of what happens to those who fail to exercise.

You should think thoughts that say youre improving physically, stretched put the palms of the
hands float down just behind the toes. Now lean on the hand and throw the head back. Take a
deep breath and slowly lift the heels and thrust forward the lower part of the body and humping
up the chest which means your spine being arched. Retain the posture for a while and return to
sitting on the heels with the head held high and breathe out. Rest and repeat.
Benefits: The camel posture affects the go-nards and thyroid glands. The spine regains elasticity.
It is also a great help against constipation and gas.

Head to knee posture (standing)

Technique: Stand with feet together. Raise your hands straight over head. Breathe in as you do
so. Now bend your upper body down dropping your hands. Keep your breathe out.

Keep the palms down and your forehead brought into contact with your knees. And stay in this
position for a while and as you inhale return to standing position. You may repeat a couple more
times. This posture maintains elasticity of both spine and hamstrings. Those into sports will do
well to practise this very posture. Its a great insurance against pulling hamstrings a common
happening at athletic meetings and soccer games. This posture massages deeply the regions of
the abdomen and pelvis. Women folk who suffer painful periods should practice this before the
onset of their periods. With it they get relief.

OBESITY ON THE PROWL: How not to

eat your way to the grave this season By Chioma
Obinna

Christmas is a period for sober reflection and thanksgiving for many Christians. It is also a
period for family reunion and feast. It is also a time to give, share and receive. There is also a
lot of good food to eat free of charge. Findings have shown that many people tend to gain a lot
of weight during this season because, with all the merriment, many peoples self-control and
sense of fullness tend to disappear.

But experts say although there are many temptations during this season, the season of excess
doesnt have to mean weight gain because obesity is on the prowl. Findings also showed that
obesity has joined the ranks of malnutrition, malaria and hypertension among other deadly
ailments. Overweight and obesity are defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as
abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health. Body Mass Index (BMI) is a
simple index of weight-for-height that is commonly used to classify overweight and obesity in
adults. It is defined as a persons weight in kilograms divided by the square of his height in
meters (kg/m2).

According to nutrition experts, many people are unknowingly eating their way to the grave and
obesity is rising in both rural and urban areas. Adults are overweight or obese, while children
are malnourished a paradox. Today, men and women are competing for pot-belly.

Many Nigerian adults have surpassed the WHO overweight and obesity levels which define
overweight as a BMI greater than or equal to 25; and obesity as a BMI greater than or equal to
30.
Statistics obtained by Sunday Vanguard showed that one-third of the worlds population is now
overweight or obese, while 62 percent of these individuals live in developing countries like
Nigeria. In 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight, and of these
over 600 million were obese (WHO, 2015). WHO estimates that 12.7 percent of African children
will be overweight by 2020 compared to 8.5 percent in 2010, unless this is addressed urgently.

Meanwhile, Assistant Director, Dietetics, Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Dr

Obinna Ogbonna, says festive periods like Christmas are not very good for some categories
of people, particularly those prone to obesity, hence the need for people to carefully choose
what they eat this season.

According to Ogbonna, things that predispose people to be prone to obesity are classified into
two. While some people have the inherited virtue, some people eat themselves into becoming
obese. Lamenting that many people enjoy consuming junks, fried foods and refined sugars, he
said, sadly, some people have adopted the western kind of foods and have abandoned the local
foods that are more nutritious.

To the dietician, although there are many temptations, it doesnt mean more weight gain.
Christmas is only once a year and, because it lasts for a limited period, people see it as a green
light to indulge. According to him, there is need to get out of this mindset.

Many of us take a devil-may-care attitude to what we eat and drink at Christmas but constantly
viewing special occasions as an opportunity to splurge on fat and calories can seriously increase
weight gain over the course of a year, Ogbonna stated.

Admitting that Christmas foods are high in calories, he advised strongly that people should be
mindful of what they consume.

For obesity prone persons, they should take little carbohydrates with lots of vegetables and they
should not eat late night foods. Any dinner after 7:30 may not be too good for the system, he
added.

