ADV: Do You Have A Good Heart?

According to an article I read in AsiaSpa, people are likely to do 3 things to improve their wellness: exercise, eat and visit a spa.

Unfortunately in our country, we really only do one of those three: EAT.

Even then, we tend to eat food that are high in fat and low in fibre instead of the nutritious ones that will bring benefits to our body.

On top of that, we don’t exercise. Only the richer ones among us will visit a spa – even then it’s probably the OH CHI PALA type of spa and not the clean-clean ones.

No wonder newspapers reported that heart diseases has been the number one killer in our country for the past 30 years, causing 1 out of 8 deaths in Malaysia – even more than cancer-related deaths.

Over 3 million Malaysians are at risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart diseases. If left untreated, these people are opening themselves up to strokes, heart attacks and organ failures.

But here’s the most startling part. Most people DON’T even know they are at risk of developing heart diseases.

Most people in my age group have this mentality: we think we are invincible. We are young, and so we can do whatever we want and nothing is gonna happen to us.

So we smoke, we drink, we don’t exercise, we don’t eat healthily and we don’t allocate time for exercising. By the time we reach 50 years old and the medical bills start rolling in, we regret we did not take care of ourselves when we were younger.

In fact, when I ask the 20-somethings in my fitness centre what they come here for, "looking good" is a often bigger reason than "staying healthy". That shouldn’t be the reason people exercise!

People in my fitness centre often work out to improve the appearance of their waist, their chest, their butt and their biceps. But I feel it’s even more important to improve the health of the heart.

This involves 3 steps.

The first is to take a Heart Health Test to determine what risk level your heart is at based on your current lifestyle and diet. If you have done a medical check-up lately, it is a straightforward test that can be done online at www.myhealthyheart.com.my

Otherwise, just do the test anyway and you’ll be given a discount voucher for a medical check-up at your nearest BP Healthcare.

That’ll provide a starting point for your roadmap to better heart.

Second, start exercising.

We often hear from doctors that just 30 minutes of moderate cardio activity 5 times a week is enough to prevent up to 75% of chronic diseases, including heart disease. It is such a little investment for a high ROI, and yet it is ironic that many people wouldn’t even want to spare that 30 minutes in the 24 hours they have in a day!

People, you gotta eliminate your excuses and start exercising now!

And lastly, stop smoking and start eating healthy.

Eating healthy doesn’t mean you gotta completely stop eating KFC. It just gotta be done in moderation. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so I make sure I have a bowl of Quaker Oats when I wake up, and some fruits and veg in my diet throughout the day.

All these hype about eliminating carbohydrates for weight loss is getting a bit overboard. The key is to take in good carbohydrates like hot oats, and not too much sugary carbohydrates like alcohol and sweets.

It’s that classic food pyramid that we learnt since primary school but chose to ignore.

If you can do all three, then maybe you too can have a healthy heart. Like me! 😀

This community message is brought to you by kennysia.com 🙂

25 Replies to “ADV: Do You Have A Good Heart?”

  1. Kenny, you ought to advise people against drinking alcohol as well.
    Alcohol is the No.1 poison on earth and everyone is drinking it.
    If you are really health-conscious, we should stop drinking alcohol as well to keep our liver healthy.
    And ignore those self-interested goons who tell everyone that drinking moderately is OK and healthy. It is not healthy at all, in the first place to even sip it.
    I’m a non-muslim, anyway.

  2. u know why ure saying these?coz u wanna promote yr gym, and whats more, u wanna con our money.we don’t need to pay to exercise, gym are not suppose to suck ppl’s money who wanna exercise.if u wanna exercise, it must be free!ure just another True Fitness, Celebrity Fitness, Fitness First wannabe.hw sad…cheating ppl’s money to promote health…duhh

  3. It’s funny that your readers don’t really dig your health message… biasalah, Malaysian ba… but it’s a good message dude… I myself am doing a few things to reach a better health.. cheers!!

