Kickstarting a Healthier New Year

Stepping out of one year and into a new can be a daunting prospect for some, with the pressure to create New Year’s Resolutions and start the new year “right” at the forefront of everybody’s minds. In what are some of the most uncertain times, taking the steps to do this can be a challenge for everyone.

Setting achievable and realistic goals is vital to creating the foundations for good health and wellbeing and finding the support to do so can help you and others to be empowered to take ownership of your health.

We’ve found some examples of ways to kickstart a healthy 2022, from short-term challenges which could help to change usual patterns, to regular practices which can be implemented into people’s daily lives.

5 Minute Kitchen Workout

The 5 Minute Kitchen Workout, designed by GP, Dr Rangan Chatterjee,  to easily introduce movement and strength training into their daily lives. With no equipment or gym membership required, the Kitchen Workout is accessible and can be lightly tailored to suit individuals’ needs.

Dry January

After the boozy festive period, setting the challenge of drinking no alcohol throughout January can encourage a long-term change in your relationship with alcohol and has numerous health benefits such as reduced cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and reduced diabetes risk (BMJ, 2018). Alcohol Change UK has developed a toolkit to support yourself or others through the challenge.

Veganuary

Reducing high meat intake has been proven to support good health and limit the risk of common conditions such as high cholesterol. Whilst changing our behaviours and patterns is difficult, engaging in a short-term challenge such as Veganuary can help to support attitude change and introduce people to new recipes and ways of cooking, as well as promote low carbon and sustainable food practices.

Help Me Quit –Smoking Cessation

As we round the corner into the third year of the COVID-19 Pandemic, respiratory health has never been more important. Aside from the numerous physical benefits to quitting smoking, the financial, social and mental benefits can be good incentives to making the decision to ditch the cigarettes. Help Me Quit is an NHS Wales organisation and provides resources and services to support people to quit, as well as support for those who work with potential quitters.

Supporting others to make a healthy difference

We know that taking on a new health challenge or setting goals to support health and wellbeing can be tricky, and supporting others to do so is, arguably, even trickier. Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine  is a suite of digital resources, tools and eLearning that enables practitioners to empower patients through prescriptions focused on lifestyle interventions. Focusing on biological systems rather than symptoms, Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine offers practitioners a new set of immediately implementable, safe tools which will increase job satisfaction and deliver better patient outcomes. Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine introduces a unique, easy to use framework that is applicable to practitioners within a standard clinical appointment system. If you would like any more information on Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine and would like to explore this further, please contact Rhys Jones  at rhys@dymani.cymru

While the New Year offers a fresh opportunity for setting healthier goals, it’s never too late in the year to start. As the old proverb goes, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now”.

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