A New Year a New You with Feel Good Food

Are you thinking about turning over a new leaf in the New Year?  Thinking about changing your lifestyle can be quite difficult when you consider all the information that is out there around dieting and losing weight from low carb to five two what really is a healthy balanced diet?  To help you get the facts, dispel any diet myths and make the right decision we are offering a free six week course with a qualified nutritionist to give you all the information you need to make small changes to improve your diet.

Each session lasts an hour and a half and aims to engage with the local community to improve dietary behaviours, knowledge, skills and confidence around budgeting and meal planning for the family, shopping, food labels, and cooking.  All sessions are delivered by a fully qualified nutritionist to small groups of up to 12.

Week 1 – What is a healthy diet? The importance of physical activity

Week 2 -  Menu planning and reading food labels

Week 3 – A virtual shopping tour

Week 4 – Bad fats and good fats

Week 5 – Understanding portion sizes

Week 6 -  Sugars

***We also have a monthly cooking session that takes place at Stafford Manor High School which is free to attend, we encourage anyone who has taken part in the six week course to attend (ingredients are provided) This hands on session gives the opportunity to cook a delicious batch cooked healthy meal with a portion to take home.

First session Tuesday 12th January 10.00-11.30 (and every Tuesday for the following five weeks)

At

The Signpost Centre

Auden way

Stafford 

ST17 9TX

To book your place contact the Community Involvement Team on 0800 111 4554 or email cp@sarh.co.uk

So What?  

Those who attend will get all the right information to make healthy choices for themselves and their families.  By improving knowledge through a qualified nutritionist people will be empowered to make informed decisions when meal planning, shopping, preparing and cooking food.

More for your money: 

The course will encourage nutrition advocates to be able to support people making healthy lifestyle choices.

 
Clearance kick-start for community allotment

The land off Meadow Road, Barlaston is set to be transformed into community allotments after the project received a welcome boost by a team of young people from Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service’s Prince’s Trust Team programme. Together they cleared the area of weeds and rubbish to help kick-start the project.

The Growing Health initiative is proving a huge success, encouraging people to eat healthily whilst getting out and about in the fresh air.

This project in Barlaston will give families and community groups all the seeds, tools and skills they need to manage an allotment plot over the growing season – improving their dietary habits, increasing physical activity levels and helping them to spend more time with family and neighbours.

After a successful bid for support from the Service’s Prince’s Trust Team programme, which helps young people gain valuable work experience, the allotment has now been transformed. Over eight days 16 young people, aged between 16 and 25, filled four skips with rubbish and recycled other items to make interesting allotment features.

They also helped to raise over £200 for the project by bag packing at two local supermarkets and taking part in an indoor triathlon.

They did a fantastic job, and we would like to thank Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service’s Prince’s Trust Team programme for its support, and the young people taking part for all their hard work!

Other Growing Health Allotment sites include Adamthwaite Drive at Blythe Bridge and Priory Road in Stone.

So What?

The ‘Growing Health Project’ will give local residents the opportunity to spend time outside, increase levels of physical activity, develop knowledge and learn new skills.   Community allotments provide great opportunities for people of all ages and increase levels of community cohesion!

 

More for your Money:

Allotment sites provide local communities with a cheap source of fruit and vegetables, therefore leading to healthier diets and improved quality of life.

Mental Health Matters

On Thursday 22 October, as part of the Community Learning Programme, SARH delivered a Mental Health Awareness session. Our very own Paul Curran (Independent Living Team Leader) delivered the session to a group of customers at the SARH Community Resource Centre. The 2 hour workshop explored the way we see mental health, how to respond to it and what the journey of recovery looks like. With 1 in 4 of us suffering from metal health problems during our lives, we believed this was a key subject area to cover on the programme!

The course received great feedback which included “The course was really informative” and “I now have knowledge which will allow me to help others”.

So What?

SARH encourages customers and members of the local community to come along to our selection of Health and Wellbeing courses. The purpose of these sessions of to help customers feel good and live well!

More for your Money:

Having experienced staff deliver sessions in their specialist subject areas offers excellent value for money. This means we do not have to pay for external providers to deliver sessions.

Autumn Kiddie Cook

As part of the Feel Good Food Project on the 19^th November we ran an Autumn Kiddie Cook session at the Stafford Manor High School.  

The session was aimed at parents and children, those who attended the hour long cooked a sweet potato and rosemary soup which was ready for them to take home and eat for their tea.  Not only did they have a copy of the recipe they were cooking to take away for future use, everyone had additional recipe cards for tasty healthy ideas for cooking using a slow cooker.

For one of our younger attendees, Cole, this was the first time he had chopped vegetables and cooked a meal from scratch.  “This is great!  It’ll help me to be a good chef!”

These cooking groups will be a regular monthly occurrence cooking a range of delicious meals on a budget.

If you want to know more please contact the Community Involvement Team on 0800 111 4554 or email cp@sarh.co.uk

So What?

By giving people the opportunity to try recipes with ingredients new to them it encourages them to widen the range of foods they would normally eat as well as try different healthy recipes.

More for your Money:

Encouraging a nutritious diets will improve health, reducing the need to be so reliant on the health service for conditions that are down to poor diets.

If you want any more information about any of the events that have already happened or that are coming up in the future please do not hesitate to contact us on:

cp@sarh.co.uk or call us on

0800 111 4554