Fit for Life

Our guide to everything you need to know about getting in shape garnered personal testimonials from active exercisers, compliments from fitness trainers and appreciation from those who are happily full-bodied and still in top form. And some readers pointed out the need for personal motivation

Bravo for showing that fitness isn’t only for the thin, the strong or even just for young people [Aug. 8]. As an exercise physiologist, I have spent my career trying to change how people look at exercise. We all need to get back to making fitness activities feel as they did when we were kids — full of fun, movement and creativity — not the drudgery of the same old 30 minutes on a treadmill or an hour at the gym.
Catherine Cram
Middleton, Wisconsin, U.S.

In our modern society’s relentless pursuit of physical fitness, we risk forgetting a crucial factor: mental well-being. Our grandparents lived healthier lives not just because they sweated more than we do but also because they fretted less. Technology helps us get more done in the least possible time, but today’s lifestyles mean frazzled nerves for most of us. Unless we work simultaneously toward greater peace of mind, physical fitness alone will be an empty Nirvana. The ancient dictum of a “sound mind in a sound body” has never been more relevant.
M. Venkata Krishnan
Madras, India

How about ballroom dancing for exercise? It’s joy, not work. Swing, salsa, tango for blood pressure, heart, balance and alertness. All that while you hear great music and hold someone in your arms.
Vera Lee
Newton, Massachusetts, U.S.

I am a 56-year-old male, mostly vegetarian, a nonsmoker and only a social drinker. Both my parents, prior to their reaching age 40, suffered from heart ailments and diabetes. I have been practicing yoga and taking a brisk walk five times a week for the past three decades. A few months back, my yearly checkup showed an abnormal stress test. Angiography indicated multiple blocks in my blood vessels, some of them major. The next step was to have heart-bypass surgery. I was shocked and asked my cardiologist how that could happen after I had been taking so much care. He calmly replied, “Just the way you like to inherit the wealth of your parents, you should be prepared to accept their genes too.” I was one of the fortunate ones who was warned in advance. There are millions who do not get this chance.
Pradeep B. Chinai
Bombay

I fell asleep at night after reading your fitness articles, and the next morning I bolted out of bed for a 30-min. walk. I had not done that for months. Thanks!
Gail Kaplan
Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.

I have some svelte friends who could learn a lot from your article “Can You Be Fat & Healthy?” Unfortunately, they are all downtown drinking and chain smoking. Meanwhile, I am enjoying a quiet evening at home with Time, resting up from 70 km of cycling on the weekend. I may wear larger-size clothes than some, but my blood pressure and cholesterol levels are low. We need much more reporting on the issue of health, as opposed to thinness.
Stacey Paul
Chicago

Thanks to TV, the internet and video games, it’s no wonder that we have lost even the most basic instinct for staying fit. Exercise should be a daily activity at the top of everyone’s list of things to do. It gives a feeling of well-being that cannot be matched by any of our more stationary daily activities. Exercise should not be a chore. It should be a personal requirement that everyone feels happy to fulfill.
Leon Rafailov
New York City

With all the hype about the countless fad diets out there, it was nice to read “Couch Potatoes, Arise!,” with its praise for the healthier method of staying in physical shape — getting off one’s duff and exercising. It was courageous of Time to point out our laziness and make the connection between obesity and our passion for convenience. Being healthy takes more than putting down the feed bag. It means getting off the couch and engaging in forward motion. Gee, what a novel concept!
James C. Nill
Detroit

Tackling Terrorism
Re Time’s reporting on the manhunt for and arrest of London’s suspected suicide bombers [Aug. 8]: I am a British Asian who has lived in the U.K. for most of my life. I am as proud of this country and its value system as any native-born Briton. Recently, for the first time, I have felt like a stranger in my own country. It will be a long time before I can take a rucksack or other bag on the tube without being looked at suspiciously by fellow passengers and the police, and I do not blame them. The responsibility lies firmly with the terrorists who caused this situation and not with the police or my fellow commuters. It is vital that all Britons stand united and show those who want to divide us, especially terrorists, that they will never succeed. The death of those innocent people in the July 7 bombings has had the opposite effect of what the bombers intended: it has brought our communities together.
Nic Careem
London

Safe Spaceflight
“Why nasa can’t get it right” reported on the safety concerns plaguing the space-shuttle program [Aug. 8]. Over the years I have found it difficult to support nasa, a government operation that I believe is basically a welfare program for aeronautical engineers. After a hiatus of 21⁄2 years, nasa engineers launched the Discovery shuttle and encountered the same problem — falling insulation foam from the external fuel tank during lift-off — that doomed the previous shuttle, the Columbia, in 2003! nasa’s engineers, managers and technicians should refund to the government the full amount of their salaries and benefits for the past 21⁄2 years.
Rod Rawson
Miami

Now that the Discovery shuttle is safely back on Earth, I hope you will give nasa the credit it is due instead of bashing the agency about a few chunks of foam. The camera that allowed technicians to see the insulation foam provided information about damage that was assessed and fixed. I believe nasa got it right. After all, the International Space Station has been restocked, the new safety systems (cameras, sensors, etc.) worked perfectly, and all seven American astronauts are back on solid ground, having been confident that the agency had the ability to get them home safely.
Emily J. Chambers
Columbus, Georgia, U.S.

You wrote about the safety concerns plaguing nasa’s space-shuttle program [Aug. 8]. I was among the millions of people around the world who watched the touchdown of the shuttle Discovery on television. The craft’s journey to space and back was another stride in mankind’s effort to unravel the mystery of the universe. We hope the benefits from the efforts in space will also reach us in rural Africa, where poverty, disease and hunger are making life for the majority of people not worth living. How we wish that the billions of dollars spent on the Discovery’s journey had been given to Africa to provide safe drinking water, education, shelter and employment to the millions who are in need. But at least we can acknowledge the benefits from past space explorations that we are all now enjoying.
Peter Kwame Boateng
East London, South Africa

The whole enlightened world was awaiting most apprehensively the safe return of the Discovery and its crew. The happy landing was a great relief. One dares to ask, however, if the risk of life to the astronauts and the expenditure of immense funds are justifiable. What are mankind’s benefits from conquering space? Would the money not be better used for cancer and aids research, for trying to save people instead of endangering them?
Jehuda Straschnow
Netanya, Israel

Skepticism about the I.R.A.
“A farewell to arms” reported on the announcement by the Irish Republican Army (i.r.a.) that it is formally ending its armed campaign to force Britain out of Northern Ireland [Aug. 8]. It reminded me of 1993 when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo peace accords and shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. We all applauded and thought that peace had finally come to the Middle East. We so wanted it to be true. But terrorists are con artists. Their promises are worthless. They are good at murdering innocents and then blaming the victims. Terrorists quit only when they are tired, afraid or outgunned. And even then, there is always one terrorist who refuses to give up. So I am not applauding the i.r.a.‘s announcement. I am tired of being made a fool of again and again.
Batya Dagan
Los Angeles

Al Gore, Entrepreneur
I was happy and not surprised to read that with his new 24-hour youth cable network, Current TV, Al Gore continues to be actively engaged in many of the issues that guided him as a public servant [Aug. 8]. Americans missed a golden opportunity to have a truly visionary leader when the Supreme Court essentially selected George W. Bush in the 2000 election. We now find ourselves in debt, involved in a war with no end in sight and viewed by the world as a bully. I was disheartened to read that Gore has all but ruled out another run for President, but then again, who could blame him? I just hope that with all his intellect and foresight, he comes to realize that we need his leadership now more than ever.
Matthew Sokol
West Bloomfield, Michigan, U.S.