Staying physically fit and healthy

Rudo Kazembe
Being fit requires discipline and dedication to healthy eating and regular exercise. Unfortunately, catchy fad diets are becoming a popular trend, including among teenagers. These diets often promise quick weight loss. They sometimes advise you to skip meals or completely avoid certain food groups.

Skipping meals can cause your body to turn to starvation mode.

This means that your body will cling on to whatever you eat and this will result in weight gain in the long term. There are also pills which are sold on the market which supposedly, ‘miraculously burn fat’. However diet pills can cause serious side effects such as stomach cramping, diarrhoea, constipation, headaches and mood swings.

How to spot fad diets
They often have testimonial phrases such as Chipo Moyo lost 20kg in 10 days.

They often require you to completely eliminate certain food types for example: the ultimate no carbohydrates diet”

They require you to spend money on the products: buy the new weight loss pills for only US$10.

They often tell you that you will lose weight quickly: new diet which will ensure that you will lose 5 kg in one week.

Ways to stay fit and healthy
If you need to stay fit and healthy or lose weight, it’s best to talk to a dietician so that you can get advice on appropriate healthy eating habits that you should adopt.

It is important to combine healthy eating and exercise so you should also seek help from fitness trainers who can give you a list of exercise routines to help you to lose weight and to maintain weight loss in a healthy way.

The dietician and the fitness trainer can check your body mass and assess your level of fitness. This information enables them to create a weight loss and fitness plan in order for you to achieve your weight loss goal and maintain long term fitness.

The following are simple ways to help you achieve your goal:

Exercise on a daily basic

Eat a healthy, balanced diet

Don’t skip meals

Play sports

Take walks

Participate in fun activities that involve physical exercise such as yoga and dancing