We all know that maintaining a busy work life and healthy lifestyle is challenging.  At GutCheck, we wanted to dig deeper to understand how working professionals who actively focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle are doing — and what we can learn from them.  

We conducted a three day Instant Research Community with over 35 respondents and probed for their insights on activities, brands and even celebrities that they pay attention to when thinking about living a healthy lifestyle.  Here are a couple of highlights from the community members:

* Respondents identified living a healthy lifestyle with many different brands.  In fact they mentioned nearly 50 national and regional brands collectively.  The challenge is any agreement on brands that do represent maintaining a healthy lifestyle consistently.  Kashi was the one brand that rose above the clutter, with 42% of respondents mentioning it specifically.  The next mentioned brand was Whole Foods with only 18%.

* Even those who actively try to live a healthy lifestyle find barriers to do so.  A third of respondents say that they frequently run out of time.  In addition, 21% said that their other family members kept them from keeping their health and wellness goals (can be spouse, children or older parents — but children were mentioned most often).  Another significant factor was the actual expense of staying healthy — most notably the price of organic food.

For more details on this Instant Research Community, please see the summary report.  Some great insights!