Top 10 New Years resolution lifestyle tips

Working out with friends, exercising in short bursts and binning faddy supplements are some of the ways people can keep fit and help prevent chronic disease in the New Year.

As 2016 approaches many people are seeking to find new ways to improve their health, which is why a national centre of excellence in diet, lifestyle and physical activity, the NIHR Leicester-Loughborough Diet, Lifestyle and Physical Activity Biomedical Research Unit (BRU), has issued a Top 10 New Year’s lifestyle resolutions list.

The Top 10 tips for a healthy year are:

1. If you’re exercising to lose weight, try exercising in the morning before breakfast. Keep the activity light and easy and this will help you to burn fat.
2. If aiming to reduce fat mass, you should be able to run/cycle with your mouth closed for 30 to 60 minutes only breathing through your nose – this will help ensure that the intensity is low enough to stimulate fat burning.
3. Break up inactive office days by regularly standing up or walking for five minutes at a time, which significantly reduces blood sugar and insulin levels.
4. If the gym is close to you, instead of getting in the car, try walking, running or cycling there and back - think of it as your warm up and cool down.
5. Arrange to do exercise with friends, having someone to exercise with will help you to get out of the door on those days when you’d rather stay on the sofa.
6. Sign up to some exercise classes as they will really help your motivation, and the variable intensity that many classes have will help you to get fit faster.
7. Don’t do all of your training at one speed for the same time. Mix things up with intervals, go for shorter or longer bouts of exercise and vary the intensity accordingly.  
8. If using weights and resistance exercise, remember to target all of the major muscle groups each time you train.
9. When weight lifting remember less weight should equal more reps, or more weight should mean fewer reps. This will promote endurance and power development without too much gain in muscle mass.

10.  Eat a balanced diet, you should have no need to take supplements if you consume a healthy balanced diet. Spending money on fad supplements will be money primarily wasted.

Professor Melanie Davies, Director of the Leicester-Loughborough Diet, Lifestyle and Physical Activity BRU, said: “We believe taking regular exercise, eating a well-balanced diet and taking care of your general well-being can definitely help prevent you from developing chronic illnesses such as diabetes.

“For people who are already suffering with a condition, maintaining good health will certainly help, which is why we have put together some suggestions for people to try in the New Year.”

The role of the BRU is to enable some of the country’s best health researchers and clinicians to work together to develop new treatments for the benefit of patients.