The quality of Americans’ diets has declined since last year. From fruit and vegetable consumption to exercise, and even smoking, Americans are reporting worse habits than this time last year.
A Gallup poll of 1,000 Americans that was released last week reveals the 55.9 percentage of Americans reported eating five or more servings of fruit and vegetables at least four days out of a week. Last May, the poll found that number to be 57.8 percent.
The poll concluded that produce intake is specifically down among Hispanics, young adults, seniors, and women compared to 2010.
In 2010, 68.2 percent of people said they “ate healthy all day yesterday.” This year that number dropped to 66.2 percent. That percentage translates to 4.5 million less Americans eating healthy this May.
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Rebecca Wilson practices cognitive & mindfulness-based therapies and researches health psychology and behavior change. Her website, habitspark.com, focuses on how to use positive habits to create healthy and happy lifestyles.
First of all, what exactly is a habit? A habit is a behavior that you do so regularly that it becomes almost automatic. Although many habits are good, like brushing your teeth, some habits are devastating to a healthy lifestyle and weight control. Here are the 3 worst habits and how to break them:
Bad Habit #1: Eating mindlessly. Eating on the run, eating without paying attention to your hunger signals, and eating to escape painful feelings.
Break It: Replace eating mindlessly with eating mindfully. Eat at a dining table and make sure you aren’t doing anything else while you are eating. Before you start eating, notice your hunger level. As you eat, pay attention to your senses: the taste of the food, the feel of it, the smell, and how it looks.
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Tune in to Good Morning America tomorrow, Thursday, March 3rd to see Matt Bean of Men’s Health share some good advice for breaking bad habits.
According to the health experts at Men’s Health, bad habits set up neural pathways in the brain, which is part of what makes them so hard to break. Once a prompt arrives, the brain can easily shift into autopilot after that pathway is established. Bean, a senior contributing editor, will share some quick to tips to overcoming these bad habits for good.
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Every New Year’s, millions of people say “Enough!” and pledge to lose weight. They begin Atkins, Weight Watchers, The Zone, the Grapefruit Diet, The Cabbage Soup diet, or Slim Fast. We’ve seen it time and again- they follow all of the rules, lose their weight, reach their goal and quit the diet. They return to their regular life and many times, they gain the weight right back. Why does this happen?
It’s simple. It’s because they undertook a “diet” and not a lifestyle change. The word “diet” indicates an action that has a beginning and an end. “Diet” to most of us equals deprivation and lots of sweat. You often hear people say, “I’ve begun a diet” or “I’m off the diet – it wasn’t working for me!” That’s because if you diet, you don’t really change any of your firmly entrenched habits long term, and those habits return. The key to a true and lasting weight loss is to get off the traditional diet path and get on with living a healthy lifestyle.
Instead of making gigantic changes in your daily life, pick one area and make a change. When you’ve made one change a part of your daily routine, make another. Those small, incremental differences really add up. Before you know it, you’ve seamlessly transformed your entire life – and those lost pounds will stay away!
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By Beth Casey Gold, MS, RD, and Director of Corporate Programming at Vtrim Online
The Vtrim Weight Management Program was developed by Jean Harvey-Berino, Ph.D., R.D., a nationally recognized weight-loss researcher at the University of Vermont. Dr. Harvey-Berino’s concept is based on behavior changes: a systematic shaping of daily habits to help people move more and eat less.
When the clock strikes midnight on December 31, millions of Americans will make a resolution to lose weight in 2011. The experts at the Vtrim Online Behavioral Weight Management Program can help make that resolution a reality.
The Vtrim philosophy is simple: eat less, move more. Our approach is based on behavior change. We have proven in clinical research that people can successfully lose weight by trading in unhealthy habits for new, healthy habits. This year, vow to change your habits, and lose weight as a benefit of changing your lifestyle.
Here is my advice on changing your behaviors to lose weight and feel great in 2011.
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