Since we are a pretty fat-phobic society most medical information on lifestyle interventions portray lifestyle changes as vehicles for weight loss rather than as healthy behaviors in and of themselves. So ‘healthy diet’ and ‘exercise’ get tons of air time, but they are mostly treated as ‘these can help you lose weight’, not ‘these interventions have tons of benefits independent of your weight’. By and large, we only care about health when doing something healthy can help us avoid the social stigma of being fat.
Other lifestyle factors also play an important role in health, but they get almost no air time unless they can be tied to combating obesity. Stress and poor sleep as examples. Poor stress control and poor sleep quality are both about as detrimental to health as a sedentary lifestyle and poor diet, but they are rarely brought up in popular media. When they are brought up they too are usually portrayed as tools to combat obesity. ‘too little sleep can cause obesity’. ‘poorly controlled stress can cause abdominal fat’. etc. Not always, but a good deal of the time that is how they are portrayed.
So if you leave out the social pressure to not be fat (and doctors, journalists and researchers are just as prone to social pressure as everyone else), and focus only on lifestyle interventions for their own physical and psychological health merits independent of their effect on obesity and bodyfat, what lifestyle interventions are important to having good physical and psychological health?
FWIW, smoking is a pretty poor lifestyle choice but a major reason people choose not to quit is fear of gaining weight. So healthy lifestyle choices as a vehicle for weight loss go in both directions.
From what I can think of:
Healthy diet
Exercise
Good rest
Don’t smoke
Good stress control
Good, meaningful personal relationships
meaningful work (whatever that means)
Not sitting too much throughout the day
Having an attitude of gratitude and optimism
Drink 1-2 alcoholic drinks a day
Not being poor
Having a college education
Having good social status
Good oral hygiene (this may have recently been disproven. I don’t know).
Of those I don’t know how much are causation and how much are just correlation (does having a college degree make you healthier or is it just that people who are prone to delayed gratification are more likely to attend and complete college).
I wonder if I’ve asked this before. Probably.
I am obese. My doctor and I have decided that trying to lose weight is depressing and a set up for failure. Getting on a scale can ruin me emotionally for days. Therefore, we only focus on healthy habits like the ones listed above, which is really all anyone can really do. We don’t measure my health by a scale, but by a healthy blood pressure, normal blood sugar, appropriate cholesterol, stamina and energy levels. I have a much higher compliance and success rate without the black cloud of a number on a scale. My doctor says that even though I am overweight, I am very healthy, doing very well, even better than some of his slender patients who do not adopt better health maintenance habits.
Really? I’ve heard a ton of stuff about how we should drink a glass of wine a day for good health. Google wine and reversitol.
Other “good health” advice that isn’t necessarily weight-loss related:
[ul]
[li]We should eat enough fiber to avoid certain cancers[/li][li]We should do what we can to minimize our salt intake[/li][li]We should drink 8 glasses of water a day[/li][li]We should make sure our kids are vaccinated/we get a flu vaccine ourselves[/li][li]We should avoid wearing high heels to keep from developing problems with our skeletal system[/li][li]We should do thought-intensive activities to stave off the likelihood of getting Alzheimer’s[/li][/ul]
I and many others have said it before but losing weight and keeping it off is about the the simplest thing you can do. I lost 40 pounds after a bad health scare a few years ago. There isn’t any secret to it. I don’t drink any soda now and only eat minimal processed foods, I get a healthy 6" Subway sandwich for lunch, and usually cook my own dinner with huge amounts of vegetables plus a small meat portion all heavily spiced so it isn’t bland or boring by any stretch. Breakfast is a banana and a cup of Greek yogurt. It takes a couple of months to adjust to it but you will lose weight and keep it off if follow some variation of that (permanent) diet. You basically have to ignore the fact that you are an American from that point forward but it is dead simple even easy.
