New campaign to help adults get fitter - News - LIVING SPORT

New campaign to help adults get fitter

One million mums say their families are eating better and being more active, and people are making positive changes to their shopping habits, thanks to Change4Life. This new data comes as the Government’s healthy living movement celebrates its first year of activity.

Change4Life is an innovative, interactive healthy living campaign. It helps families to achieve and maintain a healthier lifestyle by promoting healthy habits that encourage them to eat well, move more and live longer.

The movement is already showing good progress in changing harmful behaviours which can lead to people becoming overweight or obese:

- one million mums claim to have attempted to change their children’s behaviour as a result of Change4Life;

- latest data show that obesity prevalence in children is levelling out;

- an early analysis of people’s shopping baskets suggests that families who signed up to Change4Life are now more likely to chose low fat milks and low sugar drinks: and

- for every pound spent on the campaign, three pounds are spent by partners such as Tesco and Asda to build momentum.

In its first year, the focus of the campaign was on young families. The spotlight will now fall on adults. This follows new evidence, published today by the National Heart Forum, which predicts a near 100 per cent rise in diabetes by 2050 unless people take action now.

Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham said:

‘In response to an urgent need to tackle the alarming rise in obesity, we launched Change4Life - not just a campaign, but a movement with a mission to encourage people to eat well, move more and live longer. We have surpassed all our targets for the first year and we are beginning to see the positive impact on families as they start to adopt healthier lifestyles.

‘The beauty of the campaign is that it motivates everyone to get involved right down to local communities. For every pound we spend on the campaign, other organisations have committed to spend £3 to build momentum. This makes Change4Life a highly powerful movement.

‘Unless we build on the achievements of this first year, we will still face an obesity crisis in years to come. Today we are launching Change4Life for adults. We are going even further to support people to make the simple changes that will lead to us living healthier, longer lives.’

The next phase of the campaign urges adults to ‘Swap it Don’t Stop it’ – giving people tips on how to lose weight and feel healthy without giving up all the things they love.

There are a series of suggested ‘swaps’ – including swapping watching a favourite sport on television for taking part, increasing fibre intake by choosing brown rice over white, or simply swapping bigger plates for smaller ones to choose smaller portions of food.

The new range of television and poster adverts will air from Saturday 20 February.

One year after the movement started, an early analysis of people’s shopping baskets suggests that families who signed up to Change4Life are now more likely to choose low fat milks and low sugar drinks. The analysis compared purchases made at Tesco in September-November 2009 with the same time period in 2008.

The Change4Life movement has branched out across England with supporters at the grassroots, in the NHS, local government, commercial sector and non-government organisations. Change4Life activity is now in schools, GP surgeries, community centres and supermarkets.

A range of sub-brands including Let’s Dance with Change4Life, Bike4Life and Walk4Life have supported people to get up and about, and the campaign has also been extended to pregnant mums and families with babies with Start4Life.

To find out more about Change4Life, visit the website at www.nhs.uk/Change4life.

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