Making healthier lifestyle choices

Whether you feel fighting fit or have health problems that are difficult to manage, there are things we can all do with our lifestyle to help us be healthier.  These include: following a healthy diet; being more active; avoiding smoking; and drinking only small amounts of alcohol. If you have a medical condition, the benefits of improving your health can lead to better management of your condition, fewer complications and improved quality of life.  They can even help you live longer.

If you’re not sure how a healthy lifestyle might help, download the "Benefits of Maintaining a Healthier Lifestyle". This can be found on the right side of this page. Alternatively you could ask your doctor.

Making changes is not always easy.  It is normal for people to struggle to change or stick to changes. You might never have done some of the things before that would help you feel healthier.  The information available here, which includes downloadable leaflets/worksheets, may help you to achieve and mantain a healthier lifestyle.  This can help you to feel healthier.

Making changes can involve different steps. These are explained in the downloadable leaflet "Making Healthier Lifestyle Changes Whatever your Starting Point".  There are also lots of exercises that can help us start to think about making a change. These can also be downloaded by clicking on the links on the right.

Thinking about your values and how making changes to your lifestyle may help you fufil how you want to live your life might also help. The my values leaflet on the right might help you to do this.

For information on physical health conditions, see our A-Z or go to www.nhs.uk/Conditions and search for the illness that you would like to know more about.