Lose Weight and Improve Your Health with Patient.co.uk

Hubby has been working really hard to become healthier and lose weight, we are extremely proud of his achievements so far, he lost 18kgs in 2013 and he would like to lose another 5kgs this year.

He has been exercising more and watching what he eats, he had a little break on his diet over the festive period, but he managed to keep his weight thanks to Patient.co.uk and the one-to-one consultation we had with Dr Sarah Jarvis before the festive period.

A couple of weeks ago, we were introduced to Patient.co.uk, an award-winning leading independent health info website, where you can take a survey running through various aspects of your health in order to give you recommendations on the actions you can take to improve your health.

The survey was comprehensive and easy to complete. During the health assessment, hubby was asked questions about himself, medical history, family history, lifestyle, biometrics, diet and stress. The survey takes around 10 minutes and you are advised to answer all questions honestly and accurately to give them a true picture of how healthy you are.

Once the health risk assessment is complete, you receive a Patient Q Score from 0 to 100, there is also an easy to understand graph with coloured bars with your lifestyle factors, such as alcohol, smoking, exercise, blood, BMI/weight, cholesterol, diet and stress. Hubby scored low risk on most of the lifestyle factors, apart from BMI/weight and diet.

You can click on each coloured bar to learn more how to improve your health. Nutrition/Diet is hubby’s main priority, he was quite surprised with diet appearing as a high risk as he has changed his diet dramatically over the past few months. It says on the website that ‘the two keys to a healthy diet and keeping your weight in check are eating the right amount of food for how active you are and eating a range of foods to make sure you’re getting a balanced diet’.

Hubby scored particularly well on his intake of water, caffeine and eating patterns, however he can improve his intake of carbohydrates by incorporating more wholegrain bread and brown rice into his diet, increasing his intake of fibre and eating less salt.

Hubby’s second priority is his BMI/weight. At the moment, it falls just outside of a healthy range. On the website, it says: ‘Excess body weight is a major risk for developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancers as well as reduced energy levels. When you carry the extra weight also makes a difference, health risk increases further if the excess fat tends to accumulate centrally around the abdomen as opposed to on the limbs’.

After taking the patient survey, we had a consultation with Dr Sarah Jarvis, a GP regular on Radio 4, to give us health tips. During our conversation, we spoke about the health risks of bad cholesterol, blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. Dr Jarvis explained that it is easier to lose weight, than to maintain, so once hubby has achieved his goal by losing weight slowly, he should increase his portion size slightly and keep a healthy food and exercise regime during the maintenance phase. He was advised to become aware of his portion size and work out what he is doing to maintain his weight in the long term by working with targets.

The recommendations on the website were helpful and helped hubby understand his current health and set goals to improve it. You can set a 12 week health programme and sign up to 3 lifestyle programmes to receive weekly emails with practical health information and advice to keep you motivated and on track.

After using the website, we believe that Patient.co.uk is a great way to check your health and find ways to improve it. Hubby will be using their tips and recommendations to lose weight and improve his diet and weight, and become healthier in 2014!

You can take check your health in less than a minute by taking the test below:

We were compensated for our time, however the opinions in this post are honest and our own.