Image Justine Cuny, Examiner.com
While attempts to make sudden, dramatic changes in health behaviors are likely to fail, modest changes in diet and exercise are more likely to work. This is the conclusion of a recent study of overweight American adults in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. Researchers found that subjects instructed to reduce their daily calorie intake or increase the amount they walk every day were more likely to follow the diet and realize health benefits than overweight people who attempted to make large changes to their behavior.
The study, called America On the Move (AOM), used a relatively small sample group (116 participants). During the study period, participants were observed during weeks of normal behavior, as well as on “intervention weeks.” During intervention weeks, subjects were instructed to reduce their calorie intake by just 100 calories per day. In addition, they were told to walk an additional 2000 steps per day.
The results were encouraging. the average meals size for intervention weeks decreased to 489 calories compared to an average of 559 calories for non-intervention weeks. As a result, participants actually decreased their calorie intake by more than 100 calories per day on average. Likewise, subjects were successful in increasing the amount they walked each day, from around 6,363 steps per day to an average of 7,755 steps per day. The increase of 1,392 more steps per day fell short of the study's instructions, but was “not insignificant.”
The researchers chalk up the success of the intervention to the smaller changes, which were “more feasible” for the participants to achieve. America on the Move suggested a list of a hundred different ways for the subjects to decrease their calorie intake, such as switching to skim milk and reducing serving sizes to a few bites on each plate. The scientists involved in the study observed that a number of the participants utilized more than one of the methods, resulting in a deeper calorie decrease than expected: around 414 calories per day.
Read about other America on the Move research here.
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