The Power of Lifestyle
What is stopping you from living a healthy lifestyle?
Eat 5 portions of fruit and veg, get 10,000 steps a day, drink 8 cups of water, and get 7 - 9 hours of sleep every night. Advice we’ve all heard hundreds of times and can trot out every January when making our resolutions. But it’s advice we don’t always heed and resolutions we rarely stick to. If we know what a healthy lifestyle looks like, what’s stopping us from living it? If you were in the UK at the start of May you probably couldn’t miss the headlines following a poll carried out by YouGov asking people just this. The poll of 2,086 people carried out by YOUGov asked participants what is stopping them from living a healthy life. This was done on behalf of the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). For once I agree with the tabloids that these results were worth shouting about. The two biggest barriers were lacking motivation (38%) and feeling too tired (35%) (1). When you look at the latter in more detail, nearly half (48%) of young people aged 24-35, cited being too tired as a barrier to living healthier lives (1). This is compared to less than a quarter (23%) of the over 55-year-olds (1). (Maybe sixty really is the new thirty?)
Well, why is a healthy lifestyle so important?
The WCRF has used these results to launch an eight-week health living plan, Activ8. This program aims to help participants eat better and move more. The WCRF is an amazing organisation and they are not the only ones championing the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. If you look at any of the big organisations in the UK – British Heart Foundation, Heart UK, Diabetes UK, Cancer Research UK they all have fantastic resources, recipes and facts sheets related to diet and lifestyle.
Why are all these organisations pouring resources into healthy lifestyle guides and programs? Simply put, prevention is better than cure. The WCRF estimates that 40% of cancers worldwide are preventable (2). WCRF says ‘If people didn’t smoke, avoided the sun, avoided alcohol, ate a healthy diet, maintained a healthy body weight and stayed physically active, 1 in 4 cancers might simply never develop’ (2). The WHO estimates that worldwide a huge 80% of strokes and premature heart attacks are preventable (3). Harvard School of Health estimates that in America 90% of cases of pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes are preventable through diet and lifestyle changes (4). Of the UK population, Diabetes UK estimates that half of those at risk could prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes through diet and lifestyle (5). The NHS Diabetes Prevention Program, a lifestyle-based program, resulted in a 7% reduction in new diagnoses between 2018 -2019 in England (6).
So if living a healthy lifestyle can reduce your risk of a whole range of serious diseases, why are we so unmotivated? Despite all the research proving the power of a healthy lifestyle, levels of lifestyle-related diseases are rising. Is there a lack of awareness – does more need to be done to raise awareness of the rising levels of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease? To raise awareness of the preventative power of a healthy diet and lifestyle? Is it because we live in a world of instant gratification that prevention just isn’t a strong enough motivator? Do we need a reframe around health, do we need to sell a healthy lifestyle as an investment into your future? Or have these diseases become so commonplace that it’s almost expected that you would develop a chronic disease during your life?
But isn’t it more complicated than just personal responsibility?
All that said, we need to consider two important factors. First of all, living a healthy lifestyle is not easy. We live in an obesogenic world. In a world where making the healthy choice is no longer the easy choice and it’s only getting worse. This can be subtle, for example, your workplace not having any visible stairs but the lift is the focal point of the lobby. Or not so subtle, like high-fat high sugar convenience foods being significantly cheaper than more nutritious options in your local supermarket. Food is constantly being pushed on us and opportunities to move are constantly being taken away. The other important thing to consider is that leading a healthy lifestyle isn’t a guarantee of life free from any disease. There are still many risk factors for these lifestyle diseases that are out of our control – genetics, age, sex, air pollution, and even what our mothers ate during pregnancy. There is also just chance or pure bad luck that a person will be diagnosed with a lifestyle disease throughout life.
So realistically what can we do on an individual level?
Control the controllable
Given that there is so much out of our control, it would be understandable for people to feel like they have no, or very little, control over their health and lifestyle. But the opposite is true, this highlights the need to empower people to take control of their diet, lifestyle and movement where they can. Obviously, you won’t always be able to control what you eat, your movement or the quality of your sleep. However, it’s estimated that we make 35,000 decisions a day and over 220 of these relate to food alone (7). Maybe we need to start seeing some of these decisions as small opportunities to take back control. To see them as opportunities to invest in our health by making a choice that will benefit us in the future? Even if we don’t always know what would be more beneficial for us– say an egg bagel vs a Greek yoghurt fruit pot? Or going for a walk vs trying a Pilates class? The very fact that we are stopping to think about this is an indication that we are trying. And that’s half the battle. Don’t be afraid of getting it wrong, be afraid of passing up the opportunities you do have.
Back to basics
I recognise that we live incredibly busy lives, in a society that glorifies stress. Being tired and lacking motivation is totally understandable. Of course, you won’t always feel the burning desire to roll out your exercise mat and start lunging around your kitchen after work. Or feel like getting out the whole spices to make a curry from scratch after an evening of swimming lessons and homework. But for the vast majority of people who want to improve their lifestyle, eat a little healthier and move a little more, it is the basics that will be hugely beneficial. You don’t have to pick a specific heart-healthy diet or a diabetes-prevention lifestyle. It’s not particularly exciting but the basics work. So, I’m not talking about taking up intermittent fasting, going to the gym 6 days a week or drinking a collagen smoothie every morning. It’s a lot simpler than that. It’s small consistent steps that lead to a healthy balanced diet, regular movement and good quality sleep. It’s a brisk fifteen-minute walk to the post office instead of driving. It’s drinking a glass of water instead of a fourth coffee at 4 pm. It’s intentionally having leftovers to bring for lunch so you don’t end up with a vending machine lunch because your 12 o’clock meeting ran over. It’s calling your mum and walking for 20 minutes rather than doom-scrolling Instagram on the couch after work.
Just do it, for ten minutes
When it comes to trying to muster the motivation or energy to exercise the best tip I can give is just to do ten minutes. Take the pressure off to do an hour of burpees or jump squats – do ten minutes of any movement. If you want to do another ten minutes then great. If not, then that ten minutes will be so much better for you than doing nothing. Or maybe it’s cooking that you struggle with. If you cook a Sunday lunch every week, could you throw a tray of peppers and courgettes in to roast at the same time to use in your lunches? Could you bring a bag of apples into the office every Monday to keep at your desk?
Let your power be your motivator!
Maybe none of those examples resonates with you. Maybe you work night shifts and it’s too dark to go for a walk when you’re up. Or you have young children and your time in the kitchen is already stretched to capacity. A healthy lifestyle won’t look the same for everyone. It’s up to us to look at our lives and recognise where we can make healthier decisions. To think about what would work for us. Yes, this requires motivation and some effort. But not as much as you would think, a little goes a long way and the benefits are worth it. This isn’t about blaming people – it’s about empowering everyone to have the confidence to use the power they already have. I’ll climb down from my soapbox now but if there’s one thing I implore you to take away it’s this –a healthy lifestyle is a powerful preventative tool that can reduce your risk of serious chronic disease and it’s worth investing your time and energy.
References
2. What we know about preventing cancer | World Cancer Research Fund (wcrf-uk.org)
3. Cardiovascular diseases: Avoiding heart attacks and strokes (who.int)
5. How to prevent type 2 diabetes | Diabetes UK
6. NHS England » NHS Prevention Programme cuts chances of Type 2 diabetes for thousands
7. How Many Decisions Do We Make In One Day? (pbsnc.org)
