Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight benefits our physical and mental health, and is important because it helps to prevent illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers.
Maintaining a healthy weight means looking after your body by eating nutritious food and staying active, but it results from much more than just individual motivation or willpower.
Busy lifestyles, food and drink adverts, how much money we have, the weather, our friends, and all sorts of other factors influence how much we eat and how much we exercise.
Finding the right balance between how much, how often and what we eat, and finding activities we enjoy and can do regularly is important.
Havering’s Healthy Weight Strategy 2024-2029: Everybody’s Business, aims to make it easier for residents to eat healthily and be more active.
Local Services
Find out more about local services contributing to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.
This includes advice and support to eat well, move more, access affordable food and chose and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Healthy Weight is an essential area of Public Health
Where we live shapes our choices and as a result, it is harder for some to maintain a healthier weight.
People from disadvantaged communities, older people, people with learning disabilities and people from Black, Asian and other minoritised ethnic groups are at an increased risk of having excess weight.
For some groups, factors like poverty, longer working hours, limited access to healthy food or safe spaces for exercise make maintaining a healthy weight much harder.
Healthy Weight is an area of Public Health focus in Havering
In Havering, many people find it hard to maintain a healthy weight because of things like busy lifestyles, easy access to unhealthy food, and not enough chances to be active.
We want to make it easier for everyone to eat well and move more.
Key Facts:
- Obesity is the second biggest preventable cause of death after smoking.
- In Havering, one in five children aged 4-5 are overweight or have obesity. By the time they are aged 10-11 years, two in five are overweight or are living with obesity. This is above the London and England averages.
- Children are beginning to develop diseases previously seen only in adults, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, liver conditions, and bone and joint problems.
- Three in five adults in Havering are overweight or are living with obesity, which is the second highest across all London boroughs.
What we do in Havering
Havering Council use a whole systems approach to tackle obesity. You can read the Havering Healthy Weight Strategy 2024-2029 here.
This means working with lots of different people—Planning, Transport, Regeneration, schools, food businesses, community groups, and the NHS— to make sure the environment supports healthy choices.
Key Initiatives:
- Supporting healthy lifestyles: Running weight management programmes for children, adults, and people with learning disabilities.
- Promoting healthy food choices: Restricting junk food advertisements, supporting healthier school meals and hospital menus.
- Encouraging active travel: Helping schools promote cycling and walking.
- Improving food environments: Creating spaces with better access to healthy food and tap water, and working with food businesses to offer healthier options through the Healthier Catering Commitment.
How you can make a change
Members of the public can:
- Eat well: Visit the Havering Healthy Weight website for nutrition advice.
- Move more: Walking, dancing, and gardening all count! Find new sports or activities on the Havering Active Directory.
- Get healthier lifestyle support: Everyone Active’s Live Healthier Havering offers healthy weight support to adults and adults with learning disabilities. The HENRY Programme offers courses to parents with children aged 0-5 years to build healthy habits.
- Access affordable food: Food pantries in Rainham and Harold Hill offer £20 worth of shopping for £6. Healthy Start vouchers help families with young children buy essentials. Find out more: Foodbanks, free food, and low-cost food – Live Well Havering
Professionals working in the area can:
- signpost residents to local weight management programmes and Live Well Havering webpages
- review policies, service specifications, or tender documents in your service area or organisation to assess how healthy weight considerations could be strengthened.
- review planning applications or an upcoming regeneration, housing, or transport projects to assess whether healthy weight principles (e.g., active travel infrastructure, access to green spaces/play areas, and access to healthy food) are considered.