In the midst of the day-to-day pressures of modern life, maintaining a healthy physique and eating right can be something of a challenge. We are all so busy, running from meeting to meeting, spending endless hours commuting to and fro and seeing friends for a quick drink at the end of it all that by the time we get home, there's barely time to shovel a microwave meal down our throats before we hit the hay for a well earned night's rest.
But eating healthily and exercising regularly is incredibly important. Of course, no-one should feel pressured to conform to specific diets or furious workout regimens, your body is your own and what you choose to do with it is your business, but if you're looking for some hints and tips on how to get ahead, then 72-year-old Cher might be able to help.
Cher, icon that she is, revealed last year that she could still plank for five minutes - she was 71 at the time. So how has she gone about achieving such commendable levels of fitness over the years? Here's how.
She apparently sticks to a mainly vegetarian diet, telling Hello! magazine, "I don't like meat and so most of things that I like are healthy for you".
She rarely drinks or smokes, and she doesn't take drugs;
"There are things I don't like that are unhealthy, like drugs and drinking, so I never got into them to begin with. I smoked cigarettes for a while and I'd have done drugs had I liked them, but they didn't agree with me. I'll only drink three of four times a year too."
She says she has learned what foods work - and which don't - for her;
"Dairy products are not good for us. I weaned myself from whole milk to nonfat milk — if I'm having milk at all. I think cheese is one of the worst things for the body. It doesn't digest well, and most cheeses are too high in fat and cholesterol."
She says she has been known to binge while on film sets too, though;
"I have had some bad binges while making movies. At the end of The Witches of Eastwick, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and I really went crazy. We'd go from one of our trailers to the other stuffing ourselves with Pepperidge Farm Cheddar Cheese Goldfish, M&Ms, Cokes and Hershey's Kisses," she wrote. "Then Michelle and I found out we could microwave sweet potatoes in four minutes, and that changed our entire lives. We lived on sweet potatoes, baked potatoes and Caesar salads."
So what does she focus on eating these days?
"I've been concentrating on eating the foods that Robert [Haas, her co-author] has stressed as being terrific: brown rice (not white rice), legumes — lentils, pinto, navy, lima and kidney beans—vegetables, pastas, fruit.
"Pastas give me a lot of energy, and so do fruits like bananas, papaya and nectarines, because they have a lot of sugar but it isn't refined."
She also told E! News back in 2010 that she had been learning to surf, which is extremely impressive;
"When I was young I was a tomboy. I played sports ... And I'm learning to surf right now. I like that kind of stuff, thank God."
So often does she hit the gym?
"I exercise about five times a week because it's something I've always done and I just enjoy it," she told Hello!
Cher - whatever you're doing, it's working. 72 never looked so good!