Why be active?
Being active is good for your health and wellbeing. Even if you move for one minute more than you did yesterday, it’s good for you – you just need to take that first step!
Living an active life is important for your physical and mental health. Staying active is proven to help prevent and treat diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some forms of cancer.
There are also social benefits from being active too – from meeting new friends, getting out and about, to improvements in self-esteem and confidence.
Watch the video below to learn about the effects of physical activity intensity on your health
Benefits of physical activity when stopping smoking
Physical activity can help you stay smoke-free. The benefits to physical, mental and financial health through stopping smoking are clear but physical activity can also help you throughout a quit by reducing cravings to smoke and withdrawal symptoms, decreasing appetite, limiting weight gain and providing a distraction to smoking.
Exercise stimulates endorphins in the brain which make you happy, just as smoking stimulates dopamine to make you happy, but is a much healthier, natural way to improve mood, reduce stress and have more energy.
Support to stop smoking is free via Quit Your Way in Forth Valley. Call 01786 433293 or email fv.fvstopsmokingservice@nhs.scot leaving contact details and postcode of person wishing support.
The stop smoking service’s friendly, expert stop smoking advisors will make contact and support you to make your plan to become smoke-free providing treatment to reduce, or prevent, nicotine withdrawal symptoms, making quitting for good more likely.
Move more for successful weight loss
If you are trying to lose weight you will need to do more than the recommended 150 minutes (or 2.5 hours) of moderate intensity activities every week and make changes to your eating habits. See your recommended physical activity levels for your age in the drop down below.
One way to reach your recommended 150 minutes each week is to do 30 minutes on at least 5 days a week. If you don’t have much time, you could split up the 30 minutes into 3 blocks of 10 minute work-outs.
Once you’ve achieved 30 minutes of moderate activity on at least 5 days each week. Try to build up to 45 – 60 minutes daily to help speed up weight loss.
Visit the Forth Valley Choose to Lose page for more tips and tools to support you losing weight.
Physical Activity Guidelines
Visit NHS Inform for guidelines on keeping active.