The New Fountain of Youth- AstroFit by Dylan Paul

Thursday August 23rd 2007:
Today at a meeting of the Trenton Rotary Club, an interesting guest speaker came to the podium.
Sam Bayer, in his late 80's, came up to the podium to talk about a program, supposedly reversing the aging process, called astrofit. This new type of thinking was originally developed for the astronauts to be used to stop "accelerated aging" in space. The idea is this: When in space, aging accelerates, causing bone density loss, crippling muscular defects and even a loss of balance, as a side effect of prolonged weightlessness. To counteract this aging process, astronauts must utilize both a healthy eating style and a balanced amount of excercise so as not to exert too much stress on their bodies.
To this writers understanding, as the speaker spoke mostly in parables and forceful words telling us to, "get up and do!" The Astro-fit program can be applied to earthlings as well as spacelings because of our sedentary lifestyles that we lead, in front of our televisions and at our desk jobs on the 20th floor offices. Most of our lives are spent sitting. Not to say that excesive excersize is any better for you but the idea is that not using your muscles makes them break down.
The author of the book on Astrofit is Dr. William J. Evans of the NASA space program. His idea is to raise and lower weights slowly to build and retain more muscle. Since many people can burn fat through excersize, they think that losing fat is all they need but in truth, it was said today that 1 pound of muscle can burn up to 500 calories whereas 1 pound of fat can only burn 100.
In the crowded room of upstanding Rotarians, I heard many of them laugh and almost scoff at the fact that they were being told that they were not fit enough. One Rotarian in the corner even had another Rotarian sign something in the middle of this man's speach but as I looked at this man and realized he was grossly overweight, I figured he probably hasn't listened to any physical therapists in the last 20 years.
The speaker talked about his program like this: many people say, "I'm going to do this" or "I'm going to do that" he said it is time we get up off our couches and start doing.
To learn more about the Astrofit program, please visit http://www.enotalone.com/article/5706.html for details. The Trenton Rotary can be reached by going to http://www.trentonrotary.org/. Guest speakers are always needed and contact information is provided on their cite under the contact us button.