Ten Top Tips for fitness

CEL welcomes the British Governments efforts to encourage the population to be fitter.

Already twice as many people in the world are overweight as are underweight. And IF PRESENT trends were to continue, By 2050 90% of today's UK children will be overweight or obese,

More of you reading this will be overweight than underweight ... especially since you are pariticpating in the fattening occupation of using a computer... Don't take my words too personally - but let's buck up and improve our lives for the sake of others!

If we all ate less, especially less meat, there would be less demands on the environment, more space for wildlife-

If we were all fitter we would enjoy life more and be able to help other people more, and appreciate God's world more.

1. Follow a Mediterranean Diet - Jesus did. (Also olive oil is a better oil for you than palm oil - use of the latter in 10% of our foods is causing the extinction of Orang Utans)

2. Eat local food - as nearly everyone in the bible did. (slightly contradictory to 1 above, but try!) Follow CEL's LOAF principles - (Locally grown, Organically Produced, animal firendly and Fairly Traded.)

3. Locally grown foods such as oats, potatoes, broccoli have low GI values - They release sugars more slowly so "last longer" than things like toffees.

4. Get up early. Get enough sleep for you - but get up early at a regular time - (From one of John Wesley's Sermons:)

I advise you, Fourthly, be steady. Keep your hour of rising without intermission. Do not rise two mornings, and lie in bed the third; but what you do once, do always. "But my head aches." Do not regard that. It will soon be over.

5. Have a walk or do exercise early in the day. That will get your metablolism going and it will burn of fat during the rest of the day. It increase your endorphins. And if you walk in in the park or a garden or the countryside, you will learn more about nature and your body will be happier surrounded by natural and interesting shapes.

You can pray as you walk - or at least sort things out in your mind.

John Wesley walked great distances to do his preaching, - and often read as he walked.

In the summer of 1731 he walked from Oxford to Epworth. On his return to the University he learned that four or five-and-twenty miles was an easy and safe day's journey, in hot weather as well as cold. Then also he made another discovery, that it was easy to read as he walked for ten or twelve miles...

He travelled great distances by horseback. He lived till his 88th year.

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Your web editor has decided she had better practice what she preaches and has gone for a walk...

Maybe you could email me your suggestions for the last 5 tips?...

6. If you feel depressed go out and help someone else. Visit an old person. Go into town and give some people some compliments. Listen to them- you might find someone more depressed than you and that could make you feel better.