Look At Your Diet: assess how much and what you eat and drink, and make healthier, sustainable changes.
Improve Activity Levels: try to move and do more, considering your mobility and ability.
Know You Better: learn more about yourself by evaluating who you are and why you do the things you do.
Seek Support: avoid doing it alone. Partner with someone significant in your life.
Find Professional Help: get professional support that fits your needs.
Focus on Health, Not Just Weight Loss: while weight loss can be beneficial and achievable done in a safe and right way, it shouldn’t only be the primary goal. Aim to prevent further weight gain to start. Positive changes will typically reflect in overall health improvements.
Take a look at the directory of services on the website to find a service that might fit your needs.
We would also love to hear more about your experiences and perspectives with your body weight and any attempts at trying to make a change. Please complete our survey here.
We are not completely closed systems, however, most of the fuel we don’t use, consumed as food and drink gets stored. The easiest fuel for our bodies to store is fat. We can look to the scientific theory of energy balance to gain an estimated picture of this relationship. Energy balance is the idea of looking at the difference between what we take in (the food and drink we consume) and what we use, in terms of energy or fuel. We can picture it like the scales of justice. If we keep both sides of the scale the same, we are in balance. Our body weight doesn’t change. If we take in more than we use, we gain weight. This could be fat or new tissue, like muscle. Finally, if we use more energy (fuel) than we can meet through consumption, we lose body weight.
If we have better awareness of the food and drink we consume. Such as how much, what types, when and where. Self-monitoring can provide a wealth of information that you can use to make changes. Having someone else professional look at it and offer advice can be insightful and very rewarding. Keep a diary in whatever format suits you.
As stated above, doing more can help improve the balance between what we consume and the energy we use. We are always consuming fuel to create energy to drive our cells and body, when we are moving, we need more. Different types of activity help us move in different ways. Some can help improve the health of our heart and lungs, others can increase our muscle and improve the way we use energy.
Moving more not only helps you be fitter, but it can also support other health markers and improve your overall health. This needs to be done in a safe way, seeking advice and professional support, especially when trying something new is very important.
Learning about what makes us tick and the decisions we make can really help us to make lifestyle changes. Changes to improve your health that are more sustainable and most importantly work for you. Seek support so that you can tailor changes that fit your lifestyle, that work around you. When we do this, we are much more likely to stick with them and create new healthier habits.
We eat and drink for lots of different reasons, we can try to uncover what these reasons are and maybe change how they influence us. Usually, what is around us doesn’t change, but we can have the power to change how we react to them. The first step is awareness. We can also use behaviour change techniques like being more assertive, self-efficient or mindful or even deeper explorations of how we think and perceive.
