Healthy living tips
It may not be easy at first, but leading a healthy lifestyle really can make a big difference to how you feel now and in the future. It will reduce your chance of a whole range of health problems, including cancer and heart disease, and can help control problems if you already have them, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
Healthy weight
Try to maintain a weight that's healthy for your height. Maintaining a healthy weight means you need to balance the energy you consume in food and drink with the energy you use in activity. If you take in more than you use, the excess calories are stored as fat and you gain weight. To get the balance right, stick to a healthy diet and make sure you get plenty of exercise.
To establish whether you are a healthy weight, why not try the interactive BMI calculator.
Another way to check if you’re a healthy weight is to measure around your waist. This will help ascertain if you are carrying excess fat around your middle.
To give you a guide, waist circumference measurements should be:
• Below 94 cm / 37 inches for white and black men
• Below 90 cm / 35 inches for Asian men
Healthy eating
A healthy diet is one that is varied, containing all the nutrients you need as well as the right amount of energy for your level of activity.
Most of your energy should come from carbohydrates. These include bread, potatoes, cereals, rice and pasta. For a bit of variety you could try yam or sweet potato instead of normal garden potatoes, and experiment with other grains like couscous. Always opt for wholegrain varieties when you can because these contain more fibre and nutrients. Eating wholegrain foods just four times each week can reduce your risk of cancer by 40%69 – you'll soon get used to brown rice and wholemeal pasta.
Eat at least five (ideally more) servings of fruit and vegetables every day. They are packed with essential vitamins as well as fibre to keep your gut healthy. Be as colourful as you dare, trying red cabbage one day and spring greens the next. The more variety, the broader the range of nutrients. Don't forget about dried and tinned fruits, and remember that frozen foods count too.
Include meat, fish and protein alternatives like lentils or chickpeas every day. Limit meat products like salami, burgers and sausages though, as they are generally high in fat and salt. Try to go for skinless poultry and white fish instead. Oily fish is important too because it contains fats that can protect against heart disease – aim for at least a portion a week (but no more than four because it is important to maintain a balanced and varied diet)70.
You need some dairy to make sure you're getting enough calcium. But don’t overdo and opt for low-fat varieties when you can.
High-sugar and high-fat foods like cakes, crisps, chips and chocolate should be an occasional treat. They contribute calories without providing any nourishment, and can make you put on weight.
Keep an eye on your salt intake. You ought to eat no more than 6g a day. It's hidden in all sorts of unexpected places so always check the nutrition information on the packaging. It may be listed as sodium – to calculate salt from this, you need to multiply by 2.5. So what may look like a little salt could actually be a large proportion of your daily limit. A high salt level is more than 1.5g (0.6g sodium) per 100g of food.
Exercise
Being physically active is linked with a whole range of health benefits, from reducing the risk of heart disease to preventing osteoporosis. It'll also help you stay strong, mobile and independent as you get older.
Try to do at least half an hour of exercise, five days a week. If this sounds daunting, bear in mind that you need only do moderate activity; you don't need to slog it out at the gym. Moderate means anything that warms you up and gets you slightly breathless. For you this might be a brisk walk or some gardening. And you don't need to do it all in one long stretch - it's just as beneficial if you do three 10-minute sessions, just as long as you do it often enough.
However, if you're overweight you'll need to do more than half an hour to lose the excess weight – 60-90 minutes is ideal71. Still, this needn't be vigorous squash games – moderate is fine.
The key to maintaining adequate levels of activity is finding something you enjoy. Cycling, walking with friends, a bit of ballroom dancing, kicking a ball about with your family, striding round a golf course or digging up potatoes - it doesn't matter what you do, as long as it keeps you moving!
Smoking and alcohol
Smoking
We all know that smoking kills. It’s linked to almost every life-threatening condition going, from cancer to heart disease. But did you know it’s also linked to a whole range of less life-threatening but pretty unpleasant conditions, like Erectile dysfunction (impotence)72 , depression73 and gum disease?74
Quitting smoking is the single best thing you can do for health. Even cutting down is a good start75.
Alcohol
Too much alcohol is not much better than smoking. It’s linked with cancer of the mouth, throat, liver and breast cancer (men can get breast cancer too)76. It can also contribute to high blood pressure, depression and liver disease.
Moderate amounts of booze are OK though, and may actually reduce your risk of heart disease77. Stick to no more than a couple of pints (4 units) in a day, and have a day or two off drinking each week. You shouldn’t be drinking more than 21 units in any week. To work out how many units are in your drink, multiply the amount in ml by the alcohol by volume (ABV) strength and divide by 1000. So one pint of 5% lager is 568 x 5 / 1000 ie 2.8 units. A glass of wine might be 175 x 13 / 1000 ie 2.3 units.