Regular exercise allows you to live a healthier, longer life

This is the third part of a six-article New Millennium New You series on practical tips about how to stay healthy. The weekly column is written by Clare E. Urwin, a nutrition, fitness and health advisor based in Surabaya.

JAKARTA (JP): Well done! Positive changes are already being made to your eating habits for the wonderful new millennium. Now you want to take the next step, exercise. Regular exercise makes you feel good and look good. It will help you live longer, too.

It is undeniable that exercise is beneficial during every stage in our lives. Just take a note of this. Exercise improves strength, stamina, energy and vitality.

It increases mental alertness, gives greater resistance to disease and improves symptoms of insomnia and depression. Exercise is great for the skin and circulation, contributes to a better sex life and offsets the aging process! Wow, if somebody could invent a pill to do all that, they would be a millionaire within days.

Yet this apparent magic answer to all our problems is available to everyone. Furthermore, it's free.

In the beginning we are often resistant to exercise, using any weird and wonderful excuse to avoid it. Yes, we know we should be doing it, but it's not easy and something always seems to stop us.

Besides, the prospect of attending a gym can be really daunting. Weird shaped machines resembling torture-chamber implements, jammed into a room. Obviously slim and obviously fit people, in coordinating track suits and leotards, prancing around the place.

Possibly smirking at our amateur efforts while condemning fat wobbly shapes underneath baggy shorts and tee shirts? Don't worry and no more excuses! Optimum fitness is not necessarily dependent on gym attendance.

You have already decided to make positive health habits for the brand new century. Regular exercise is going to be a part of your weekly routine in the new millennium. Remind yourself frequently about all those great things exercise can accomplish. So, where do you start? Back to basics for a moment. Good physical fitness can be categorized under the three headings of stamina, strength and suppleness.

To improve stamina, "aerobic" or "cardiovascular" exercise is needed. This is rhythmical and continuous, tending to use large muscle groups, like those in the legs. These big muscles demand oxygen for their efforts, forcing the heart and lungs to work harder while keeping up the supply. The heart is a muscle and like any well-used muscle, it becomes stronger and more efficient through regular physical exertion.

Aerobic exercise raises the pulse rate, pumps invigorating doses of oxygen around the body, relieves stress, improves circulation and strengthens the heart, bones and muscles.

Walking, running, swimming, bicycling, dancing, step classes and games such as tennis, squash, badminton and golf, all provide ideal aerobic exercise. Most importantly, find an activity that you enjoy.

Exercise should be fun and pleasurable. Not something you do because you are supposed to! Thirty minutes of sustained aerobic activity, three or four times a week is an ideal base for a fitness program.

For many people, walking is the best and easiest form of aerobic exercise. It is free, accessible to everyone and available to almost anybody of any age.

Start off by walking slowly for five minutes, then gradually increase the pace until you are walking briskly; fast enough to be a little out of breath. Allow arms to move rhythmically and let legs swing freely from your hips. Walk at this brisk speed for 30 minutes, three or four times a week. Easy isn't it?

Strength improvement is the second category in good physical fitness. This form of exercise is often neglected, but combining some strength training with aerobic activity, achieves superior results from a fitness program.

To make muscles stronger, with increased endurance, they have to be worked harder than usual. However, strength doesn't necessarily mean looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger!

In fact, women can increase their strength by up to 50 percent without any enlargement in muscle size whatsoever. Stronger, toned muscles give a healthy, lean look to the body.

For weight control, it's important to remember that muscle tissue is active tissue, which efficiently consumes calories and raises the metabolic rate. In other words, when muscles are in good shape, it's possible to eat more food and not put on weight. Older people who don't exercise, tend to lose muscle tissue. This is one of the reasons why a weight increase often occurs with age.

Joining a gym and using its equipment is a convenient way of practicing strength training. Exercising in the privacy of your home is an alternative. Slowly increase the number of push-ups, squats, stomach crunches, calf raises and lunges you complete, using your own body weight as resistance.

Only 15 minutes of strength training, three or four times a week, will produce rapid and welcome results.

Suppleness, so important for joint mobility, is the final component of good physical fitness.

It can be achieved by regular stretching exercises or by practicing Yoga or Pilates. "Use it or loose it" is apt advice regarding mobility and flexibility levels. When your body is truly mobile and flexible, it resists injury and daily tasks become easier.

Stretching brings a lovely, sensuous, renewed feeling. Think of cats and how they seem to enjoy their numerous daily stretches. After warming up, slowly and deliberately stretch different muscles, hold the stretch for a few seconds, then gradually release the tension by relaxing.

Ten minutes of stretching, three or four times a week, is ideal for completing your fitness regime.

Optimum fitness is not exclusively for the young. It can be achieved by most people, irrespective of age. Approximately one hour of exercise, combining aerobic activity, strength training and stretching routines, three or four times a week, is all that's required.

Real enjoyment of your exercise program does happen. It quickly becomes such a part of your life, you don't feel right without it. Take the time or make the time; the investment is invaluable.

Just do it and get started. Y2K is now looking even better. Next week, the third element: Supplements.