How old are you really?

Know your fitness age and consider utilising these tips to reverse it in style

- Nitin S

What if I told you that you could be 35 on paper but 50 on the inside or, better yet, 60 but living with the energy of someone half your age? That's the quirky, slightly humbling world of fitness age. It's not about birthdays or wrinkles. It's about how your body is holding up behind the scenes.

The idea was first tested in Jebsen Centre of Exercise in Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where researchers asked thousands of people to run on treadmills, measured their heart rates, checked their oxygen capacity, and basically figured out how 'young' or 'old' their bodies were behaving. From this, the concept of fitness age was born. Soon, a fitness calculator was developed, and suddenly people everywhere could plug in a few numbers and find out if their bodies were younger or sneakily older than their actual age. Sounds fun, right? Until, of course, you realize your watch thinks you're ten years older than you are.

Age your body thinks you are

Fitness age is like a friendly truth-teller. It reflects not just how fit you look in the mirror but how your heart, lungs, and muscles are actually performing. A younger fitness age usually means lower risk of things like heart disease or diabetes. An older one might be your body waving a little red flag, telling you to move more, eat better, or take stress seriously.