The holiday season will be gone before we know it, which means we’ll tuck away the cookie tins and gravy boats and prepare ourselves for the season of self-restraint and suppression. In other words, New Year’s Resolutions centered around diet and exercise. And it’s no secret that diet companies and gyms are eager to reinforce shame about our bodies or habits. After all, it’s estimated that 45 million Americans go on a diet each year, and spend $33 billion each year on weight loss products, according to a study from the Boston Medical Center.
We started the new year with a new zeal and a revamped spirit towards life. But if you look at it holistically, nothing changes and what does is our ethos towards a happy, better life.
It’s a good bet that eating healthier and getting more exercise are at the top of everyone’s lists. The good news is that getting close to nature helps us achieve both of these along with having fun. An article I chanced upon recently stated that spending time with nature enhances longevity of life, which got me thinking. If not longer, living a healthy life is surely possible!
USA: A recent study in the journal Obesity has revealed that eating breakfast is tied to a greater weight loss during an intensive lifestyle intervention (ILI) for obese/overweight people. This was mediated by increased physical activity.
Observational studies have shown breakfast skipping to be associated with obesity and related cardiometabolic outcomes, however, the association between breakfast eating and weight loss is not well-established. Considering this, Daisy Duan, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and colleagues aimed to determine breakfast consumption frequency (BCF) is associated with weight-loss outcomes in the Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes), a randomized trial comparing intensive lifestyle intervention (ILI) to diabetes support and education (DSE) in adults with overweight/obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The researchers analyzed data from a subset of participants (n = 3,915) from the Look AHEAD trial. BCF collection was done through a yearly questionnaire. The association between n average BCF and percentage weight change over 4 years was estimated using multivariable linear regression models. This was done after controlling for baseline sociodemographic, anthropometric, and diabetes-related variables. In separate models, the researchers performed adjustments for diet (n = 915) and physical activity level (n = 837) in a subset of participants.
The combination of healthy lifestyle and adherence to antihypertensive medications was associated with decreased risk for mortality in patients with hypertension, according to data in JAMA Network Open.
“No study has examined the joint association of antihypertensive medication use and healthy lifestyle with mortality among individuals with hypertension, to our knowledge. In addition, whether improvement in lifestyle may yield health benefits for individuals with hypertension is unclear,” Qi Lu, MBBS, of the department of nutrition and food hygiene at the Hubei Key Laboratory of Food Nutrition and Safety, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Environment and Health and State Key Laboratory of Environmental Health (Incubating) at Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and colleagues wrote. “To fill these knowledge gaps, we aimed to prospectively examine the association of antihypertensive medication use and healthy lifestyle, as well as changes in lifestyle, with risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality among middle-aged and elderly adults with hypertension in China.”
Other habits like incorporating more colors into your diet or working to include one more vegetable on your plate each day can make your goals seem more attainable, than trying to implement an entirely new diet. Which in turn will help cultivate a healthier relationship with the new changes, because they are gradual and not all at once.
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