You probably know the importance of living a healthy life and promoting wellness. You’ve researched various strategies, read articles, and watched videos about how to boost your wellness and live a healthy life. You’ve even gone further to set many health and wellness goals for yourself. And yet, for some reason, you still struggle to live the healthy life you always dream about, and even worse, you can’t seem to place a finger on what you could be doing wrong. If any of the above presumptions sounds a lot like what you are going through, you might want to find out if there are some daily habits you’re still holding on to that make it difficult for you to live the healthy life you want. In other words, are the following habits sabotaging your health and wellness?
Failing to be proactive with your health
A common mistake many people make concerning their health is that they wait until there’s something wrong before dashing off to see a doctor. Some people ignore potential health issues until they become serious before seeing a health specialist. Many experts agree that getting regular medical examinations is one of the best ways of being proactive with your health. In addition, you can prevent most health problems simply by visiting your healthcare professional as regularly as necessary.
Do not postpone seeing a professional when you notice anything wrong with your health, as your health might only worsen. Even something that appears non-fatal, like a mild headache, will need medical attention if it is persistent or chronic.
Excessive drinking and smoking
If you need more reason to quit smoking and drinking, this is it. Smoking is associated with cancer, lung diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. Some reports suggest that some substances can be especially dangerous when used together. For example, combining tobacco with regular alcohol intake can increase the risk of some cancers. Smoking and drinking can make it difficult to see any results, regardless of how intense your fitness regimen is. Additionally, if you’re struggling to quit drinking alcohol or substance abuse, professional assistance is available to help you recover. For example, you can visit https://www.sunshinebehavioralhealth.com/texas/houston/ to get all the professional assistance you need.
Restricting your diet
While eating healthy is crucial to staying healthy, an overly restrictive diet can do your body more harm than good. You’ll be surprised by how common it is these days to find people sticking to liquid diets alone to lose weight, denying their bodies some essential nutrients and energy.
Some people opt for an overly restrictive diet like protein shakes alone or eating just fruits and veggies to help them lose weight. While it is possible to lose weight through this method, you will find that the extra weight comes right back when you get off that diet. You’ll also lack energy, as being too restrictive with your diet can deplete your energy levels. It is not sustainable.
Also, while reducing your calorie intake is necessary for weight loss, consuming fewer calories than your body needs does not automatically result in faster weight loss. So, always aim to give your body all the essential nutrients it needs while ensuring that you don’t consume more calories than your body needs. You can also seek options like semaglutide injections.
Not getting enough sleep
The amount of sleep your body gets can have a massive impact on your health, yet many people overlook it. When you sleep, you give your body a chance to rest, repair, and reset, putting you in a state of recovery and refreshing you to take up the next hours of physical activities.
In what has become a fast-paced modern world, many people choose to skip hours of sleep to get more work done and increase productivity. But this approach is counterproductive, as there is enough research to suggest that a lack of sleep can significantly reduce a person’s productivity levels.
Depriving your body of enough sleep means that you’re less likely to function effectively during the day. Aside from that, you’ll also put your body at risk of weakening your immune system, living with stress, and disrupting your hormonal balance. And this can affect your ability to live the healthy life you want.
Skipping your workouts or overindulging
You probably know how important exercising is to living a healthy life. Having a good fitness regime can help strengthen your immune system, reduce your risk of heart diseases, help maintain a healthy weight, help manage blood sugar and insulin levels, and generally improve your mood. Failing to exercise regularly means putting your health and weight at risk.
While regular exercise is crucial, overdoing your fitness also comes with several negative consequences, including overuse injuries, stress, mood swings, tiredness, depression, trouble sleeping, sore muscles, low productivity, to mention a few. Over-exercising in an attempt to achieve set goals is counterproductive, so the next point is equally important.
Setting unrealistic health and fitness goals
Many people set unrealistic expectations for themselves regarding their fitness goals, forcing them to want to push their bodies to the limits to achieve those goals. Sometimes, one of the number reasons many people fail to reach their health goals is because they set unrealistic targets. For instance, if your goal is to lose 50 pounds, giving yourself a couple of weeks to achieve it will be unrealistic. You will only push your body to its limits and do more harm than good.
Setting unrealistic expectations is an easy step to failure. The difficulties in meeting such expectations are more than enough to force you to abandon those health targets.
Living a sedentary lifestyle
The past several years have been pretty challenging for most people. Social distancing measures and remote working strategies have ‘forced’ many people to spend several hours of the day locked up in their homes. Unfortunately, this situation has led to many people living sedentary lifestyles, spending countless hours behind their phones, and turning into couch potatoes.
If you’re wondering what level of physical activity falls under a sedentary lifestyle, some research has suggested that any lifestyle that makes you take less than 5,000 footsteps can be considered passive, albeit there is still some controversy about this number. But it does give you some idea about what range of activity falls under sedentary. What many scientists do agree with is the fact that taking 10,000 steps or more each day makes you a healthier person.
Living a sedentary lifestyle is a huge impediment to any health and wellness goal – not to mention the fact that it makes you more vulnerable to various health conditions. An inactive lifestyle has been linked to health conditions like depression, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart diseases, including heart attack and coronary artery disease.
Poor social health
Regular interaction with other people is necessary for mental and emotional health and wellness. Some studies have suggested that living in isolation can make a person more vulnerable to depression and poor mood. Although an introvert will contest this suggestion, social interaction is essential for everyone.
Social wellbeing can affect brain chemistry and stress levels, impacting a person’s physical health. Even where it is impossible to meet people physically or live alone, you can take advantage of social media, video calls, or even traditional phone calls to stay socially active.
To live a healthier lifestyle, it is important to let go of these habits. Now that you know those bad habits, it’s time to cut them off.
