Sue Dunlevy: How Aussies’ lifestyle choices are impacting their health

Whether it’s confusion over the ever changing diet advice or being pressed for money, data shows Aussies are treating their health badly. This is how News Corp’s Health of the Nation special can help, writes Sue Dunlevy.

Pressed for time and money and confused by ever changing diet advice Australians are struggling to make healthy lifestyle choices and it is impacting our health.

Two thirds of us are overweight, up to 40 per cent of the food we eat is junk, and we spend too much time sitting and too little exercising.

It taking a ravaging toll on our wellbeing.

A News Corp survey revealed two thirds of Aussies are overweight and up to 40 per cent of the food we eat is junk.

By the age of 34 eight in ten of us will have at least one long term health condition that grows to almost 100 per cent of people by the age of 65 the latest ABS National Health Survey reveals.

The problems start at an early age with one in five preschoolers carrying too much weight, this grows to almost one in three people by the age of 17.

By the time we’re in our mid- fifties three in four Australians are facing a battle of the bulge.

Although all the research shows a plant based diet is the fast track to health fewer than seven per cent of us are meeting the national guidelines for vegetable consumption.

Most of our long term health problems from cancer to arthritis, diabetes to heart disease can be prevented or eased by losing weight, increasing our activity and shifting to a Mediterranean diet focused on olive oil, fresh vegetables and fruit and small amounts of fish and meat.

New research shows the ultra-processed foods that make up a large proportion of our diet are linked to rising rates of depression and anxiety and are destroying the good gut bacteria we need to stay healthy.

To help you reset your lifestyle and get on track to better health we have interviewed Australia’s leading health experts and researchers and reviewed the latest international studies.

Over the coming weeks we will reveal much of what you thought you knew about getting healthy is outdated.

For starters if you go on a crash diet you could actually be setting yourself up for long term weight problems as your body’s metabolism slows down to defend your old higher body weight making it hard to keep lost kilos from creeping back on.

Crash diets can actually end up making you fatter.

We explain the latest way to lose weight in intervals to prevent this problem occurring.

TAKE OUR HEALTH CALCULATOR

New ways of exercising in short high impact bursts will help you build exercise goals into daily activities and help you get fit without having to set aside large slabs of time you probably don’t have.

And we have heaps of practical advice for parents about how to get their kids eating healthier food and moving more.

Technology is often seen as the villain but we uncover ways can help motivate kids to get healthy.

We’ve broken the latest heath advice down into specific age groups and over the next eight days we will cover what you need to do from the cradle to the grave to get healthy.

Originally published as Sue Dunlevy: How Aussies’ lifestyle choices are impacting their health