In this week’s blog Abi Begho discusses her Walk to Work  Week challenge.

Last week was Walk to Work Week and I got involved by walking part of my journey to and from work all last week. This was a great opportunity to get some much-needed exercise and I was amazed at just how much I was able to achieve by making some very simple changes to my journey to work.

I started off on Monday 11^th May. I was heading to central London and decided to substitute the 7 minute tram journey from Addiscombe to East Croydon train station with a lovely early morning walk.  This was a great way to start the morning, it took about 25 minutes and along the way I had the opportunity to see my neighbourhood in a whole new light; the lovely houses, the cute kids heading to nursery and the shopkeepers getting ready for a day of trading.  When I got to East Croydon Station a quick glance at my pedometer completely shocked me, I had racked up 3,977 steps! Whey hey!

During the rest of the day I made a conscious effort to walk as much as I could so I walked to meetings, took a walk at lunch time, walked up stairs and walked some of my journey back home. At the end of the day a final glance at my pedometer informed me I had walked 12,087 steps! I was  very pleased as the recommended number of steps we should take a day is 10,000.

The rest of the week was much the same although some days were not so good. I peaked at 15,173 steps on 12^th May due to a trip to Birmingham that saw me doing a lot of walking as I opted to walk between train stations and skip the taxis and walk to and from my meeting. My low point was a terrible 3, 268  steps on the last day of Walk to Work Week. On this day I was working close to home and because I was carrying my heavy laptop I jumped on the tram, but I did walk up 5 flights of stairs!

I really enjoyed my little Walk to Work Week experiment and I’ve decided to introduce more walking into my commute to work. I’ll be skipping the tram and walking to East Croydon station from now on. I’m going to force myself to do 10,000 steps a day.

Wednesday was our last session of AfroFit for the season. We had a great six sessions and now it’s off to evaluate it and see how we can make it bigger and better for, hopefully, the summer season.

Wednesday’s session was great fun and our instructor Eunice focused mainly on muscle toning. After  our warm-up Eunice brought out some resistance bands which we made use of for a series of strength training exercises. Resistance bands are not something that I have used before when exercising and it was a great addition to the workout. This very simple piece of equipment was very versatile and allowed us to perform a variety of exercises that worked our entire body. They are in effect a simple and cheap way to strength train without going to the gym or using weights

Our series of exercises included band squats, band lunges, leg lifts, biceps curls and much much more. This was a painful yet effective workout.

After the core part of the workout we cooled down and then went on to my favourite part, relaxation. Lovely!

We’ll be back with AfroFit later in the year and would like to say a big thank you to everyone who attended and a very big thank you to Eunice Adu-Appiah for leading a great set of sessions.

See you next time!

On Wednesday we were back at Christ Church Methodist for another fun AfroFit session. We might have been low on numbers but we were high on energy and motivation being joined by a lovely 15 year old who kept us on our toes!

We started the session once again with a African style warm up and then moved on to circuits where we had to take part in a selection of intense exercises for 30 seconds each. These included lunges, squats, ab wheel rolls outs (double ouch!), plank, push ups and skipping. After doing two rounds of these we were well and truly tired and were so glad to move on to our cool down and relaxation – whoopee!

This was another great session by Eunice, our instructor, who is so upbeat and  really keeps us motivated.

We’ll be back next Wednesday at 7pm. Please do join us. We’d love to see you. For more information and to book a place please email us

On Wednesday, we were back at Christ Church Methodist for another fun session of AfroFit. AfroFit is led by Eunice Adu-Appiah a health promotion professional with ten years of nursing experience. Eunice is extremely knowledgeable with years of experience in fitness training having been an athlete herself (sprinter) in university. She’s absolutely fantastic, explains everything and is really friendly and approachable.

Wednesday’s class was really fun with a slight variation to the previous week’s session. After our funky warm-up and stretch we did a selection of circuit training exercises to improve our mobility and strength. These exercises included plank, lunges across the room, spider lunges across the room and ab wheel roll outs. Once complete it was on to floor work and then our favourite part, cool down and relaxation – yay!

This was another great class by Eunice. The circuit training made it very challenging but with the great music and Eunice’s passion we were motivated to keep going.

We’ll be back at Christ Church Methodist next Wed at 7pm. Please do join us in our drive to get our community fit and healthy.

For more information and directions click here.

Last night was the second session of our new aerobics class, AfroFit, which aims to give attendees a great workout whilst having a whole lot of fun.  The class is inspired by the Afro beats movement and thus the workout is choreographed to toe tapping Afro beats music.  It’s not all about fun though as there is some pain involved, but like our instructor says “no pain, no gain!”

AfroFit is led by Eunice Adu-Appiah a health promotion professional with ten years of nursing experience. Eunice is extremely knowledgeable with years of experience in fitness training having been an athlete herself (sprinter) in university. She’s absolutely fantastic, explains everything and has developed a really fun class that will appeal to everyone.

In last night’s session we worked every part of our body,  but it was so much fun that it really didn’t feel like a workout (well, some of it did, especially the floor work, ouch!). We started with a light warm up and then moved on to cardio which included some great African dance moves . This was followed by some floor work and then we finished with a cool down with some relaxation – ahh lovely.

This was a great session and is part of our drive to get our community fit and active. Please do join us next week at 7pm at Christ Church Methodist in Croydon. We’d love to see you.

For more information and directions click here.

On Sunday, The Lake Foundation held its first annual fundraising aerobathon, to raise funds for our cancer and fibroids information and support programmes.

