Day 340 – December 6th – Change4Life

Change4Life is a public health programme that began in 2009. The campaign, organised by the Department of Health, aims to encourage people in the UK to lead healthier lifestyles. The campaign’s slogan is ‘eat well, move more, live longer‘.

The programme covers several main areas of behaviour change for children and adults. These include:

• Up and About
• 5 a Day
• Meal Time
• Snack Check
• Cut Back Fat
• Portion Swap
• Drink Swap

Being backed by major food and beverage companies, sports and health groups, as well as the British Heart Foundation, the campaign is strong and widespread and gives everybody the opportunity to become healthier, providing helpful information, recipes, hints and tips.

For more information about Change4Life, go here. To find out why you should join, click here. For a vast range of handy links and resources, you can go here. To sign up to the programme, please click here.

Day 299 – October 26th – Try New Foods

Some people get tired of making and eating the same old meals every week. My advice to combat this is to try out some new foods from time to time: find some interesting recipes and prepare some meals that you’ve never eaten before, perhaps including ingredients that you’ve never tasted before. Explore with different styles and tastes to come up with something exciting.

There are many ways to discover new recipes. You can look through old cookbooks at recrips that you may have previously just skipped over. Alternately, you can go out and buy some new cookery books that include meals that you really want to try. There’s plenty of choice out there, with books that focus at certain styles of food and/or different preparation times, which can be useful if you’re looking to produce quick, easy meals, for example. If you find books quite limiting, then you can always go online to search for recipes. Some places allow you to search by inputting up to three ingredients, while others let you search for food produced by a certain chef or containing a certain ingredient. A good place to start is the BBC Food homepage.

It’s all about producing a variety of foods to eat. It’s not just about keeping you interested in what you’re eating, though – a range of different foods also helps to keep you healthy. There are also the benefits that come with cooking your own meals, such as knowing exactly what goes in to your food. It’s a win-win situation, so why not go out there and find something new to eat?

Day 253 – September 10th – Sleep

This refers back to the general ‘Getting Fit‘ post I made a few months ago, although I thought that sleep was something that was worth going into in more detail, so I will be building upon what I wrote back then.

Sleep is important. Everybody needs sleep. It might seem like a big waste of time or just something that gets in the way, but it really isn’t. I suppose that the most important thing to note about sleep is that a lack of it can kill. Our bodies needs rest to function. It’s just one of those things that you have to deal with. However, I have some benefits of sleeping, which I thought I would share with you. They may well change your perspective or just educate you a little bit:

• Sleep helps to rest and restore your body – As well as stopping you from feeling tired or fatigued, during sleep you body can actually repair itself faster. Damage from many things, such as stress, sun exposure and infection are more easily healed while you are sleeping.
• Sleep reduces stress – Sleep lowers your blood pressure, as well as the levels of stress hormones that come as a part of a hectic fast-paced lifestyle. Sleep encourages relaxation, counteracting stress and anxiety.
• Sleep helps your heart – As well as lowering blood pressure, as mentioned above, sleep lowers cholesterol in your body. By also reducing stress and inflamation in your body, rest greatly lowers the changes of a heart attack, stroke or heart disease.
• Sleep improved your memory – Sleep allows your brain to organise memories, helping you to learn. It therefore allows you to better process new experiences and knowledge. It also improved your concentration while you are awake, meaning that you can more easily take in information in the first place.
• Sleep helps your weight – Sleep helps to regulate hormones that control your appetite. The better sleep you get at night, the less hunger cravings you get during the day, helping you to regulate your weight and lead a healthier lifestyle.

Day 208 – July 27th – Jogging

Jogging is an activity that a lot of people seem to shy away from. It involed being quite active, dragging yourself out of the house and exercising for a set amount of time, out in the open, where people can see you. I think that that is what puts a lot of people off: the prospect that passers-by can see what you’re doing. People are very self-conscious these days.

Jogging, however, is brilliant. I must admit that I only really started doing it myself back in April, but it’s something that I quickly got into and really enjoyed. It’s not really something that should be humiliating, because you go at your own pace; you decide how fast and how far you go; you decide how long you want to jog for. In fact, it’s more about having a chance to escape, albeit temporarily, from what can otherwise be a hectic, busy life. It allows you to leave home and wander off into the unknown. You choose where you go. You could choose a different route every day, if you felt like it. The choice is entirely yours.

So, what are the physical benefits of jogging? Well, I suppose that main one is that it builds up the muscles in your legs. It also allows you to better regulate your breathing, which is something that you soon learn. It allows you to be on the move for a long period of time without becoming breathless or wheezy. In those terms, it allows you to develop.

