Pillar 3: Eliminating Unhealthy Habits
It’s difficult to admit that your unhelpful habits might be causing you stress. As you read in the previous discussions on sleep and stress, the effect of cortisol in the body can cause a physiological process inside you that leads to inflammation and a long list of corresponding health problems. Stress uses your body’s nutrients, which hinders other processes like detoxification in the liver.
Stress also has an amazing ability to compound itself. Once you find yourself in a stressful situation, you may feel more prone to other causes of stress, be subject to cravings for caffeine and sugar, and struggle with productivity due to poor sleep, and result in poor time management.
Two of the habits that are quick to be be set aside are healthy eating and physical activity. Fit people are more likely to live longer, suffer fewer diseases, have fuller lives and are usually more successful than their out of shape peers. Eating whole, natural and untreated foods are less taxing on your liver and help to reduce inflammation.
One way to minimize the negative effects of unhelpful habits in your life is to eliminate some unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. For example, turning to sugar and processed foods for a quick energy boost sends your insulin hormone into oscillations. Irregular blood sugar leads to inflammation in the body and can make sleep difficult. The result is feeling tired during the day, performing your work poorly, and falling behind in your schedule. You crave stimulants like coffee and sugar, which compounds the cycles and can create a physically untenable situation in your life.
But there is good news. When you slowly regain control over your health by recognizing and changing unhelpful habits and behaviors, you will gain better levels of fitness and enjoy natural energy, all day long.
1- Unhealthy Relationships. One unhelpful habit that infrequently is identified as such is fostering unhealthy relationships. You do not have to totally eliminate contact with friends and family members that are: self-centered, constantly negative, or actively causing stress in your life. But you can minimize the time you spend with these people.
2- Eliminating Processed foods. Sugary foods, fried, fatty and processed food products taste incredible. But they are extremely unhealthy. If you suffer from the effects of poor nutrition in your diet, this is a unhelpful habit you should change immediately – but gradually because if you make too many changes, too soon, and you might find it hard on your digestion.
Food manufacturers add addictive chemicals intentionally so that you will become hooked on their offerings. It makes changes to your diet all the more difficult. I highly recommend you start slow, replacing one unhealthy processed meal a day by substituting it with a plant-based dish filled with fruit or vegetables. This change can also slowly curb your addiction to sugar, salt and the various chemicals found in most processed foods. See the later chapter for more information on making healthy dietary changes.
3 – Quit Smoking. Speaking of intentionally addicting you to unhealthy chemicals, alcohol and tobacco manufacturers are guilty of this as well. No one needs to tell you how dangerous, and possibly deadly, prolonged abuse of alcohol, cigarettes and cigars can be. By causing a laundry list of health problems, they can be extremely stressful to you, and limit your ability to be active with limited breath. If you smoke, stress can also be caused by the impact your smoking has on your relationships, even negatively affecting your family, friends and career.
4 – Excess Coffee and Black Tea. Caffeine is not inherently bad for you. A cup of coffee in the morning or a glass of black tea during the day is fine. Those beverages have been shown to deliver health benefits. But when you overdo coffee or tea (black or green), you can become jittery. Your work and personal relationships can suffer because of lack of focus and irritability. More than 1 or 2 cups a day of coffee or caffeinated tea is too much (1 cup is 8 ounces, not your XXL sized coffee cup).
5 – Work-life Imbalance. Overworking can be an unhelpful habit as well. Dedication to your job is commendable, and is often an important survival tactic in many work environments. There is a balance between taking proper care of yourself and your family, and putting in the effort required to make a good living, or even get promoted. If you spend too much time at work, your diet and sleep can suffer, with strained relationships and poor health as the result.
When you are honest with yourself, you can identify the unhelpful habits that are causing you to be unfit, tired, low on energy and unhealthy. Take it slow, and work on one habit at a time. The health that accompanies your behaviors will directly correlate with your choices. Up next, we’ll look at what happens when you choose daily physical activity and how your fitness and energy levels will improve as a positive byproduct.
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