  4. How is this funny? Where’s the normal Kenny Sia? God.. it’s like ‘watching’ an infomercials …

  5. @Mike I think its a progrssive thing. Messages like this do sink into peoples heads in the long run. You can’t just expect them to change in one, or two, or three health messages. Over time, I think it’ll become a trending topic and people will soon realise the impact of what Kenny was just saying above.

  6. you don’t have to pay to exercise, but don’t you think you have to pay to use fitness equipment and getting people to coach you how to exercise? Education is not cheap. It costs me money to train instructors to provide coaching to people who dunno how to exercise correctly. People are not born to know how to exercise naturally.
    Sure, I’d love for my gym to be free so everyone can use it, but who is going to pay for the salary, rent and equipment?
    Hey, I think housing and water should be free. Maybe I should stay in your house for free?

  7. I agree. You don’t have to pay to exercise. You don’t need a gym to exercise. You don’t exercise just for looking good, but to stay healthy.
    It can be very simple, walk more km instead of relying on motor transport; use the stairs instead of the lift. It all adds up!
    Obviously, most of you out there need to learn to live a better, healthy lifestyle.

  8. Dude,
    I feel that your blog is in the process of evolving into a health blog. Big sign of you are out of this blogger biz and into the real world money dealing biz. I wish you all the best. May those who appreciate your blog stay.

  9. One more thing to add.. Coronary(related to fatty food) heart disease is also the WORLD’s number 1 death cause!
    I’ve been doing light research on this lately 😉

  10. Hi Kenny,
    I went to Level Up with my friend cos she gave me the CNY coupon,the free promotion for a week. It was my first day & honestly I like your gym, I spent an hour there working out.
    I thought to spend a week to go there to make full use of the coupon but after that work out session, I got back and few days after I got dry nose.
    I think the aircond and the air inside there is a bit dry.Maybe an air vaporiser would help? I’m not complaining, I’m just suggesting 🙂
    I wanted to go back to the gym but I need to recover first. LOL.
    Thanks.

  11. Happy to read your blog again, and it’s educational this time~! (^_^) It has been a while. Quite sad to read some comments regarding u just wanna promote ur gym and turn this to biz blog. i’m sure u won’t be as emotional as girls, so FIGHTING~!
    p/s Miss going your gym! love ur friendly and cheerful staffs!

  12. Commercial gyms are very expensive to maintain, and that is the reason they have higher entrance and monthly fees. They have well-trained staff, exercise machines, lots of treadmills and regular classes held, and finally, logistics. But the trip to those gyms are really worth it if you go there regularly and work out consistently.
    I was a member of Celebrity Fitness, and now my membership went expired, so I had to cancel it and switched to a ghetto one instead.
    During my trips to commercial gyms, I noticed that the personal trainers are very expensive and they have problems with the scheduling. Thankfully, I had almost 18 sessions of personal training and the results were very very good. Unfortunately, my scheduling hours has becoming tighter, and can’t really follow theirs too, so I had to halt the sessions altogether.
    The funny thing is, I found the ghetto ones have more ‘contact’ than the commercial ones. The ‘contact’ means the patrons inside are much friendlier and more likely to respond positively to another patron, which I don’t see in the commercial ones. The gym owner/trainer is nice – I paid him some personal training fees, he is willing to watch after me carrying heavier weights and stuff. I would not worry too much because he had trained other bodybuilders before.
    So, my summary is, both commercial and ‘ghetto’ gyms are good and it depends on people. For a good start (and for ladies), the commercial gyms are better and friendlier. If used properly, they will better your body. 🙂

  13. Actually, I feel nothing is wrong if Kenny wants to blog about health stuff. If you guys don’t like reading health issues and still want to continue damaging your own body, then go ahead.
    But one contradiction I find is that on one hand, Kenny is advocating good health. On the other hand, Kenny advertised the Kilkenny Beer.
    Drinking beer once in a blue mooon may not pose a very serious harm but that advertisement might actually encourage your readers to drink beer.
    And it’s true that drinking too much beer will damage your liver, no matter how much exercises you do.

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