Does one healthy habit make up for a poor one?

Maybe this sounds familiar: you exercise regularly but cheat on your diet a lot. Or you skip exercising because your diet is extra-healthy. You hope that following just one of those important habits will make up for slacking off on the other. But it doesn't, according to a large study published online July 10, 2022, by the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The research involved about 350,000 healthy British people who underwent a physical exam, answered questions about their exercise and diet, and were followed for 11 years. After all that time, there was no evidence that high levels of physical activity fully offset the harmful effects of a low-quality diet, or that a high-quality diet fully offset a lack of exercise. But researchers did see that people who exercised the most and ate the healthiest diets had the lowest risk of dying prematurely, as would be expected. The study was observational and relied on self-reported data, so it doesn't prove conclusively that you need both exercise and a healthy diet to get the best chances of warding off disease and early death. "Still, we know from other studies that exercising and eating a healthy diet are two keys to longevity. And you'll reap the most benefits by following both healthy habits as closely as you can," says Dr. I-Min Lee, a study author, senior exercise researcher, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Image: © Charday Penn/Getty Images