Planning and Reasoning New Year's Resolutions

To start the year, we have some of the classic New Year's resolutions such as exercising, eating healthy, quitting smoking, in order to give a hand to our readers to encourage them in their compliance.

Many people set goals unattainable, which from the beginning, decrees failure. For example, it makes no sense that one of our resolutions is to get up at 5 am and run 8 km, when we are not early risers people and we have not run or 1km in our lives. A goal and demoralizes us because we will not be able to fulfill

Sticking to our strengths rather selecting realistic goals and thus increase our confidence and motivation.

Be clear about one good reason to comply with the resolutions can help a lot, and children can be an unbeatable reason.

According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics of the United States, for the new year, good resolutions are: to be a good role model, and help the whole family eat healthy and regular physical activity.

A previous study of the Academy clearly shows that parents have the greatest potential to influence the behavior of their children, including their eating and exercise habits. Even if you dont have perfect model healthy habits, which your children see you making a real effort to improve them, it will help them to realize that healthy living is important.

Beginning the year, an article in the January 2014 edition of the European Heart Journal, tells us that physical activity in adolescence helps protect heart health in adulthood.

According to this study conducted in Sweden with 750,000 men, their aerobic fitness in adolescence is associated with a lower likelihood of having a heart attack in adulthood. Each increase of 15% in aerobic fitness at age 18 was associated with a 18% reduction in heart attacks three decades later. Similarly, the results suggest that both adolescents and young adults who perform cardio have 35% reduction in risk of heart attack later in their lives.

We also found that aerobic fitness in adolescence appears to significantly reduce the risk of heart attack even in men who become overweight and being obese later.

These findings emphasize the importance of physical fitness in young people and even chronic noncommunicable diseases are prevalent in adults, whenever it is clear that the behaviors and habits in childhood and adolescence is critical to health that will as adults. So is not this a good reason to be active with our children?

To help further in setting achievable goals, a study at the University of Leicester, published in the prestigious journal The Lancet, December 20, 2013 found that for every 20 minutes a day to walk at moderate speed can be reduced in a 8% the risk of cardiovascular disease in people at high risk for type 2 diabetes (with impaired glucose tolerance).

People with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) have a much higher risk of cardiovascular disease, and while several studies have suggested that physical activity is beneficial for patients with IGT, this is the first study that quantifies how specifically should be traveled to modify the risk of heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular-related deaths.

Changes in lifestyle are the basis for many of the programs for the prevention of diabetes. One advantage is that walking is the most common and preferred option for physical activity, and is not much that we are being asked

This is certainly an achievable goal. Don't ever you think?

Regarding weight loss, one of the most frequent New Year's resolutions, the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics presents an article published on January 2, 2014, whereby, simply eating more slowly can significantly reduce what a person eats at each meal.

The study involved groups of normal weight and overweight. All were given the opportunity to eat under relaxed conditions, at low speed and low pressure conditions at high speed.

The "slow food" took an average of 22 minutes using small bites and carefree time deliberate chew. Fast food involved large bites and chew fast, feeling the pressure of time. Their average time was 9 minutes.

All consumed less when they ate more slowly, and all declared feel satiety when eating slowly, but only those of normal weight significantly reduced their caloric intake by eating more slowly (88 calories less) in contrast to overweight participants (58 calories less).

Something very interesting: to eat slowly water intake increased by 27% in people of normal weight, and 33% in obese and overweight people.

This could then be a New Year's resolution not that hard to accomplish:

Eat more slowly.

Research published in January 2014 in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, gives good news for middle-aged women: those who follow the guidelines of the American Cancer Society nutrition and physical activity for cancer prevention are less chance of developing cancer or dying from cancer or other diseases.

The researchers analyzed data on about 66,000 postmenopausal American women between 50 and 79 years and were followed for 8.3 years, during which 8,600 cases of cancer were diagnosed and there were more than 2,300 cancer-related deaths . The authors investigated the adherence to these guidelines, which give advice on weight. physical activity, diet and alcohol consumption.

Those who met the guidelines were 17% lower risk of death from cancer, and 27% lower risk of death from other causes.

The message could not be clearer: "If you want to reduce the risk of cancer, even late in life, keep a healthy diet, be active, avoid or limit the consumption of alcohol, and do not smoke.

And in 2011, another study by epidemiologists at the American Cancer Society, published in Cancer Biomarkers, Epidemiology, and Prevention, conducted for a period of 14 years, with more than 100,000 men and non-smoking women who followed these guidelines, had a lower risk of dying from cancer, cardiovascular disease and other causes. Now, do you know these guidelines?

These are the recommendations of the American Cancer Society for individual choices

• Maintain a healthy weight throughout life.

• Balance your caloric intake with physical activity.

• Avoid excessive weight gain throughout life.

• Achieve and maintain a healthy weight if currently overweight or obese.

• Adopt a physically active lifestyle.

• Adopt a healthy diet with an emphasis on plant foods.

• foods and beverages in amounts that help achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

• Eat five or more servings of a variety of fruits and vegetables a day.

• Choose whole grains over processed (refined) by grains.

• Limit consumption of red and processed meats.

• If you drink alcoholic beverages, limit consumption.

Finally, to help us in other big issue as the cessation of snuff, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), presents a thematic edition (January 8, 2014, Vol 311, No. 2): 50 years of control tobacco.

This edition presents a number of important items, we recommend.

50, Luther Terry, Surgeon General, or highest health authority of the United States ago, convened a press conference to reveal the results of the report "Snuff and Health". Prior to this, the results were reviewed in secret, and was chosen to minimize the effects of the report on the financial markets on a Saturday.

The report's conclusion was that smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men; the magnitude of the effect of cigarette smoking than all other factors, and the risk of developing lung cancer increases with duration of smoking and number of cigarettes smoked per day, and decreases after stopping smoking.

Today we know that smoking is related to other types of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and many other chronic diseases.

According to one of the articles in JAMA, USA efforts to limit the consumption of snuff in the past 50 years have avoided 8 million premature deaths in the United States, giving people an average of almost 20 years of life .