Colour me happy
NEW ADVICE FROM THE BRITISH NUTRITION FOUNDATION WILL MAKE 2019 HEALTHIER, SAYS LISA SALMON
YOU may be thinking now is the time to make a few changes to your diet and lifestyle to kick-start a healthy 2019. However extreme diets and punishing exercise routines often fail, so the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) has come up with a far easier and more sustainable plan.
Its Try, Swap, Change weekly planner (see nutrition.org.uk) aims to help resolutions stick through 15 easy-to-follow healthy diet and lifestyle suggestions.
Each week you choose three or more of the suggestions – which involve trying something new, swapping old habits for better ones, and changing small parts of your daily routine. The idea is that, by focusing on smaller areas where you can make sustainable changes, you’ll be able to lead a healthier lifestyle long term – not just for the first few weeks of January.
The planner can be personalised to help you focus on achieving individual goals, such as reducing sugar or becoming more active, and it’s colour-coded to highlight six areas that are key to improving diet and lifestyle:
GREEN = fruit and vegetables: make sure you get your five a day.
YELLOW = wholegrains: The majority of people are below the recommended intakes for fibre.
RED = physical activity: Getting active burns calories, helps improve fitness and may help improve sleep and reduce stress.
ORANGE = helpful habits: Lifestyle changes such as eating more slowly.
BLUE = protein: To boost plant protein and include fish your diet.
PINK = lower salt, sugar and saturated fat.
The BNF explains that people can choose what’s best suited to them – so if you want to focus on upping your fruit and veg intake, start your weekly planner by choosing green suggestions, or if you fancy eating healthier proteins, begin the year by taking on the blue challenges.
Try new goals each week, to help you turn the lifestyle changes into long-term habits.
Sara Stanner, the BNF’s science director, says: “Many of us start the New Year with great ambitions to eat better and be more active, but these resolutions may falter after just a few weeks or months.
“Finding behaviours that work for you is key to making sure that short-term changes become long-term habits and part of the daily routine. However, many people find it difficult to know where to start – let alone how to keep up the good health initiatives long-term.
“The Try, Swap, Change planner has been developed by BNF nutrition scientists to provide a practical guide to help people put their New Year’s resolutions into action, but also to provide an extra motivator for keeping things going longer-term.
“It’s a great feeling at the end of each day to tick off completed challenges and, in turn, the goals you’ve started to achieve.”
Why not try some of the following suggestions?