New Study: Diet and Exercise Changes Work Best Together, Not One at a Time

It's the age-old question for people looking to get healthy: Eat better or start working out? Now, a study published yesterday in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine finds that for best results, we should make both of these changes at once -- and that dieting first may actually sabotage later attempts at a regular exercise routine.

This may seem obvious: Of course you're going to get healthier faster if you're doing two good-for-you things, rather than just one. But previous research on this topic has been inconsistent; some experts believe that trying to address several health issues at once can be overwhelming or counterproductive, and that taking baby steps to improve one thing a time is the best approach.

Stanford University researchers set out to see how food and fitness, specifically, work together, versus separately. For 12 months, they provided counseling to four groups of volunteers: One learned to make dietary and exercise changes at the same time, one changed diet first and then exercise a few months later, one did the opposite, and one did not learn to make any diet or exercise changes.

Even though they had more new goals to think about at once (150 minutes of exercise per week, five to nine servings of produce per day, reducing saturated fat), the diet-plus-exercise group was most likely to meet them all by the end of the study period. The exercise-first group also did an OK job with improvements over the course of the whole year.

But those who started with diet first had a much harder time ramping up their exercise routines a few months later. Finding time to work out may be harder for busy people swapping in healthier foods, the researchers say -- and if you're already doing the easier one, there may be less incentive to make a more difficult change later on.

Okay, so, shameless plug time: We're big believers in making lots of good things happen all at once -- that's why we designed our Drop 10 Diet to include healthy recipes AND a killer workout program so you can shape up fast for summer. We already knew that it was a winning combination (check out these success stories!), but it's nice to know that science has our back, too. And yes, you can totally get started today!

Do you find that eating healthy and working out go hand in hand? Tweet us your thoughts at @amandaemac and @SELFmagazine.

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Image Credit: Terry Doyle

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