One can’t just drastically change their way of life overnight. Sometimes it starts by building healthier habits and making them part of your routine and lifestyle. So, how do you exactly build good habits? It sometimes starts with recognizing your bad habits and actively making a change. After that, you incorporate the essential good habits and practice them. To help you get started, here’s a list of bad habits you might be practising now.
Table of Contents
Eating Late at Night
The first bad habit you should quit on this list is that you should stop consuming food late at night. Eating foods near your sleeping time will affect your circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is an internal process that regulates sleep and other metabolic processes. This means that snacking at night significantly affects your sleeping cycle because your body adjusts its insulin sensitivity.
In the morning, your body becomes sensitive to insulin, which helps power your body up. However, in the evening, your body becomes insulin-resistant, and all the calories you’ve just consumed will be stored in your body as fat. So, to start living with healthy habits, you can first practice not eating too late in the night.
Hydrating Yourself With Juice and Soda
You might think that juice and soda satiate your thirst sometimes, but it’s not the best way to do so. For starters, juice and soda contain extra amounts of sugar. So, drinking them as an alternative to water will only make you more thirsty and crave them more.
What’s more, consuming large amounts of juice and soda might only do more harm than good. Too much can usually cause urinary tract infection and, most of the time, weight gain. Also, if you are predisposed to diabetes, dropping this bad habit as soon as possible would be best. So, instead of losing yourself in sodas, consider habitually bringing a bottle of water with you wherever you go.
Not Getting Enough Exercise
One of the habits you should consider practising is exercising. Although you might hear this a lot, only a few people practise this activity when exercising entails more benefits than you think. If you’re finally planning to start exercising, you can try to start slow by running on a treadmill or jogging around your area. You can do it during your free hours, but it’s usually recommended to go jogging in the morning to make you feel refreshed throughout the day.
Then, slowly increase the intensity as day passes by. You can reach out to a fitness instructor to guide you or enroll at your local gym to stay motivated. Keep in mind that what you also need the most is to stay consistent.
Undersleeping
You must understand that sleeping is a significant factor in one’s well-being and body. Most of the time, people only act when they see illness or symptoms manifesting from their poor habits. Remember, when symptoms start being visible, it’s usually a sign that your body is at a serious, more likely life-threatening stage of an illness.
Aside from various health problems that could shorten your lifespan due to a habitual lack of sleep, you’re constantly putting yourself and others at risk. For example, due to fatigue and lack of sleep, many drivers have fallen asleep on the road, that’s caused car accidents. So, before you get complacent with your sleeping routine, practice sleeping earlier than you used to.
If you’re having a hard time sleeping, investigate your night routine and figure out what could possibly affect sleep. Were you using your phone before sleeping? Do you keep your lights on at night? If so, consider making your room a more sleep-inducing environment to experience better results.
However, if you’ve already done enough and still can’t fall asleep, consider asking for professional help because there might be an underlying psychological or physiological problem you’ll need help with.
Setting Unrealistic Expectations
Another bad habit you need to quit right now is setting unrealistic expectations. Setting goals allows a person to stay motivated and achieve goals in life, but setting them too high can often lead you to a bad place. Humans are resilient, intelligent, and adaptable, but change is best met with small and brave steps with patience that ensures the development of the habit.
Although change is good, being too fast and setting the bar too high will only overwork you. There might even be instances where you need to catch some details that can lead to worrying situations. So, do yourself some favour and reconsider the goals you’ve set up. Having short-term goals and long-term ones that are relatively conventional doesn’t make you less of an achiever. Keep in mind that sometimes, small steps are more!
Final Thoughts
Once you’ve realized all your bad habits, it’s now time to put action to turn them into better ones. Change is done only if you’ve put in the effort. So, consider all the necessary things and plan how you’ll reach your goal by practising good habits. You can use the list above to help you recognize your bad habits and start a good change for yourself.