I have no idea why there are so many studies into the ‘causes’ of obesity and the rise of Type II diabetes. Nothing could be more obvious. We have a all the same food now that people ate when it wasn’t a problem. Eat what they ate instead and you will get the same results.
realage.com hits a lot of points, if you take their test. When I read the OP “floss your teeth” was the first thing I thought of, but I see it covers that. Keeping a pet and maintaining a large social network are others.
I’ve heard that too. But the OP said “Drink 1-2 alcoholic drinks a day.” Huge difference between a glass of red wine and 2 shots of whiskey, or two martinis, or two muslides or two Miller Lights.
If you read the fine print in most studies, “1 drink” usually equals about 4 oz wine, a 12 ounce beer, or 1 shot (1.5 ounces) of hard liquor. Mudslides are more like milkshakes than drinks, and martinis can be huge - I’ve seen them with as much as 4 shots of liquor.
[li]We should drink 8 glasses of water a day[/LIST][/li][/QUOTE]
I came here to say this. Give up the sodas and sweetened drinks altogether and just go with mostly water, and the occasional coffee (black), tea, fruit juice, beer or wine. Giving up sodas and switching to water is one of the best changes you can make to promote your good health, regardless of your weight.
Of course, the soft drink companies would cringe if someone in the public view expressed that sentiment - they want you to believe you are being healthy by drinking a zero calorie soda instead of water.
I think one of the key lifestyle features is to associate with healthy people. I heard a good quote a few months ago that said, “you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”
Since getting into distance running and long course triathlons I’ve found more and more of my closest friends also happen to be into similar activities. While the friends who are less active slowly drifted away. If everyone you know gets boozed on Friday night it’s unlikely you’ll be motivated to get up and go running Saturday morning.
I only know a handful of smokers. But for them, nearly everyone they know smokes. If they go out it’s with people that smoke and will be smoking. For them to quit is nearly impossible because they are always surrounded by smokers.
I’m a great believer in holistic health so I absolutely think this approach of identifying multiple interlocking and cross-connecting health changes is the right way. It’s really depressing to hear someone describing their new question for fitness as going to the gym every day, living on salad and oat bran and never drinking alcohol again (you know they’ll have failed, and badly, by day three).
I absolutely agree with the low stress, good quality sleep ones. Getting regular exercise seems like a no brainer to me but a lot of people seem to translate that as go to the gym for two hours several times a week, when in fact I think the exercise needs to be proportionate. If you never do any then you need to start with going for walks and maybe a swim, if you’re already active then sure consider something structured like a gym (if you want to, like me) or some kind of sporting activity. But you’ve got to do SOMETHING! Saying “I don’t like exercise” is one of the most self defeating attitudes you can have, as it locks you away from all of the wonderful endrophins that physical activity gives you and the virtuous circle of exercise = better health = more energy = want to exercise more.
Diet is a huge one too and I’m also in the camp of never drinking soda/carbonated drinks, and I don’t drink alcohol so that helps too (I’ll stick with never rather than a couple of glasses of wine a day, thanks). If you can reduce your salt and processed/added sugar intake to as low as possible that helps. I recently did a 30 day no-sugar diet and the impact it had on me was really strong, stopped having hunger pangs and wanting to snack as well as feeling generally healthier. It’s quite extreme but I definitely felt the difference.
Maintaining a low-level of physical and mental activity throughout the day.
I don’t do this at work. But I try to do it at home. Instead of spending the evening plopped in front of the TV or computer, I engage in my hobbies–I’m constantly painting or sculpting (busy hands!) I’ve pulled out the ole electronic keyboard and I’ve committed myself to 30 minutes of practice every night. I do 30 minutes of yoga during the day and another 30 minutes at night. I’ve always got books to read when I just need to take a breather. I even mix up my music based on the activities I’ve got going on.
I used to waste hours in front of the computer, posting to the Dope. As much as I love ya’ll, I have found that having a mixed agenda makes me feel better psychologically.