Can your diet and lifestyle help the environment?

Scientific evidence shows clear benefits for eating less (or no) meat, so making healthier lifestyle choices often involves cutting back on the amount of meat you eat. It can help reduce your risk of conditions like:

• Cancer
• High blood pressure and cholesterol
• Heart disease
• Stroke
• Type 2 diabetes
• Obesity

And it’s not just good for your health – it’s good for the environment, too. Research suggests that agriculture is responsible for almost a quarter (23%) of all global greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from livestock production.

It’s not just the atmosphere that livestock production takes a toll on, either. Over two-thirds of farmland worldwide is dedicated to growing livestock feed, compared to just 8% that’s used to grow food for humans to eat. Research has also found that the livestock industry is using depleted freshwater resources, destroying animal habitats, and causing water pollution with runoff from fertilizer and animal waste.

So, eating less meat could help reduce the global demand for livestock production, free up land for other crops, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A study suggested that replacing beef with beans in the US could free 42% of US farmland currently used to feed livestock, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 334 million tonnes. While this might be an extreme example, it highlights just how much room there is to cut back on animal produce to help our planet.

A good way to build healthy eating habits is by planning your meals and shopping ahead of time, so you only buy what you need. This can help you cut out unhealthy foods, as you won’t have them in the house to tempt you – and it’ll be easier to stick to the healthier options you went for instead.

Planning your meals also helps reduce your overall food waste – as it helps you get the most out of the fresh ingredients you buy. We’ve all bought ingredients for a meal we’re excited to cook, only to throw most of them away afterwards because there’s nothing else to use them in. By planning multiple meals that make use of the same fresh ingredients, you can make sure you use everything you’ve bought before it goes bad – cutting down on your food waste.

If you’re on a weight loss journey with Wegovy, it’s really important to take up a more active lifestyle. A great way to do this is to ditch your car or a taxi for daily journeys, and start walking or cycling instead. It’s a really convenient way to fit more physical activity into your day, and reduce your carbon footprint.

And it has a bigger impact than you might expect. A study that followed 2,000 people across seven European cities suggested that switching from driving to cycling for a single trip a day could reduce your carbon footprint by about half a tonne per year.

Making sure you’re getting the right nutrition is an important part of losing weight with Wegovy, because it affects your appetite and how much food (and nutrients) you eat. This means you’ll likely be paying a bit more attention to the foods you’re buying, and the nutritional information on the packaging. While you’re looking at the packaging, it’s good to check how much and what kind of packaging your food comes in. Going for products with less (or no) packaging, or packaging made with recycled ingredients, can help to limit the amount of single-use packaging that ends up in landfills.