Sir Chris talks a lot of sense about diet and exercise

IT was probably inevitable but a terrible thing happened the other day: I woke up feeling old.

While ageing creeps up on all of us, it feels like it has been tracking me with the stealth of a leopard.

In my head I am 21. In my heart I am 21. Even my sports watch has been known to lie by telling me I have the fitness age of someone who is 21.

Yet despite the sudden epiphany, the warning signs that I was about to start feeling old have been around for a while.

I’ve been heard talking about “young people” and arguing that “I’m way too old to do that”. I do avoid talking about “back in my day” but I’m often heard apologising to people for mentioning something “that’s probably way before their time”.

While I still have a busy social life, weekends are becoming much more about Strictly Come Dancing than Saturday Night Fever. I’m still a step away from having Horlicks as a nightcap but I’m increasingly inclined to tea as my favourite tipple, even at a party!

I still enjoy regular exercise but sometimes it hurts – a lot. And I’m reluctant to kneel down to search in a cupboard for fear of the difficulty of getting back up. Of course, ageing is inevitable but according to one of the UK’s most respected health experts, the way we approach getting old doesn’t have to become a cliché and we can fight the old age demons.

Professor Sir Chris Whitty, Britain’s public health supremo, has always been known to speak sense. Well, except for when he was unfairly forced to justify the Government’s incompetency in the Covid pandemic. And his advice to people like me is that while the government needs to make it easier for everyone to have healthier lifestyles, we still need to take responsibility for our own health, with good diet and exercise.

The harsh truth of that is that while we are still going to start feeling old, we can’t use bad food, booze and a sedentary lifestyle to comfort us. Instead, we have to keep on doing the things that are good for us – regardless of how much harder and how much more they hurt when you reach a certain age.

And there’s good reason why Sir Chris is keen to spread that message.

By 2050, a quarter of those in the UK will be aged over 65. Yet research shows that people become less active as they get older, with a third of 75 to 85-year-olds, and 57% of people aged 85 and over, being physically inactive. That means we are faced with having a massive section of the population who are at risk of disability and what doctors refer to as “multi-morbidity”.

I don’t think Sir Chris is suggesting that we should all be running marathons in our 90s but there is much evidence to suggest that the “use it or lose it” mantra really does apply to physical exercise and its benefits.

In his report Health in an Ageing Society, Sir Chris says maintaining exercise for the longest possible time will have a “huge positive impact on both physical and mental health in old age”.

It seems blindingly obvious that we should do all we can to try to maintain good health in old age. But the reality is that it is not until we actually start to feel old that we realise that we are not invincible.

Hopefully it’s not too late for me, I’m off for a good walk and a cup of tea.