Want to make a change in your life but don’t know where to start? Lifestyle changes mean making personal and conscious decisions to take actions that should help decrease your risk of injury or disease and overall improve your quality of life. But it can be difficult to know where to start.
But the most important step is the first one, beginning to make small changes that can make a huge difference to your life.
Here at The Fire Fighters Charity, we believe in a whole-person approach, looking at all factors that may be affecting your overall sense of happiness or wellbeing. That’s why we also look at lifestyle management as part of the whole picture of your recovery.
Lifestyle management
Promoting good health in all aspects. This is the secret to lifestyle management. Trust us when we say that when it comes to your health, your lifestyle choices generally seem to be much more dominant than your genes. So there’s no time like the present to adopt new habits to improve your health and wellbeing.
We can help you to achieve your goals, equipping you with all the tools and support you need to make real behaviour changes that will have a huge impact on your overall sense of wellbeing. We can help you find successful strategies by encouraging, motivating and assisting you within many areas of your life.
Remember, it can take time to develop new habits or change existing ones, so be patient with yourself and remember that making healthy lifestyle changes is a long-term commitment to yourself.
We can help you with many lifestyle management resources, such as maintaining a healthy body weight, tips for self care, knowing your alcohol limits, understanding the impact of smoking, eating well, getting enough exercise, improving your sleep, drinking more fluids, coping with depression, loneliness or anxiety, or helping you manage long-term health conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
Lifestyle management also forms part of our Phase IV Cardiac Rehabilitation Programme for people recovering from heart problems such as heart attack, heart failure, angioplasty or heart surgery. Find our more about our cardiac programme here.
Wellbeing library
We have a large library of health and wellbeing resources on our website that you might like to browse, covering all aspects of mental health, physical health, social wellbeing, retirement and family life. We also regularly send out wellbeing resources to our beneficiaries, so if you’d like to join our mailing list, you can do so here.
Shout!Podcast
You may also like to listen to our health and wellbeing podcast. Every fortnight Shout!Podcast explores the health and wellbeing of the UK’s fire services community, offering a unique insight into the physical, mental and social challenges facing those who live and work around the fire service. From top tips on sleeping well, to advice on dealing with trauma, nutrition, exercise and injury prevention Shout!Podcast aims to help you live healthier and happier. Hosted by Kim Robson and produced by The Fire Fighters Charity’s extensive team of specialist exercise and psychological therapists, Shout!Podcast also offers you the chance to share your stories and ask those questions that you’ve always wanted to know the answer to. You can find out more and take part in the show here.
Recommended apps
We work in partnership with Orcha, a leading health app evaluation and advisory organisation, to provide our beneficiaries with access to a library of reviewed and evaluated health and wellbeing apps. You can access the Orcha library through the following link, where you can also find more information about how Orcha reviews and evaluates health apps.
Workshops
For those beneficiaries joining us at one of our centres, you will be invited to attend our workshops designed to look at your whole sense of health and wellbeing. We hold talks and seminars on a broad range of topics such as diabetes, obesity, pain management, sleep, fitness and weight loss, heart disease, nutrition, injury prevention and the psychological benefits of physical activity. We also invite you to join us to try some activities you may never have encountered before, such as yoga, Tai Chi and guided relaxations.