He advised: You dont indulge in fried foods and too much of oil. People should be mindful of
refined sugars that come from various forms of soft drinks. One should not indulge in them
because of the merry-making.

Also counselling people on foods like salads, the dietician said: People should be very mindful
of the bacteria micro-organism that may be incubated in them because if they are not hygienic
enough and they did not wash their hands and utensils like knifes well, it may become injurious
to health.

When people use the knife they used in slaughtering their chicken directly to slice their
cucumber, it is a very good medium for micro-organism to grow. When people eat such things,
they come down with gastroenteritis; they will start purging (diarrhoea) which could be very
dangerous.
Ogbonna stressed the need for people to include vegetables in whatever they eat this period as
well as eat more of white meat than red meat. Things like chicken and fish are good. If you
want to eat chicken, it is also important to de-skin it because the skin is not too nutritious. If you
want to eat beef it should be the beef, itself and should be eaten in small quantity because the
white meat is better, the Assistant Director advised.

Also warning people on high consumption of soft drinks, he said: There was a study we carried
out during the festive period like this. A particular company was running a promo about a
particular soft drink. They started giving people free soft drinks and in hospital the rate of
diabetes increased and people were coming down with diabetes because they were taking too
much of the free sugar drinks. Some were taking up to five bottles a day. People should be
mindful of that this season because accumulation of sugar will eventually harm the body.

Strategies to enjoy Christmas to the full

Mindless eating is consuming food just because it is there. It is eating while distracted
watching TV, working at a computer or texting on smartphones. It is eating for emotional
comfort instead of for hunger. It is not paying attention to what we eat which can lead to being
overweight and even obese.

In a report, a certified nutritionist for the Cardiac Rehabilitation Centre at Mt. Sinai Medical
Centre, New York, Riska Platt, said mindless eating has always been an issue but the key to
mindful eating is awareness.

Platt said just by paying more attention to what you eat, you are more likely to make beneficial
changes.

When you pay attention to what you are eating, you can make small changes that make a big
difference.

Tips toward a more mindful approach:

* You dont have to deprive yourself, simply control your portions

*Eat when you are hungry. Just because the clock says noon doesnt mean you have to eat. If you
are not hungry, wait until you are hungry.

* Prepare healthy snacks throughout the day if you tend to get hungry between meals.

* Enjoy each bite and put your fork down while chewing, then take a drink between each bite.
This gives your body enough time to trigger your brain that you are satisfied (not necessarily
full).

* Do not eat in front of the TV or computer, or while standing in the kitchen or talking on the
phone. When you do these things, you are more likely to lose track of how much youve eaten.
Curbing your calorie intake this season

*Go easy at breakfast

* Avoid grazing

* Scan before you serve

* Dont skip meals you will be famished and hungry people make bad food decisions. Eat a light
lunch and then shortly before you head out have a snack such as a yogurt or a couple of pieces of
fresh fruit to take the edge off your hunger and stop you gorging.

* Clear the decks: Dinner with family and friends often means we spend longer sitting around the
table. But the longer we linger, the more likely we are to keep eating even if we have had
enough. Instead clear the table when everyone has finished eating and move into another room to
continue the conversation.

*Healthy snacks: Healthy snacks like unsalted nuts and seeds will stave off hunger

*Cut down on carbohydrates: Avoid overloading on starchy carbs by replacing roast spuds with
parsnips, celeriac or sweet potatoes.

* Be mindful: Dont lose touch with your internal appetite regulators. Listen to your body and
give it a chance to feel hungry before you eat.

* Exercise will help you to maintain your weight during the season of excess.

* Factor in the drinks: Alcohol is packed with empty calories. A 125ml glass of 13 per cent abv
(absolute bottle volume) fizz has 94 calories. Research shows alcohol not only increases our
appetite but can weaken our willpower, meaning we are even more likely to overindulge on
festive nibbles.

* Treat sweets as treats: Eat little chocolates and making it an occasional treat means you will
enjoy it more.