Are you confused about the best diet for you? Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information available and the apparent conflicting nature of the research?
This is certainly the case for many of us and can lead to us ‘giving up’ and often blaming ourselves for not eating better!
Lifestyle First provides evidence based information that considers our evolutionary history on this planet to give you the basic principles you need to eat your way to better health. Learning about these key principles gives you the freedom to use your own cultural, moral and taste preferences to eat the way that suits you at this present time.
Exciting microbiome science, circadian rhythm, autophogy, metabolic health and more is explored through the programme leaving people feeling inspired and empowered to eat in a way that leads to optimal health and performance. This is combined with simple practical strategies that help these changes to become sustainable.
Click here to get a sample of some resources and some suggested reading. – leads to a page with resources or better to have the resources underneath? Would be a selection of books/ podcasts and Lifestyle First resources
Are the rates of mental health conditions increasing in your school? Are you starting to feel overwhelmed and at a loss as to how to manage or reverse this trend?
Many schools are experiencing these issues across the country and it is making it very difficult for teachers to focus on delivering outstanding teaching and learning. Staff are also showing increasing signs of burnout and drop out from teaching partly due to the difficult conditions but also due to their own mental health issues.
Working to improve mental wellbeing is a central part of the Lifestyle First programme. Building awareness of the way humans are adapted to cope with stress and highlighting how our modern environments are problematic not our biology is a game changer! Once people get this they approach their mental health condition in a completely different light.
Mental and physical health are both just physiology and we cannot separate them into different root causes anymore! Metabolic dysfunction and inflammation (neuroinflammation) are an underlying factor in 90% of our chronic health conditions including anxiety, depression, diabetes and neurodivergent symptoms and we need to start looking much more holistically if we are going to redress the balance and improve the mental wellbeing of our communities.
If you would like to understand more about how Lifestyle First can support improved mental health in your school please click here.
Click here to get a sample of some resources and some suggested reading to improve wellbeing. – leads to a page with resources or better to have the resources underneath? Would be a selection of books/ podcasts and Lifestyle First resources
Have you seen the stats that suggest our children are more lonely than they have ever been?
Connection to each other is a fundamental requirement for human survival. We are hard wired to ‘fit in’ to our tribe because for most of human history not doing so would have meant certain death!
This connection through healthy relationships requires physical face to face time and lots of eye contact. It also requires the social skills to listen effectively and being able to empathise and read body language.
Unfortunately the infiltration of smart phones and other digital media is robbing many of our children (and adults) of this quality time and as a result our children are now more anxious and depressed than ever.
Lifestyle First is working with our communities to prioritise healthy relationships and to find ways to make technology work for us as a useful tool rather than letting it dominate our behaviours.
Connection to others has been shown in a famous Harvard study spanning nearly 80 years to be the most important predictor of longevity and health span! It is that important!
If you would like to find out more about how Lifestyle First could help to develop healthy relationships in your communities then enquire here.
Click here to get a sample of some resources and some suggested reading. – leads to a page with resources or better to have the resources underneath? Would be a selection of books/ podcasts and Lifestyle First resources
Did you know it now takes children on average 90s longer to run a mile than it did 30 years ago!
Movement is being engineered out of our lives and for many of us that means we are not meeting the basic requirements in order to achieve good health. Convenience can be helpful but have we become too dependent on the ‘easy life’ for our own good?
Conserving energy by only moving when it was required to get food or build shelters, etc used to be crucial to our survival when food supply was less reliable. Why waste energy by going for a run? As the descendants of the humans that were the best at ‘being lazy’ we are now evolutionary programmed to only be active if it has a purpose! So don’t be surprised when you want to take the lift or stay on the sofa rather than take that walk or run!
Lifestyle First helps the school community understand the way their biology is wired and provides some great strategies to bring back movement into their day. It is vital that we appreciate the value this has on students ability to learn.
Click here to enquire about how Lifestyle First could increase the movement in your school community.
Click here to get a sample of some resources and some suggested reading to help you move more. – leads to a page with resources or better to have the resources underneath? Would be a selection of books/ podcasts and Lifestyle First resources
Do you pay attention to potential toxins in your environment? Have you ever considered the impact of toxins on your health?
Many of the household products we use including cleaning products, toiletries, air fresheners, plastic packaging and even cooking utensils contain toxic chemicals that can potentially disrupt physiological processes such as our hormones and the microbiome. This can often lead to inflammation, disrupting health and many of us will not make the connection to the root cause.
Screen time, alcohol, vaping, cigarettes and ultra processed food are all toxic to our health as well! For many schools based in built up areas you can also factor in air pollution.
This list can leave us feeling like there is little hope! Knowledge and awareness is power however and there are lots of sensible solutions, which don’t have to break the budget, that we can adopt to help minimise our communities exposure.
Living a clean life is a great feeling and one that all of us deserve. If you would like more support in eliminating toxic products from your school environments please click here.
Click here to get a sample of some resources and some suggested reading. – leads to a page with resources or better to have the resources underneath? Would be a selection of books/ podcasts and Lifestyle First resources
How are you sleeping? Do you wake up feeling rested?
If not then perhaps this is something that could be impacting your performance. Sleep is one of the most foundational activities when aiming to achieve good health. Too little and it will impact blood sugar control, insulin resistance, inflammation in the body and neuroinflammation in the brain!
Lots happens when we sleep including encoding things we have learned into our long term memory and the processing of emotions which gives us more emotional control the next day!
Over the past 100 years our sleep has gradually be eroded. We used to sleep when it got dark and get up as it got light giving us on average around 9 hours of sleep per night. These days the average is under 7 hours per night and can be typically much lower than this. The effect of being chronically under slept on children’s ability to regulate themselves and perform at their best is significant, but we also know being under slept is likely to result in poorer choices around food and physical activity which will compound these effects.
Fortunately the science of sleep has moved on a lot in the last 10 years and it is now clear that we should no longer feel as though sleep is just ‘down time’ that can be an easy place to sacrifice to gain some time to ‘do more’ in our day.
Sleep is a key pillar that almost everyone who engages with the Lifestyle First programme needs help to improve.
He are a few resources and some suggested reading and you can also sign up for a sleep webinar or the 6 week online sleep course:
