I found this link on John Berardi’s Performance Nutrition forum: Study: Few Americans Maintain Healthy Lifestyle

Here are 4 quick questions for you to answer, either to yourself or in the comments:

  • Do you eat at least 5 fruit and vegetable servings every day?
  • Do you undertake regular physical activity (defined as 30 minutes/day, 5+ times/week)?
  • Do you refrain from smoking?
  • Do you maintain a healthy weight?

My answers are yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Here are the results from a large study of Americans.

The research of Mathew Reeves, which used nationally representative data from 153,000 adults and was published in the April 25 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, found that only 3 percent undertook four basic steps that define a healthy lifestyle–not smoking, holding weight down, eating right and exercising.
….
Looking at these HLCs individually, about 75 percent reported they didn’t smoke; 23 percent included at least five fruits and vegetables in their daily diets; 22 percent took part in regular physical activity, which is defined as at least 30 minutes of activity a day, five or more times a week; and about 40 percent maintained a healthy weight, which is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or less.

Only 3% of the people in the study can say “yes” to those four questions, or some variation of them (I backended the questions from the article). Nearly all of those following a Paleolithic diet will hit 5 servings of fruit and vegetables daily. My salad alone is probably 4-5 servings of vegetables. And those on a Paleolithic diet will also tend to normalize their weight to a healthy standard. That takes care of two of the four right there. And I doubt anybody that concerned about their dietary intake would smoke.

How do you fare?


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