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45% of the decisions we make are actually habits. They’re not really decisions and from that, we know that every habit happens at a kind of border: It’s a decision we made at some point but then stopped making and continued acting on.

the best way to develop an exercise habit is during the first week or two, give yourself a piece of chocolate or some other treat that you really enjoy right afterwards because you have to teach your brain to enjoy exercise for exercise’s sake.

Poor eating and activity habits, not genetics, are the underlying causes for most cases of adolescent obesity, new research suggests. The finding stems from an analysis involving more than 1,000 Michigan sixth-grade students who participated in the Project Healthy Schools program, which is in place in 13 middle schools across the state.

The authors noted that, in 1980, just 6.5 percent of U.S. children aged 6 to 11 years were considered obese, but that percentage rose to nearly 20 percent by 2008. The recent study found that 15 percent of the participants were obese. And almost all had poor eating habits. Nearly one-third of all the students said they drank a soda the day before, while fewer than half said they could recall having eaten two portions of fruits and vegetables in the same time frame. And while 34 percent of non-obese kids consumed lunches provided by their school, that figure rose to 45 percent among obese students. Only one-third of all the kids reported exercising a half hour for five days during the previous week. Obese children were much less likely than non-obese kids to participate in regular exercise and/or physical education classes, and less likely to be a part of a sports team. Among obese children, 58 percent reported watching two hours of TV in the past day. That compared with 41 percent of non-obese kids.

Lifestyle choices are associated with cardiovascular disease and mortality. The purpose of this study was to compare adherence to healthy lifestyle habits in adults between 1988 and 2006.

Analysis of adherence to 5 healthy lifestyle trends (≥5 fruits and vegetables/day, regular exercise >12 times/month, maintaining healthy weight [body mass index 18.5-29.9 kg/m2], moderate alcohol consumption [up to 1 drink/day for women, 2/day for men] and not smoking) in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1988-1994 were compared with results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2006 among adults aged 40-74 years.

Generally, adherence to a healthy lifestyle pattern has decreased during the last 18 years, with decreases documented in 3 of 5 healthy lifestyle habits. These findings have broad implications for the future risk of cardiovascular disease in adults.

A new study adds yet another reason to consider scaling back your soda intake, and it's already putting beverage makers on the defensive. Researchers from the School of Public Health at Imperial College in London analyzed the diets of nearly 2,700 middle-aged people in the U.S. and the U.K. They found that people drinking more than one soda or other sugar-sweetened beverage a day had higher blood pressure, and that it kept going up the more they drank. After accounting for weight and other risk factors, that habit seemed to still put them at greater risk for cardiovascular problems.

The researchers also found that people who drank more than one sugary drink a day consumed nearly 400 more calories than those who didn't. And their diets were more likely to lack key nutrients like potassium, magnesium and calcium. "This is because they're getting the calories from these nutrient-poor sources. All they provide is the calories — none of the benefits of real foods," Brown says.

The new study seems to bolster previous research showing that cutting back even just a serving of soda a day can help lower blood pressure for those most at risk.

Obese children in America are much less physically active, consume larger quantities of food during school meals, and watch much more TV than their normal-weight schoolmates, researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School revealed in The American Heart Journal. Lifestyle is by far the major driving force behind childhood obesity in the USA, and not heredity, the authors stressed after examining data on check-ups of 1,003 Michigan sixth-graders in a school-based health program.

The obese children in this study tended to eat a school lunch rather than a packed one made at home, and spent a considerable amount of time either playing video games or watching television.

58% of the obese children in the study had watched at least two hours of TV the day before, the authors reported, compared to 41% among the other kids. 34% of non-obese children ate school lunches regularly, compared to 45% of the obese ones. Regular exercise, being a member of a school sports team, and rates of physical activity were considerably lower among the obese pupils.