I went jogging in a small village. It was absolutely amazing to be travelling down small country lanes with nobody else around; no sound but the wind and a few nearby birds. In that sense, jogging can be very therapeutic. Admittedly, if you’re restricted to a town or city it might not be as enjoyable in that respect, but even just getting out and giving it a try makes you feel good about yourself. At least you’re taking an active role in your fitness.

Day 188 – July 7th – Brain Training

Health and fitness isn’t all about your physical body; it is also about the state of your brain and your mental capabilities. There are many ways to improve your memory and practically ‘train’ your brain to perform better. There are several good ways to achieve this:

• Brain teasers, such as puzzles, keep your brain active and working. Crosswords, wordsearches and sudoku puzzles are particularly useful.
  
• Brain Training and similar games are very good, also. They have an interactive element where you can complete puzzles and various challenges. Doing these sorts of things consistently can help you to become quicker and better at them, and you should gradually notice an improvement occuring.
• Reading is yet another excellent method of keeping your brain in shape. Reading may seem to come naturally and fluently, but it requires a lot of processes, such as recognising letters and words and associating them with meanings and context, all taking place in a split second. It is also obviously extremely enjoyable and can be a good source of knowledge.

There are likely many other ways of helping to keep your brain fit and your mind fresh, but these have just been a few examples to get you going. It is definitely worthwhile doing something to focus you and get you to think from time to time, as otherwise you can get quite slow and sloggish in your thought processes. Through training, you can be fit and active a lot more of the time.

Day 140 – May 20th – Get Outside

Now that the long Winter months seem to be officially over and Summer has arrived, it is a great opportunity to get out and about at last. During the Winter the days and cold and dark, often leading to what people call the ‘Winter blues’, where people feel down and stay inside a lot and don’t do much. Now, though, the days are long and sunny and hot.

It sounds like a pretty obvious thing to do anyway, but getting outside is actually very good for your health, also. Scientific studies have shown that being outside can reduce stress, and even improves focus. If you are in school or college and are sitting exams in the near future, then it seems to be a free and easy way of helping.

Some other benefits of getting out are:

• You are able to ‘get away from it all’, if only temporarily
• It gets you moving and exercising, or at the very least means that you are out of the house
• Sunshine gives you Vitamin D, which is essential to maintaining a healthy immune system
• It boosts energy levels, an unseen therapeutic effect

Therefore, all in all, it is both important and worthwhile to get outside, if only for a bit. Walking around a park or sitting under a tree can really help you unwind, making you more relaxed and stress-free.

Day 101 – April 11th – One Hundred Push-Ups

‘One Hundred Push-Ups‘ is a training program that helps to improve your fitness and increase your strength, especially in the upper body.

It acts as a challenge. By commiting yourself and around 30 minutes a week, the six-week program boasts that, by the end, you will be able to do 100 push-ups.

After an initial push-up test, you are put into a category, which determines how intense the next week is going to be. Then, over the course of 3 days during that week, you do a series of ‘sets’ of push-ups, with a set amount of time between each set. At the end of the week, you do another test to determine the intensity of the following week. At the end of the sixth week, you do a final test to determine how many push-ups you can ultimately do.

I tried the program a couple of years ago, dedicating the six weeks of the summer holiday to it. I wanted to see how it worked, as well as evidently wanting to improve my strength. I admit that I did not stay consistently commited, but from what I did do of it, I can say that it definitely did help.

It is surprising how rapidly you are able to do more and more push-ups. So why not give it a try?

For more information on the program, click here.

Day 95 – April 5th – Getting Fit

There are plenty of videos out there to help you get fit and healthy. There are plenty of fitness routines and diets available help you get in shape, too.

It is said that different ways work best for different people. However, I think that it’s important to start with the small, easy things to help improve your health. These are things that pretty much everyone can do, and don’t cost the Earth, unlike a gym membership!

So, here are my hints and tips to help you get fit:

1. Eat healthily. This doesn’t just mean fruit and vegetables, but rather a balanced diet of all food groups. Of course, you should aim to eat your recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables each day. Try and eat a variety, perhaps even trying out new fruits that you’ve never eaten before!
2. Try and do a little bit of exercise each and every day. Wii Fit is a good way to keep active, but it’s better to get outside. Running, jogging and brisk walking are all extremely good for you. Just try and make sure you warm-up and warm-down in you need to.
3. A good sleeping pattern is extremely important, also. Try and work out how much sleep you should be getting each day, as it varies depending on your age. Just as important as the length of time is when you sleep, though. The usefulness of sleep is very dependant on when it occurs, so try and make sure you get to bed reasonably early, so that you are able to get up reasonably early the next morning.

These are just a few general pieces of advise to hep you live a healthier life. Further specifics may follow in future posts, so stay tuned!