1. Eating Too Much Fast Food
Why It’s Dangerous: A steady diet of double cheeseburgers and fries washed down with an oversize soft drink often leads to a bigger waistline and other related health problems, like heart disease and diabetes. Trans fat, often found in fast food, raises ‘bad’ cholesterol and blood fats that contribute to hardening of the arteries, as well as firing up inflammation, which contributes to the build-up of fatty plaque in artery walls.
Why You Should Stop: The health benefits of switching to a healthy diet are immediate and substantial. Making a permanent lifestyle change isn’t easy. Fast food is super-convenient, surprisingly inexpensive, and thanks to all its fat, salt, and sugar, undeniably tasty. Healthy eating takes more time and thought, but it’s worth it. In addition to losing extra weight, slimming your waistline and protecting yourself from heart disease and diabetes, you’ll save money if you prepare your own meals instead of eating out.
How To Reverse the Habit:
Wean yourself off slowly: Cut back a little per week and buy a little less each time you go.
Switch to healthier menu options: Replace pop with coffee or water, burgers with grilled chicken, and fries with a salad.
End impulse visits: Avoid popping into a fast food joint just because you walked or drove by one, especially if you’re not hungry or it isn’t meal time.
Switch to grocery stores: Hungry and need a fast meal? You can usually find healthy prepared meals at your local grocery store.
2. Becoming a bed potato
Why this is dangerous: The less physical activity you watch, the more likely you are to gain weight and develop type 2 diabetes. A large-scale study of more than 9,000 people found that those who watched TV for more than two hours a day ate more, saw less sugary drinks and ate less high-fat, high-calorie, snacked foods. It also causes memory loss if you spend time on an old hobby, visiting friends, or exercising your mind.
Why you should stop: By converting TV time into active time and keeping a healthy TV / activity balance, you can burn more calories, become healthier, and reduce your chances of related health problems. You will have more time for a relaxed body and sleep, as well as more energy, a better mood, a stronger mind and more social relationships, which can help boost your confidence.
How to make habits?
Follow the 2/30 rule: This means no more than 2 hours of TV and at least 300 minutes of exercise a day.
Don't Surf Channel: Just turn on the TV when you have something special to watch. Get out instead of foolishly searching.
Exercise while you watch: get up, sit up, do pushups or drag your treadmill into the TV room.
Clean during advertising: Do not eat food that has been emptied of trash, emptied of room, or laundry. This can add up to about 20 minutes of calorie-burning activity per day.
Resolve to leave home more often: See more friends, do more interesting things and stimulate your mind every day.
3. Snacking Even When You’re Full
How To Reverse the Habit:
Reacquaint yourself with hunger: Wait to eat until your body is physically craving food.
Stop eating before you’re stuffed: Finish when you feel just a little bit full, you’ll eat less this way.
Eat for the right reason: Because you’re hungry-not because you’re stressed, bored, angry, or sad.
Stop mindless eating: If snacking is an old, bad habit, ban unhealthy food from your home.
Replace junk food with real food: Once you’ve cleared your pantry, stock your kitchen with fruits, veggies, nuts, and low-fat, whole-grain products.
4. Smoking
How To Reverse the Habit:
Treat it like an addiction, not a habit: Before you stop, prepare for the tough road ahead. Prepare a strategy, a support team, and a Plan B if your first methods fail.
Ask your doctor about a stop-smoking drug
Get support: Enlist your friends and family. Counselors, hotlines, and support groups can also help.
Time it right: Plan to quit during a calm period, not over the holidays or when you’re under a lot of stress. Try ‘nicotine fading’: Use a nicotine patch or gum to help you gradually become accustomed to life without cigarettes and nicotine.
Remember that a lapse isn’t a failure: Use slip-ups to discover your personal obstacle to quitting and create a plan for dealing with those needs.
5. Overspending Your Way into Debt
How To Reverse the Habit:
Learn about money management: Educate yourself on the the basic rules and methods of personal finance-for credit cards, mortgages, budgeting, and investing.
