Offering financial incentives for exercise may be one way of stimulating, and sustaining, a more active lifestyle. Research suggests that even after rewards stop, exercise gains mostly persist.
Long-term goals can be hard to stick to if the benefits are only way off in the future. Research suggests ways to focus on the here and now to help you ultimately achieve your more far-off targets.
Resolutions are like goals and putting time into planning your resolution can increase your success. Using scientific strategies can increase your chances of sticking with your resolution.
Health guidelines can feel contradictory and hard to interpret. But a new star rating system should help consumers and policymakers better parse the evidence behind health risks and outcomes.
Asaf Mazar, University of Pennsylvania and Wendy Wood, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Understanding and changing the environment in which habits form is a critical step when it comes to breaking unwanted behaviors and forming healthy ones.
Research highlights the importance of daily meditation, exercise and sleep for improving executive functioning, a component of attention that helps people focus.
Routines can be powerful tools to help people build a ‘new normal’ as pandemic restrictions lift. Routines can support creativity, boost health and provide meaningful activities and opportunities.
Over half of people who intend to make healthy lifestyle changes fail to do so. Understanding the automatic tendencies that prevent people from enacting a new health habit can help them stick to it.
COVID has made the usual jitters about returning to school that much more intense. Parents can support their children by listening carefully and prioritising healthy habits
New Canadian clinical practice guidelines for obesity aim to help reduce the prevalence and impact of weight bias and stigma in clinical care, and also encourage the public to advocate for change.
Gathering supplies and indulging in sweet baked treats can make us feel better temporarily. Why do we seek out certain foods in times of stress and should we give in to cravings?
Large-scale adoption of simple, individual actions — like disinfecting our germ-laden phone screens — can limit the ability of COVID-19 to get a foothold.