LAT: “Why Are Unhealthy People so Reluctant to Change Their Lifestyles?”
The title says it all, doesn’t it?
Amazingly, people who have already suffered heart trouble, diabetes or other lifestyle-related illnesses —people who intimately know the consequences of their behaviors — often have an especially hard time turning things around. It seems it takes more than a wake-up call, even a life-threatening one, to get people to give up their unhealthful ways.
At least 40% of smokers who survive a heart attack are still puffing away a year later.
And you might think that an overweight person would slim down after a heart attack. But often, not so. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis followed a group of more than 1,200 overweight men and women for a year following a heart attack. Their study, published in the American Heart Journal in 2007, found that individuals lost an average of just 0.2% of their body weight. For a 220-pound man, that would translate to less than 1 pound of weight loss.
I’ve known people like this… some are simply fatalistic while others are (apparently) in denial. It’s their choice, of course, although it’s a head-scratcher for the rest of us, for sure.
May 23, 2011
Head-scratcher for sure. I just don’t get it. It seems to me if you are doing something that causes a major health issue, you would stop.
Obviously I am not smart enough to understand.