A new study depicts the challenges of making healthy lifestyle choices – and of sticking to them.
A new paper describes the alcohol consumption and physical exercise habits of 150 largely white, low-risk, community-dwelling adults in central Pennsylvania. That is, the research did not include people who were in the hospital or a nursing home.
In this study, volunteers used a smartphone to record their daily alcohol consumption as well as exercise habits in 3-week blocks. This way of recording made it possible to receive valid and reliable information and to analyze daily variations for each individual.
The analysis of the data clearly shows: people tend to use more alcohol on days when they exercise more. This is true whether they’re young, old, male, or female.
The study is not about problem alcohol users or risky users. Neither is the study about people with alcohol use disorders. This is also not a study of the effect of an intervention to change lifestyle behavior. The study also does not suggest a correlation between more physical exercise and increasing alcohol use. It is solely an observational study, not a study of change over time.
The study’s subjects are healthy people in general. The mode and median number of alcoholic beverages per day was zero. That is to say, among this group, there was no alcohol use at all on half or more of the days recorded. So the results may have been different in a different population (for instance, a more economically challenged or urban population).
But a takeaway from the study is that significant changes in health-related behaviors travel in packs:
- People who adopt healthier alcohol consumption habits also get off the couch, walk more, lose a pound or two, and generally pay more attention to their health.
The challenge, however, is to sustain these healthy changes. The challenge is to not reward “good behavior” with “bad behavior” – to allow oneself unhealthy things, as reward for having done something healthy.
