Lifestyle First

  • Lifestyle First is our school based programme. The goal is to create communities that focus on health awareness, education and promotion with the aim of our own making ‘blue zones’.
  • Mental health, student behaviour and attendance are all becoming more challenging to manage across school communities and there is plenty of evidence that the ‘modern’ lifestyle may be having a significant effect.
  • Students are playing less, sleeping less, getting less physical activity, eating lots of UPF, using screens excessively and have fewer ‘real’ connections throughout their day – is it a surprise they are struggling to focus and behave?

We need to create a new normal in our school communities!

  • When everyone is in good health they are happier, have more energy and their cognitive functioning improves making them better teachers and students!
  • Lifestyle First is working across both Primary and Secondary Schools.
  • Engaging presentations support staff to become more aware of their own wellbeing and then given the tools and strategies to inspire the students they are working with.
  • Parent presentations and workshops ensure that they have the awareness and confidence to deliver effective parenting to their children.
  • Specific strategies, tools and resources are provided as part of the programme as well as videos giving ideas for talks and assemblies on each of the different lifestyle medicine pillars.

Primary Lifestyle First

  • Students embarking on their school journey are full of curiosity and enthusiasm. Lifestyle First works with primary school teachers and headteachers to foster that curiosity and embed lifestyle medicine principles into the daily running of their schools.
  • Tools and resources that students (and staff!) are actually practicing everyday and so they become healthy habits.
  • Students (and staff) are educated around complex concepts like the autonomic nervous system, microbiome, metabolic dysfunction and epigenetics in age appropriate ways that give them the awareness and tools to live a long healthy life – the most important gift we can give them!
  • Schools also report that students’ (and staff) happiness increases and behaviour and academic performance is supported by these strategies.

Secondary Lifestyle First

  • Secondary schools are having to firefight more and more in order to deal with mental health and behavioural issues across their schools. Lifestyle First has been running INSET, staff training as well as individual interventions to support the school community.
  • Focusing on staff engagement first has been crucial in creating the ‘blue zone’ concept which can then be used to engage students.
  • Working with SLT, Lifestyle First acts as a consultancy to help bring a lifestyle medicine lens to decision making across the school. Essentially putting the health and wellbeing of the staff and students at the center leads to happier and healthy school communities. The benefits of this approach are numerous and we are working with Tools and resources that students (and staff!) are actually practicing everyday and so become healthy habits.
  • Students (and staff) are educated around complex concepts like the autonomic nervous system, microbiome, metabolic dysfunction and epigenetics in age appropriate ways that give them the awareness and tools to live a long healthy life – the most important gift we can give them!
  • Schools also report that students’ (and staff) happiness increases and behaviour and academic performance is supported by these strategies.

A Trust Wide Approach

The most effective way to implement the Lifestyle First programme is to work across your whole trust so that the students, staff and parents have consistent messaging.  This reduces confusion and builds trust, empowering all members of the school community to take back control of their wellbeing!

What can you expect from Lifestyle First…

Build awareness of our biological requirements to thrive/ the mismatch causing many of us to struggle

Nurture an aspiration to live a life in tune with our evolutionary biology

Create a culture in schools where optimising well-being is central to all policies and behaviours

Provide targeted support to those in our community who are more out of balance

Dan Newman is a certified health coach (UKIHCA) and a member of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine (BSLM) and leads on their Schools Special Interest Group.  He has worked in education for over 24 years and is Founder of Lifestyle First – find out more here