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In health doesn ' t mean having to revise your whole lifestyle. Just a couple of key behavioral adjustments can have a domino effect on your other health-related habits, with lasting benefits, a recent study reports.
Researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine looked at what it would take to get people to change their bad health habits, including the consumption of too much saturated fat, not eating enough fruits and vegetables, spending too much time in sedentary activities, not make adequate exercise.
What they found was that people should not address the four problems at once. On the contrary, changing only two behaviors - ie reduce the amount of time they spent watching TV, and eating more fruits and vegetables -. Had a domino effect, leading to a healthier life overall
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"Just making two lifestyle changes has a big overall effect and people don 't get overwhelmed," said lead author Bonnie Spring, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in a statement. "the Americans have all these unhealthy behaviors that put them at high risk of heart disease and cancer, but it is difficult for them and their doctors to know where to begin to change those unhealthy habits. This approach simplifies. "
To determine what changes are most effective, the researchers recruited 204 adults aged 21 to 60, who are committed in the four behaviors and diet related to unhealthy activity. Participants were divided into four treatment groups, each of which was assigned two lifestyle changes: increase fruit consumption and vegetables and increasing physical activity, decreasing consumption of fat and reducing the time sedentary leisure past, decreased fat intake and increasing physical activity or eating fruit and vegetables to increase and decrease sedentary leisure
participants engaged in their diets. treatment for three weeks and self-reported their progress by logging their data into a personal digital assistant every day and send it to a coach who communicated with participants as needed by telephone or email.
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When we asked people to change just a couple of lifestyle, it has become easier for them to try others. Participants who ate more fruits and vegetables and less time spent in front of television or computer also eventually consume less saturated fat without really trying.
"fruits and vegetables The increase was particularly confidence improved for people," says Spring. "Once they had achieved this change, they felt more confident to be able to d other changes in diet and activity. "
the authors also say that cutting back on TV has had a particularly positive effect on the diet of the participants due to" behavior consolidation. "- while sitting on the couch in front of the TV, you're not exercising, you're probably eating junk food stupidly, and you look at the ads for other unhealthy foods
" We think that health behaviors are interrelated - they tend to complement or substitute for another So cut TV removed the tail that is usually triggered people to do the matching behavior of snacking on junk while lounging on the couch. "says Spring.
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all health changes not have the same domino effect on other behaviors. The study found that people did not increase their physical activity unless the researchers targeted directly this behavior. Spring says his team will continue research on how exercise can be influenced by other health settings.
It is important to note one important caveat: the study participants were paid $ 175 if they stuck with their treatment plans for the first three weeks, so they had an incentive to succeed. When three weeks were up, we asked the participants to continue to connect to their data three days a month for six months gained $ 30 to $ 80 a month -. But they had to follow the treatment plan to pay
The researchers say that people have said to follow their lifestyle changes anyway. "We thought they would we pay for them, but the minute we stopped, they would go to their bad habits," said Spring in the statement. "But they continued to maintain a large improvement in their health behaviors"
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about 86% of participants said once they had made changes in lifestyle, they tried to maintain. the study did not follow participants' weight, but the results suggest that small, to low budget behavioral tweaks could potentially lead to long-term changes that promote better weight loss and health.
the study was published in Archives of Internal Medicine .
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