Nearly two thirds (63%) of adults in the UK are overweight or living with obesity. Gaining weight is often a gradual process that takes place over a number of years and modern life doesn’t always make it easy. This extra weight causes pressure to build up around vital organs, making it harder for the body to fight against diseases like cancer, heart disease and now COVID-19.The brand-new Better Health webpage is available at nhs.uk/BetterHealth. It provides tools to help people manage their weight loss – from checking their BMI, to getting access to free support tools including the NHS 12-week weight loss plan. The NHS 12-week weight loss plan, available via a new app, promotes evidence based safe and sustainable weight loss. It helps users to make healthier choices, by providing the most up to date evidence based healthy eating and physical activity advice in a magazine format that enables them to keep track of their calorie intake, portions of fruit and veg, physical activity level and teaches skills to prevent weight gain.
- If you’re trying to lose weight: for a man aim for a maximum of 400 calories at breakfast and 600 for lunch and dinner (plus drinks and a couple of healthy veg and fruit-based snacks in-between). For women this is around 300 calories at breakfast and 400 at lunch and dinner.
- Try to aim for around 1,400kcals a day if you’re a woman and around 1,900kcals if you’re a man.
- Snack less – no more than twice a day – and go for veg based ones. If you’re having packaged snacksgo for those with around 100kcals and stick to two a day max.
- Check the ‘traffic light’ labels and go for foods and drinks with more greens and ambers and less reds.
- When it comes to fruit and veg; the more the better! Get your 5 A Day. They’re low in calories.
- When it comes to exercise, some is good, but more is better – the more time active you are, the greater the health benefits. Remember every minute counts!
- It is never too late to get active to improve your health, so start small and build up starting from 10 minutes of brisk walking a day
