Be active, eat wisely

Stay­ing healthy does not just mean reg­u­lar exer­cise, it also means eat­ing right

BY: Arnold Goh
Pub­lished: August 29, 2009

As we grow older, exer­cise plays an impor­tant role in help­ing us stay active and healthy. There are three ele­ments to an exer­cise pro­gramme that you should know about:

1. AER­O­BIC EXER­CISE – This con­sists of briskwalk­ing, run­ning, swim­ming, cycling or any form of activ­ity that raises your heart rate over a period of time involv­ing major mus­cle groups, for exam­ple, the shoul­der, chest, legs, back, abdom­i­nals and arms. Gen­er­ally, you should progress slowly from 20 min­utes to 60 min­utes, five days a week at mod­er­ate inten­sity.
    
2. STRENGTH TRAIN­ING – This uses free weights or fixed-​weight machines that works the major mus­cle groups. You should work out at least once or twice a week with 10 to 12 rep­e­ti­tions, one or two sets per exer­cise.
    
3. STRETCH­ING – This should be done to warm up the mus­cles in your body before exer­cise and more impor­tantly, after exer­cise. Peo­ple often neglect to do this or they rush through it. Stretch­ing (pic­ture) has many ben­e­fits. It reduces the chance of injury when play­ing a sport, and it increases the blood and nutri­ent sup­ply to mus­cles and car­ti­lage, thereby reduc­ing mus­cle sore­ness after training.

Run­ning and briskwalk­ing are two aer­o­bic exer­cises that are ben­e­fi­cial to older adults in terms of stay­ing active both socially and phys­i­cally. But as we grow older, it is dif­fi­cult to sus­tain long, slow dis­tance runs. One way is to break the long dis­tance runs into seg­ments, with walk breaks inserted. The run and walk dis­tances will depend very much on your fit­ness level. Besides mea­sur­ing in dis­tance, you can also mea­sure it by time, for exam­ple, run­ning for 30 min­utes or one hour.

As for first-​timers, make sure you take more or longer walk breaks. If you are unable to run, con­sider briskwalk­ing as an alter­na­tive. Sim­i­larly, instead of run/​walk it will be briskwalk/​walk. These two meth­ods can also be ben­e­fi­cial to those on recov­ery train­ing after an injury. As for strength train­ing and stretch­ing, it is advis­able to per­form the exer­cises under super­vi­sion. If you have never exer­cised before, do seek your doctor’s per­mis­sion and to assess your fit­ness level before going head-​on. It is bet­ter to be safer than sorry!

Not all just exercise

The exer­cise pro­gramme how­ever, will not be com­plete with­out the inclu­sion of the food that we con­sume daily. Diet is an inte­gral part of the whole process of age­ing grace­fully and health­ily. It is advis­able to con­sume five small meals rather than three large meals a day. This helps to main­tain a con­stant blood sugar level so that we feel more ener­getic through­out the day. Also, don’t eat until you are 100 per­cent full but rather when you have the first hint of fullness.

So what food should we choose? The food we eat should con­sist of these macro-​nutrients – car­bo­hy­drates, pro­tein and fats.

Car­bo­hy­drates – Most of the daily calo­ries should come from this group. It should con­sist of mostly unre­fined car­bo­hy­drates such as whole­meal bread, brown rice and multi-​grain foods.

Pro­tein – You should con­sume this in lower pro­por­tion as com­pared to car­bo­hy­drates. It should come mostly from white meat such as fish and chicken breast meat. The Oki­nawans who are said to live long lives eat very lit­tle meat as well as lit­tle fat and refined sug­ars. Three-​quarters of their food come from plants, with lots of fruit, veg­eta­bles and fibre. 

Fats – Do not avoid this group but con­sump­tion should be kept to a min­i­mum com­pared to car­bo­hy­drates and pro­tein. This group should come from monoun­sat­u­rated, polyun­sat­u­rated and omega-​3 fats. Restrict intake of sat­u­rated fats to a very min­i­mum and totally avoid trans fat.

We should con­sume enough fibre both sol­u­ble and insol­u­ble, which comes from veg­eta­bles and fruits. When it comes to snack­ing in between main meals, choose healthy snacks such as fruits and nuts. Most impor­tantly take enough water to hydrate one­self. And keep every­thing in mod­er­a­tion – too much of a good thing is not good at all.

By eat­ing well-​balanced food daily, the body is assured of nutri­ents, vit­a­mins and min­er­als to keep the body phys­i­cally and men­tally active. And if you are won­der­ing, what about vit­a­mins – these should be taken only if nec­es­sary. Food in itself has all the impor­tant nutri­ents. If you are not get­ting enough of a cer­tain amount, do con­sider vit­a­mins. Vit­a­mins are not to be seen as a replace­ment of a meal but rather to com­ple­ment a meal.

The above arti­cle was con­tributed by Arnold Goh, 45, a qual­i­fied per­sonal trainer. He also has done a num­ber of triathlons and marathons, and con­tin­ues to run, swin and cycle each week.

(PIC­TURE CREDIT: STRETCH­ING © Michael Schade | Dream​stime​.com)