Exercise helps us to eat a healthy diet

A healthy diet and the right amount of exercise are key players in treating and preventing obesity but we still know little about the relationship both factors have with each other. A new study now reveals that an increase in physical activity is linked to an improvement in diet quality.

SINC

Many questions arise when trying to lose weight. Would it be better to start on a diet and then do exercise, or the other way around? And how much does one compensate the other?

"Understanding the interaction between exercise and a healthy diet could improve preventative and therapeutic measures against obesity by strengthening current approaches and treatments," explains Miguel Alonso Alonso, researcher at Harvard University (USA) who has published a bibliographical compilation on the subject, to SINC.

The data from epidemiological studies suggest that tendencies towards a healthy diet and the right amount of physical exercise often come hand in hand. Furthermore, an increase in physical activity is usually linked to a parallel improvement in diet quality.

Exercise also brings benefits such as an increase in sensitivity to physiological signs of fullness. This not only means that appetite can be controlled better but it also modifies hedonic responses to food stimuli. Therefore, benefits can be classified as those that occur in the short term (of metabolic predominance) and those that are seen in the long term (of behavioural predominance).

According to Alonso Alonso, "physical exercise seems to encourage a healthy diet. In fact, when exercise is added to a weight-loss diet, treatment of obesity is more successful and the diet is adhered to in the long run."

The Truth About Lifestyle and Heart Disease

The truth is, drugs won't cure heart disease, though it can certainly help control it. That means your lifestyle does matter - a lot.

For starters, it's likely that some aspects of your lifestyle may have put you at risk for heart disease. These are called risk factors. Here's a list of common risk factors for heart disease:

Smoking tobacco
Having high blood pressure
Being overweight
Having unhealthy blood fat and cholesterol levels
Having diabetes
Being physically inactive
Being over 55 years old for men and over 65 years old for women
Having family members who had heart disease or a heart attack early in life: under 55 for your father or brother; under 65 for your mother or sister

Some heart disease risk factors you can't control, such as your age or health problems of your parents. However, some risk factors are related to your lifestyle, such as smoking, being overweight, and having an unhealthy diet. These lifestyle factors may have helped contribute to your heart disease. And these same risk factors will continue to make your heart disease get worse.