Healthy Diet Linked With Better Physical Fitness in Middle-Age

While fit pros urge clients to follow healthy sleep hygiene habits, they may also want to note that a healthy diet also promotes better physical fitness. New research supports the concept that healthy fitness levels come not only from physical fitness training but also from other lifestyle factors like a healthy diet, as described in the European Society of Cardiology (2023; doi: 10.1093/eurjpc/zwad113). Researchers from multiple US institutions and the Framingham Heart Study in Framingham, Massachusetts, studied the relationship between dietary quality and better cardiorespiratory fitness with data from 2380 subjects.

“This study provides some of the strongest and most rigorous data thus far to support the connection that better diets may lead to higher fitness,” says study author Michael Mi, MD, division of Cardiovascular Medicine, department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. “The improvement we observed in participants with better diets was similar to the effect of taking 4,000 more steps each day.” Data analysis showed that a healthy diet is associated with greater physical fitness in middle aged adults. Study authors think that the positive relationship between diet and fitness may be partly explained by better metabolic health.

“This was an observational study,” says Mi. “We cannot conclude that eating well causes better fitness, or exclude the possibility of a reverse relationship, i.e., that fit individuals choose to eat healthy.”

See also: A Healthy Diet for the Ages