Examining the network dynamics of daily movement and dietary behaviors among college students: A diary study

Abstract Promoting individuals' overall health and well‐being is important, and understanding the interconnections between daily movement and dietary behaviors may provide insights for developing effective health behavior interventions. In the current study, we therefore adopted a network approach to investigate the complex relationships among movement and dietary behaviors within a daily diary study. Data were collected from 101 college students over a 28‐day period, assessing movement (i.e., physical exercise and sedentary behavior) and dietary (i.e., overeating, sugar‐sweetened beverage intake, and snack consumption) behaviors. We employed a multilevel vector autoregressive model to analyze the within‐person (temporal and contemporaneous) and between‐person networks of movement and dietary behaviors. Our findings unveiled a negative association between physical exercise and sedentary behavior at both contemporaneous and between‐person levels, while the interconnections among dietary behaviors displayed nuanced variations across different levels. We also found intricate relationships between movement and dietary behaviors, with sedentary behavior and sugar‐sweetened beverage intake emerging as central nodes in the behavior networks. This exploratory study underscores the complex interconnections of daily health behaviors, particularly highlighting the potential roles of sedentary behavior and sugar‐sweetened beverage intake in multiple behavior interventions. These preliminary findings have yet to be validated through theory‐driven studies with experimental designs.