Ashimolowo

Matthew Ashimolowo the senior pastor of Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC) turned 70 on 17 March. He was born the same day in 1952 in Ode Omu, Osun State.
He originated the Winning Ways programme which is aired daily on Premier Radio (London) and Spirit FM (Amsterdam) and on television in Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, FaithAfrica (DSTV 341), and the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) and Europe on The God Channel and Inspirational Network.
At age 20, Ashimolowo, born a Muslim, converted to Christianity after his father’s death. He later enrolled with a Bible school.

At over 70, he explained the secrets of his fitness in a video which, though recorded on 28 May, is again being shared by his church members.

His words: “Are you ready to do what I want to say? I stopped eating rice 24 years ago.
I stopped drinking coca-cola 23 years ago. I stopped eating amala made of yam 23 years ago. I stopped eating eba 24 years ago. I got to the point when I realised that food eaten by Africans was designed by farmers. And those farmers, when they woke up, would eat eko or pounded yam in the morning. They had this proverb: “Iyan lounje, oka loogun, airi rara laa je’ko, kenu ma dile no to gugugru.” That is, pounded yam is the king of food; you force yourself to eat yam flour the way you swallow pills; pap is consumed for lack of any food and you consume popcorn to keep the mouth busy. When they went to the farm, they burnt it.

Here, we stay in an air-conditioned church. You leave here to enter your air-conditioned car. You enter an air-conditioned restaurant. Your house is fully air-conditioned. In my house in Lekki, there are four ACs in my room. Even in the middle of the night, I have to put one-off.
You now find out our mobility is limited. It became obvious that if I want to live long, I have to do some things.

For our men who are here, do not forget this fact. You will never see a fat old man. Have you ever seen a man who is 90 and big? So, after avoiding all those things, I found out that it was not enough. The culture our eating is not also the best. Anything you eat after 6 pm never digests. Since you cannot burn it, your body stores the food in different parts of the body- the big tummy and others.
Another thing is that when you reach 50 plus, cow meat is not good for you. But in Nigeria, how can you eat without meat? People always ask! What is there to eat? We are not doing badly. Go to Southern Africa. One man came from Botswana for a conference in Nigeria. He ordered rice. They just put two pieces of meat on top. He asked, where are the pieces of meat? Where he came from, you don’t see the rice, you see the meat (spread on top). Heart disease in Southern Africa is a big issue.
If you want to have a good heart, and a good kidney, you have to cut down your meat, sugar and salt.
By the time you are 60, you should be able to cut down on your sugar and salt. “How will it last in my mouth? A taste naa ni (it will have a taste!). You acquired the taste.
I flew in first class on Monday. The lady serving asked whether I wanted tea, I said yes, but no sugar, no milk. Even the honey sold nowadays, the sellers put sugar! Some of the products you buy, they would not write sugar, but energy. Anything you see and they write energy, it is sugar.
Let me take you through five or six things that I do.
Number one cut down the time you eat. I no longer eat after 6 pm. When I got home last night, I did not eat. I took grape for its natural sugar and peanuts. One of the reasons I don’t take coca-cola is that there are 26 spoons of sugar inside.
Number two cut down the size. You won’t die.
Let me give you a third shocker. I eat only once per day. I am not a great food person; maybe that also helps.
Number four. I have a gym in my house; I do four hours. I can do two hours straight on my treadmill. Walk my estate for one hour and come back to do one hour on the treadmill. Last year I lost the size of a four-year-old child from my body. I feel lighter; I feel better.
Why I went that hard was that I went for a check-up and the doctor said if I did not cut down on my sugar and salt and lose weight, they might start giving me high blood pressure medication. I said, me? When they said I should lose weight and I was getting near it, people, the media too said Pastor Matthew Asimolowo “is sick.”

Watch the video here: