Fitness Articles

September 2004 issues

SEPTEMBER 2004 ISSUES

PROGRESS?
I was going to stop an obviously obese person in the street the other day and ask them, ‘why are you so fat' I'm too polite and I'm not one for hospital food. However I'm sure he would have replied, ‘because I eat cheap fast food and don't exercise. I know what my problem is and I know the solution, but I'm living my life the way I want to and you've got to die of something, haven't you? Anyway what do you so-called fitness experts know? Apparently 30minutes of moderate exercise a day is not enough, you now expect us to walk 10,000 steps a-day, everyday. Do you know that's 5-6 miles, depending on your stride length, every day? That'll take me at least two hours! 40-odd miles a week! Sod that when it's raining. And I'll have to fork out £15 for a pedometer.

My kids, they've got off to a bad start since some schools don't even have playing fields and there's no after-school activity programme, either. That's modern education for you. Now when I was a lad we used to walk or cycle 3 miles to school every day, sometimes on a Saturday if we had a football match and there was only one fat kid in each class. He was usually the rich one with loads of pocket money for sweets and his parents brought him to school by car. You can't let youngsters cycle these days; too many cars on the roads taking children to school. Progress? Maybe we're richer, but poorer, if you know what I mean.

HANG LOOSE….
And don't wear bras, no! I'm not a pervert. The theory is that the constriction of your lymphatic system prevents the natural flushing out of cancer-causing toxins, according to leading scientists. Harvard study has shown that women who didn't wear bras had a 60 per cent lower rate of breast cancer.

WATCH THE REFILL!
Alcohol raises oestrogen levels in postmenopausal women, which trigger alterations in normal breast cells to become cancerous. It can also counteract the positive effects of folic acid in your diet, which is found in eggs, cheese and milk. Women who get less than the RDA of folic acid and consume alcohol regularly were at a much higher risk of developing breast cancer.