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Charles Darwin wrote the book that coined the term "Survival of the fittest". This phrase has been used in a great range of applications that has nothing to do with Darwin's original use of the concept. Therefore one perhaps has to ask "Fit for what?" before attempting to lay down 10 best ways to stay fit.

Today "fit" is equated with "thin" and many fitness articles are actually about diet and weight loss. While this is one way in which to express fitness, the original meaning of fitness pertains to physical fitness. A thin person who can not manage to run for a mile is not regarded as fit. Thin, yes, even maybe healthy, but fit, no.

Physical fitness is now understood to include cardiovascular fitness (how well your heart pumps and your blood pressure responds to intense exercise), respiratory fitness (simply put, how long can you hold your breath) as well as joint fitness (suppleness and agility).

Diet influences all three of the fitness aspects: if you are overweight your heart labours to pump blood, and your lungs usually lack the capacity to hold much air for too long, while eating too many acid foods can result in gout and arthritis with swollen painful joints that are not supple at all.

In short, we have realised that "fitness" is a health issue that includes more than not starting to puff when climbing a set of stairs and therefore, 10 top ways to stay fit need to include all of those aspects.

1. Walk. It really is one of the best ways to exercise the muscles and the heart. At first you may not be able to walk very far but keep it up and soon you will think nothing of walking to the shop to get a loaf of bread, whereas before you would have taken the car.

2. Play games. You don't have to belong to an expensive golf club or go out to buy a tennis racket. All you need is to throw a ball to the dog on the lawn, or wrestle the kids, or shoot a few baskets or throw a Frisbee or something. What are Saturdays for in any case?

3. Take one minute to stretch before you shower in the morning. Stretch your arms up as far as you can, then bend down and try to touch the floor, and then twist sideways a few times. If you do twenty of each it takes just over a minute and it really helps to keep you a little more limber.

4. Breathe very deeply, hold, then release, whenever you think of it. Eastern philosophy places a lot of importance on deep breathing and if you keep in mind that oxygen is one of the most important things that are keeping you alive, you really should take

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