Your fitness age estimates how fit you are compared to your actual age. It can rise or fall depending on your aerobic fitness. Consistent training can improve your fitness age, which may correlate with a longer life expectancy. On the other hand, an inactive lifestyle and lack of regular exercise could accelerate aging, which would mean a higher fitness age than your actual age.
Why Is Fitness Age Important?
Your fitness age is useful for tracking your fitness progress over time. It can help you set realistic goals for yourself. If your fitness age is higher than your actual age, you may want to consider increasing your physical activity.
However, your fitness age is not a perfect measurement of fitness. Other factors can affect it, such as genetics and health conditions. Regardless, it can be a helpful tool for tracking your progress, but remember, it is just one measurement. Many other factors contribute to your overall health and well-being.
Tips for Lowering Your Fitness Age
Your fitness age considers factors such as VO2 max, resting heart rate, and body fat percentage. A lower fitness age means you are more fit than someone of your actual age. Here are some tips to help lower your fitness age and improve your overall health and well-being.
Get Regular Exercise
Regular exercise is one of the most significant factors within your control that can affect your fitness age. If you don’t exercise now, then you should start. You can start small, such as walking every day. Overall, you should aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise most days.
Eat a Healthy Diet
A healthy diet is rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains while limiting processed foods, sugary drinks, and unhealthy fats. Also, drink plenty of water as it is essential for good health. Water helps keep your body hydrated and functioning properly.
A healthy diet helps you achieve and maintain a healthy weight. As a result, it helps reduce your risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some types of cancer.
When you eat a healthy diet, it can improve your mood and give you more energy. As a result, it can increase your motivation, lower your fitness age, and improve your outlook on life.
Get Enough Sleep
Your body needs sleep, like air to breathe and food to function. Sleep affects almost every system in your body. Specifically, sleep helps repair and maintain your organs, immunity, mood, and metabolism.
Sleep helps maintain pathways in your brain to learn and create new memories. It affects how well neurons communicate with each other and removes toxins in your brain that can build up while you’re awake. Without enough sleep, you can suffer a variety of negative consequences. Typically, most adults need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep.
Manage Stress
Stress can take a toll on your physical health, sap your motivation, and negatively affect your fitness age. Thankfully, there are things you can do to help manage your stress.
- Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, and yoga can help to reduce stress.
- Talking to someone you trust about your stress can be helpful. This could be a friend, family member, therapist, or anyone you feel comfortable talking to. Talking about your stress can help you feel better and potentially develop strategies to cope with it.
- Alcohol and drugs may seem like a way to deal with stress. Unfortunately, they can make it worse. Alcohol and drugs can interfere with your sleep, make it harder to concentrate, and worsen your mood.
- If you’re feeling stressed, take a break. Get up and move around, go outside for fresh air, or do something you enjoy. Taking breaks can help clear your head.
- Learn to say no. It’s okay to say no when you don’t have time or feel uncomfortable. Saying no can help reduce stress and protect your time and energy.
- Make sure to take care of your physical and mental health. This includes eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, and practicing relaxation techniques. Taking care of yourself will help you to better cope with stress.
If you find that you cannot manage your stress on your own, seek professional help. A therapist can help you develop coping strategies and address the underlying causes of your stress.
The Takeaway
Your fitness age is an estimate of how fit you are compared to your actual age, and it can rise or fall depending on your training and aerobic fitness. Your fitness age is not a perfect measurement of fitness. However, it is useful for tracking your fitness progress and helping you set realistic goals.
You can improve your fitness age with regular exercise, a healthy diet, proper sleep, and stress management. Maintaining an active lifestyle may keep you fit and mobile and help you live a longer, healthier life.
FitTrend’s mission is to help you along your self-improvement journey, promote an active lifestyle, and help you achieve your goals. Our journal can help you track your workouts, weight, mood, calories, and more. Also, FitTrend allows you to connect supported gadgets to your account to make it easier for you to update your journal automatically. Create your account today and start using FitTrend for free!
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
