Change 4 Life Essay

Change 4 Life is a scheme which aims to help everyone, but especially children, to eat well, exercise and therefore hopefully live longer. One of the main principles is to reduce the amount of obesity in the UK. It is a fact that people today are a lot less active than they should be and rather than exercising, people are opting to use their free time watching television and playing the latest computer games. This is proven as only 37% of men and 25% of women in the UK currently achieve the levels of physical activity recommended by the Department of Health. Not only has our daily exercise fallen but how we eat and the type of food we eat has also declined. People are now choosing the easy and more ‘convenient’ option of fast food. Change 4 Life are trying their best to react to peoples new ‘modern day life’, by encouraging people to exercise more frequently and reduce the fat intake in their diet. Physical activity helps to reduce the amount of fat stored in the body and this in turn reduces the risk of contracting life threatening illnesses such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Change 4 Life promotes the idea of many different activities, ranging from walking and running to skipping and jumping. They believe that any exercise is better than none. They realise that it is important to have a healthy balanced lifestyle, which should consist of the following, nutritious diet, social life, rest/sleep, free time, physical exercise and control of stress and pressure. Change 4 Life hope to do what their name suggests. Up and About† is the slogan for children with the idea of encouraging them to be active whenever possible. On their website they give suggestions of how this can be done. Many are just simple ideas such as rather than driving to school, walk instead. This not only helps the children but the environment at the same time. They also give tips such as having a disco in the lounge, skipping, hide and seek and dancing. They have also tried to introduce a ‘2 hour maximum TV time’, meaning kids have to try new things out. This would then hopefully encourage children to be more active. On the website they have even created indoor and outdoor games, which can be played by everyone, e. g. the lamp post game that involves racing between each set of lamp posts on the way to school or the shops. Not only does exercise keep you fit and healthy it can help your sleeping pattern, relieve stress so that you feel more relaxed. This is why Change 4 Life recommends that as a family you should try to do sixty minutes of ctivities per day. They say that â€Å"active kids are happy kids†. They also say that it is important to have a well balanced and nutritious diet incorporating at least 5 fruit and vegetables a day. The scheme has loads of suggestions on which items actually count as one of your 5 fruits and veg such as smoothies and frozen and canned vegetables. They also give tips on how to compare food labels so that you become aware what the food contains e. g calories, sugar, salt etc. The way people cook/prepare the food is also essential, as this can increase the amount of fat in someone’s body, especially if it’s cooked in a lot of oil. There are many examples that Change 4 Life give to families to help them, sugar swaps being one of them, so rather than having food and drink with added sugar, they should swap for versions that are either sugar free or have very little sugar. Lastly they have loads of fun family activities such as Swim4Life, Bike4Life, Play4Life and Walk4Life, which are lots of fun and get the whole family involved in an active lifestyle.