ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some guidance on current messages for healthy living that are evidence-based and applicable to most of the adult population. Patients requiring more in-depth health promotion for complex problems should be referred to the nurse or doctor or other health worker with training in health promotion. Healthcare assistant are well placed to offer healthy living advice to patients, to enable them to move towards that state of ‘optimal health’, but they must make sure that the advice is objective and based on current evidence. When offering health advice, they should also consider where the patient is on the cycle of change, as originally developed by Prochaska and Di Clemente. Key areas for promoting health: healthy eating and alcohol awareness, increasing activity levels, and smoking cessation. There are many well-documented benefits of healthy eating. Most people are familiar with the Eat Well Guide, which replaced the earlier Eat Well Plate.