This event was a 4-hour aerobics session led by the very energetic Eunice Adu-Appiah, health promotion professional and fitness instructor, and attended by a small but dedicated group of supporters.

Eunice led a fun session that worked every body part and muscle (ouch!). The group started off with a warm-up followed by a hip-shaking routine that got our heart rates up and we then moved into circuits and toning, and finished up with a lovely relaxation session.

“Sunday was fantastic! I had a great time but boy was it tiring! It was worth it though as I got a good workout and we raised money for a good cause.” – Mary

We’d like to say a big thank you to Eunice for leading the session and to everyone who took part. We raised over £300 and burnt 3,000 calories!

We get a lot of questions from women about what they can do prevent fibroids. In this week’s blog we’ll look at the effect of exercise on the development fibroids.

Fibroids are non-cancerous tumours that develop in or around a woman’s womb. They can cause a number of symptoms including pelvic (tummy) pain, infertility, heavy and/or painful periods, back pain, anaemia, constipation, frequent urination and pain during sexual intercourse.

The exact cause of fibroids is unknown but research does suggest that fibroids are caused by a combination of genetic, lifestyle and hormonal factors. Those most at risk of developing fibroids are: black women, those who are overweight, women of child bearing age (particularly women who are 25-45 years old), those with a family history of fibroids and women who haven’t given birth.

Exercise and Risk Reduction

When looking at these factors and trying to understand what preventative steps women can take, exercise seems like a logical factor to explore for two main reasons. Firstly, being overweight increases risk of developing fibroids so a woman can reduce her risk by maintaining a healthy weight through exercise. Secondly, fibroids are a hormonal condition with oestrogen and progesterone playing a role in their development. When we look at similar hormonal conditions that have been widely studied, such as breast and endometrial cancer, exercise has been shown to be beneficial in reducing risk. This is thought to be because exercise has a number of effects on our hormones which ultimately can lead to a reduction in the level of hormones circulating in our body and a  balancing of our hormones.

What Research Tells Us

A recent small study published in 2013 by Peking University in China looked into the association between physical activity and fibroids. They found that women who participated in moderately intense occupational activity (physical activity at work) had a significantly lower risk of developing fibroids.

In 2006, The National Institute of Environmental Sciences in Washington DC published the results of their research study exploring the effect of exercise on the development of fibroids. This study included 1189 women (734 black women, 455 Whites) aged 35-49. Whilst their study did have some limitations they found that women who did the most physical activity (more than 7 hours a week) were significantly less likely to develop fibroids than those who did the least amount of exercise (less than 2 hours a week). They also found that the association between exercise and fibroids was similar for both black and white women.

Finally, in 1986, the Harvard School of Public Health published their study which compared the prevalence of fibroids in former college athletes (2,622 women) to non-athletes (2,776 women). They found that the non-athletes were at a 40% greater risk of developing fibroids than their athletic counterparts.

Conclusion

Research and theory demonstrate that regular exercise is an effective way to reduce your risk of developing fibroids. By introducing as much exercise as you can into your weekly routine you can make a significant difference to your risk.

The UK’s Department of Health recommends that we do a minimum of 150 minutes of exercise per week; this is a good target to aim for.

This week’s blog is a guest post from Ishea Muhammad, the founder and editor of Black to My Roots.

Black to My Roots is an uplifting space and resource with blogs and videos on health and wellbeing, motherhood, parenting, relationships and more. In today’s blog, Ishea discusses keeping healthy and active through walking.

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Our health often suffers from us having a busy schedule and as a result the need for us to do some type of regular exercise can go out the window. In falling victim to this we have to be creative in how we can get that workout in and keep fit.

In recently having my second child and initiating my mission to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight and get fit I’ve taken it to the street…. well OK the park to walk off the excess pounds. I have seen great improvement in my energy levels and weight loss and have met other Mum’s and made a friend or two!

Whatever your circumstances so long as you are mobile, young or old you can walk your way to fitness and reap all the benefits that it brings whilst aiding your time management as you make walking a multi-tasking activity. You are in control as you choose to walk slowly or at a faster pace depending on your level of fitness, ease your way in and take it from there.

If like me you are a busy mum with young children you can have great fun with your little ones helping them to build stamina and get a daily workout whilst getting in some rare me time for yourself as they run around.

Being outdoors in beautiful surrounding takes your attention off the stresses of life and opens you up to be creative as you remember that the gift of life is awesome and you can bring into reality anything you visualize if you just believe in yourself, with God’s backing everything is possible.

On the social side of things a walk in the park can open up some great networking opportunities as you meet other parents and exchange all the parental knowledge and share what you have in common. Your children will grow their circle of little friends to hook up with every now and then too so it’s a win-win situation!

If you have a dog you can take him or her along whilst you walk with the children, I’ve witnessed a mum running with her baby in the pram whilst the dog ran alongside them, how’s that for multi-tasking!

The first step is to think of how you can increase your opportunity to walk as a regular form of exercise such as getting off a few stops before your destination when taking the bus to get that power walk in. You can leave the car at home for short trips especially whilst the weather is warm.

The benefits of walking are numerous:

Watch the video below and click the description box for references to learn more about the health benefits listed above.

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The Lake Foundation would like to thank Ishea Muhammad for her guest blog post which was first published on 26th September 2014 here. Visit Black to My Roots for more information and you can stay connected with Ishea through the social media platforms below:

Twitter: @blacktomyroots
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blacktomyroots
Instagram: http://instagram.com/blacktomyroots
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/blacktomyroots1