Around My Kitchen Table: Getting Fit

Say hello to cycle karaoke.

My older sister Peggy (aged 80) is fit as a butcher's dog. In fact, she is so fit is that she represents Great Britain for her age group in triathlons and aquathlons (yes, that is the correct spelling - not sure where the L came from but there you go).

She recently became world champion in aquathlon and was on the last leg of becoming the triathlon world champion in Dusseldorf when some 19-year-old boy racer careered into her, knocking her off her bike and straight into hospital where after a few tests and a diagnosis of concussion, she promptly discharged herself.

So my thoughts have turned to getting fit. It's just a question of eating fewer calories than I burn - what could be easier...? So I trawled the internet for hints and inspiration and came across a website called 24 Fun And Exciting Ways To Lose Weight! The exclamation mark is theirs, not mine.

I think the target audience is people considerably younger than I am. For the 25 tips include hula hooping and playing with a Frisbee. You won't catch me out in the park flinging a Frisbee about. The young people in my family find me embarrassing enough without throwing a plastic disc at me and watching it fly past my head as I flap my hands and try to catch it. I briefly considered hula hooping but was afraid I wouldn't be able to find one big enough to fit round me. Difficult to hula-hoop with something resembling a snug belt.

Some of the suggestions sounded quite racy to an old woman like me. "Try twerking," I was advised. Young people may look sexy as they twerk. I look like I’m at the local fair with a ferret down my trousers.

Strip aerobics was another one. The idea is to learn moves similar to a striptease and get fit while doing it but not, praise be, strip completely in class. Well, that's a relief - and a bigger relief, I'm sure, to my potential classmates. I discounted pole dancing and belly dancing for similar reasons.

There was one suggestion that proudly proclaimed "age no bar!" (again, their exclamation mark, not mine). It's something called Bokwa which, I was told, is popular with the singer Robbie Williams. It requires using your feet to draw letters or numbers while doing "cardio to music". I can think of a few words I could draw but probably not suitable to repeat them here.

I’m in two minds about whether to “say hello to cycle karaoke". The concept is that singing is an indicator of your heart rate and the aim, as far as I could ascertain, is to sound like you’re on 60-a-day and have just run a marathon. If you don’t, you are not working hard enough.

Bizarrely, it suggests you do this in the gym so if you find yourself next to a seemingly mad woman on a static bike belting out hits from the musicals, it'll be me trying keeping fit. No need to call the men in white coats.

On second thoughts, I think I might revert to my original idea and just try to eat healthily and move more. I have bought a state-of-the-art blender for all the veggies.

The better half told the pub the other night: "She's on a diet and she's lost 100 pounds." Everyone looked suitably impressed until he added: "That's what she spent on some kitchen gadget for her vegetables.”

He'd better watch out or bits of him will be in it.

Look at this: