Wednesday 15th January 2020 - added extras coming along

Posted 12:00pm

One of the things I really enjoy about our intervention is the added extras we like to include. I have been on many courses, and they can all be quite samey. You sit down in a room, someone stands in the front, sometimes with a powerpoint or using large sheets of paper, and talks to you, with the occasional bit of interaction.

I was determined that our intervention was going to be lively, memorable, informative and fun, but including stuff not normally found at these events.  And we have called these our ""added extras". It has been a lot of fun coming up with as many as we can think of.

We like to have an outing - and we do appreciate that some courses do have these too. We decided though it would be on a different day, so we would still get the full course in, and not use up a day on it. We also decided early on that they would be to places that are free - as we wanted to demonstrate to people that there is no need to be stuck indoors thinking you have to spend a lot of money to go and have fun. It was also important to have a group sticking together.

We also like to bring in special guests. Luke and I are not qualified psychologists, psychiatrists, or health advisers. We go over mindset, health, fitness (with a qualified personal trainer), nutrition and routine, but we are very careful to just be passing on information and knowledge and not actually tell or advise people what to do. We stress choice, individual responsibility, and action.

However, there are times when advice needs to be given, so why not bring in someone qualified people and companies to do that. In the past we have used the Red Cross for First Aid - and they have been terrific in seeing our potential, not charging us, and it looks like we will have them for our Islington intervention in February and March.  The Oral Health team at the Whittington have given very informative demonstrations around teeth and mouth health, and how it links to your whole body. We even had the local stop smoking team come and chat. The potential is very large. We are thinking of some outside diabetes person coming in - linking overweight and obese problems with lasting health conditions.

We are adding to our portfolio of extras, and always looking for new ways to improve. We want people to leave our courses wanting to make change, believing they can achieve, and setting themselves ongoing targets and goals.