Freeze your credit cards: Literally. Put them in a cup, add water, and relegate them to the back of your freezer so you’ll stop using them.
Create a budget: How much money is coming in each month? How much are you spending on essentials, and how much frivolously? Keep track, and discover what you need to cut back on.
Pay at least the monthly minimum on your bills: Prioritize paying more on the highest-interest credit card. Once you’ve paid it off, move on to the next worst.
Automate good monthly habits: Use online banking to transfer some of your paychecks into a savings account, and set your bills to be paid automatically.
6. Drinking Too Much
How To Reverse the Habit:
Stick to healthy limits: That’s two or less drinks per day for men, one for women.
Reserve alcohol for meals: You’re more likely to sip your drink slowly that way.
Drink for flavor, not to get drunk: As an adult, you shouldn’t drink to escape. Find a healthier coping mechanism.
Can’t stop? Acknowledge the addiction: Talk with your doctor and contact a support group like AA.
Take screenings for bone density and cancers seriously: Check with your doctor if you should be screened more often.
7. Feeling Stressed
How To Reverse the Habit:
Learn to stop getting stressed so easily: How you react to triggers determines your stress level. Next time you feel a situation emerging, work hard at managing it and staying cool.
Learn a formal stress-relief process: Among the most proven are yoga, meditation, and deep breathing.
Rediscover optimism: Pessimism is a learned behavior. Regaining your sense of hope can go a long way toward stifling stress and regaining a sense of happiness.
Enjoy a relaxing hobby: Calm down by immersing yourself fully during your down time.
Rediscover silliness: Remember than in every grown adult resides a young child. You’re older, but your spirit doesn’t have to be. Stop suppressing your sense of fun and silliness and remember to enjoy yourself.
8. Getting Sunburned Every Summer
How To Reverse The Habit:
Schedule an annual skin check by a dermatologist: Your doctor will inspect your skin for any unusual changes, and take a small sample to determine the nature of the growth.
Stay safe in the sun: Wear sunscreen with high SPF, stick to the shade, wear a hat, sunglasses, long sleeves and pants during peak sunburn hours.
Get your glow with a self-tanner instead of the sun: You’ll get the bronzed look without the cancer risk.
Know a danger sign when you see it: Anything new that doesn’t look right to you on your skin deserves to be checked by a doctor.
Sip green tea: There’s some evidence that green tea may protect your cells against cancer-causing sun damage.
9. Skipping Breakfast
How To Reverse the Habit:
Work with your body: Not hungry first thing in the day? Wait and hour or two until you’re ready to eat.
Eat foods you like: No need to start the day with breakfast food. Have a sandwich, a bowl of soup, or last night’s leftovers-whatever your pleasure is.
No time? Make a portable breakfast sandwich: Bring along a piece of fruit, and maybe some milk in a coffee mug.
Have a smoothie: Whirl low-fat yogurt, frozen berries, half a banana, a little OJ, and some honey in a blender. It’s the ultimate healthy on-the-go breakfast.
Set things up in advance: Prep breakfast the night before, so you can eat it at the kitchen table in 10 minutes or less.
10. Abusing Pain Killers and Sedatives
How To Reverse the Habit:
Switch to acetominophen for chronic pain: It doesn’t cause stomach irritation, and doesn’t raise blood pressure like aspirin and ibuprofen. Save ibupofen for flare-ups of severe, short-term pain. It’s usually safe for up to 10 days, but not more.
Check out alternate pain-relief strategies: Weight loss, exercise, stress relief and avoiding triggers can help.
Don’t take habit-forming drugs for over four months: Challenge your doctors when they want to put you on pain, mood, or sleeping medication long-term if you think you’ll be susceptible to addiction-particularly if the drugs work well.
Watch for hidden signs: Clues you’re taking too much of a tranquilizer include memory loss, excess sleepiness, feeling unresponsive and falling frequently.
Get help if you can’t stop: There’s no shame in asking for help from family members, friends, or your doctor.
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