Life choices

The choices we make about how we live can have a significant effect on our health. Eating a healthy diet, doing regular exercise, not smoking and not drinking too much alcohol can help you stay well and enjoy a long life.

You're never too young or too old to switch to a healthier lifestyle. Children who learn healthy habits at a young age will benefit from them throughout their life. And giving up bad habits can improve your health at any age.

Read on for some simple ideas to help you and your family get into the habit of healthy living. Visit the Live Well section for more detailed advice.

Get active, feel fitter, live longer

Whatever your age, there's strong scientific evidence that being physically active can help you lead a healthier and even happier life.

Adults should do at least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate-intensity aerobic activity each week. Young people (5-18) should do 60 minutes every day.

If you do this, it can reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke by up to 50% and lower your risk of early death by up to 30%.

Visit the section on Fitness or try the following ideas:

• Ten-minute workouts. Choosing to take the stairs rather than a lift can help you burn calories as well as toning up your legs and bum.
• Walk 10,000 steps a day. It’s easier than you think and can help you burn excess calories.
• Get active with your kids.

Enjoy eating well

We need food to live, but to live well we need to eat well. For example, on average, people who eat five portions of fruit and vegetables every day live 14 years longer than people who eat less than that.

Eating a healthy diet can reduce the risk of getting many major diseases, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

This website has lots of information to help you eat the right things. See the sections on Good food and Lose weight, or the following pages:

• Healthy food swaps that could help you eat 500 fewer calories every day.
• Facts about fat and tips for reducing the amount of fat you eat.
• Say no to salt: eating less salt could reduce your blood pressure.
• The interactive 5 A DAY meal planner makes healthy eating simple.

Stop smoking for good

Giving up smoking is probably the best thing you can do to improve your health. Research shows that smoking is responsible for almost one in five of all deaths in the UK. This means that smoking causes an estimated 110,000 deaths a year.

Smokers are almost twice as likely to have a heart attack as people who have never smoked. Smoking also increases your risk of developing many cancers and lung diseases.

You could breathe better, feel better and live longer by following the advice in the Smoking section, or go to the following pages:

• Find out the best way to quit smoking.
• Use the smoking calculator to see how much money you could save by quitting.
• Learn how smoking could ruin your looks.
• Discover how quitting smoking can make your life better, including less stress and more energy.

Rethink your drinking

Drinking too much alcohol could increase your risk of getting 14 major diseases, including mouth and throat cancers, liver cirrhosis, strokes and mental health problems. Alcohol is believed to be responsible for as many as 22,000 premature deaths in England and Wales every year. But it’s not just binge drinkers who are at risk: regularly drinking more than the recommended limit can cause significant health problems.

Check if you’re drinking too much and find out the facts about drinking and health in the Alcohol section, or use these links:

• The health risks of social drinking.
• Binge drinking and the effects of alcohol on your mind and body.
• Alcohol units explained and the damage too much alcohol can do to you, inside and out.