It is not too late to reverse your worst habits (stopping smoking, drinking, over-eating, and more) and immediately start living a happier, healthier life. Break your bad habits and build great new sustainable habits with The Life Habit
We all have bad habits. Some people don’t want to own up to them, but we all do things that we probably should lay off of. What we don’t do enough is confess our bad habits
Bad habits that you need to break
Everybody has bad habits. Granted, some of us have more bad habits than others, but we all have them.
Five habits that you need to break and how
1. Bad Habit: Snacking too much
I am specifically talking about when you are not particular hungry.
Losing touch with your body's natural hunger and satisfaction signals can lead to chronic overeating and unhealthy extra pounds that can lead to diabetes, heart disease, and other serious conditions. If it's junk foods you snack on, you're also flooding your body with unhealthy ingredients.
With determination, anyone can fix bad eating habits, and get to a healthier, more natural weight. By paying attention to your hunger signals and switching to healthy snacks, you can boost nutrition, control cravings, lose weight, and avoid energy slumps. Your weight will fall to a healthier level, and you'll replace unhealthy trans and saturated fat, sugar, refined carbohydrates, and extra sodium with more nutritious fare.
Break the bad 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.
- Plan snacks like you do meals: Eat your healthy snack on a plate, with a glass of water, and sit down at the table to enjoy it.
2. Bad Habit: Spending too much time on the couch watching TV.
The more TV you watch, the less physical activity you're getting, increasing your odds of being overweight and developing type 2 diabetes.
If television is replacing time you'd spend on an old hobby, visiting friends, or exercising your mind, it can also speed up memory loss.
By turning TV time into active time and committing to a healthy TV/activity balance, you can burn more calories, become more fit, and reduce your odds for related health problems quickly. You'll have a fitter body and more time for sleep, plus more energy, a better mood, sharper mind, and more social connections, which can even help you increase your self-confidence.
Break the bad habit
- Don't channel surf: Only turn the TV on when you have something specific to watch. Get out instead of searching mindlessly.
- Don't snack in front of the TV: It's far too easy to eat hundreds of calories' worth of chips and barely realize it.
- Exercise while you watch: Walk in place, do sit-ups, pushups, or drag your treadmill into the TV room.
- Clean during commercials: Avoid food commercials by emptying wastebaskets, vacuuming a room, or doing a load of laundry. It can add up to 20 minutes' worth of calorie-burning chore time everyday.
- Resolve to leave home more often: See more friends, do more interesting things, and stimulate your mind every day.
3. Bad Habit: Overspending your way into debt.
Money worries can have serious health consequences.
It's tough, but getting yourself out of debt is a lot like losing weight. It takes time, can be hard on your ego and your lifestyle, you have to be constantly vigilant, and it's easy to revert back to old habits. But for those who succeed, and many people do, the results are stunning. You'll feel more in control of your life with less stress and fewer worries. You'll be able to sleep better, stop overeating, and have fewer headaches. Finding ways to curb your spending and focus on the simple joys in life will also help improve your relationships.
Break the bad 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.
- Change money priorities: Stop shopping as a form of entertainment or distraction. Identify important things you'll need in the future and start savings programs for each.
4. Bad Habit: Behavior that leaves you angry, worried, or stressed all of the time.
An unhappy lifestyle releases a cascade of stress hormones that increase your blood pressure and blood sugar, lower immunity, slow digestion, and make you feel downright mean. Nature intended stress to be a short-lived fight-or-flight response to a threat, but modern life can lead to chronic stress and to far-reaching impacts on your health, such as increased risk of being overweight and overeating high-fat, sugary foods. Both raise your odds for heart disease and diabetes.
Stress-reduction techniques have been proven to lower blood sugar, improve immunity, reduce depression, ease chronic pain, lower blood sugar, and possibly protect your heart, too. A regained sense of joy and control is worth its weight in gold, and the physical health benefits will be substantial as well.
Break the bad 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.
- Eat healthy and exercise: A healthy lifestyle does wonders for your ability to manage stressful situations.
- 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 you spirits doesn't have to be. Stop suppressing your sense of fun and silliness and remember to enjoy yourself.Content continues below ad
5. Bad Habit: Drinking too much alcohol and smoking cigarettes
If you over-drink on a regular basis, alcohol can be a poison. Women who regularly consume two or more drinks a day and men who regularly down three or more are at higher risk for liver damage, various cancers including those of the liver and mouth, high blood pressure, and depression. Women, who are more sensitive to alcohol, can also develop heart disease, brittle bones, and even memory loss.
Soon after you cut back or quit, your digestion will improve and you'll sleep more soundly. Your blood sugar will be lower and steadier, your blood pressure may fall toward a healthier range, and even your brain will bounce back. You'll have a healthier liver and cardiovascular system. Since you're limiting your alcohol intake, you'll also be cutting your risk of being in a car accident. On top of feeling more energetic, you'll probably have better relationships with your family and friends, if drinking has caused problems in the past.
Break the bad 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: Join The Life Habit community
- Take screenings for bone density and cancers seriously: Check with your doctor if you should be screened more often.
- Liver damaged? Get a health plan: Talk to a doctor about a high-calorie diet to help your liver regenerate.
As far as health goes, no popular habit on Earth is as harmful as smoking. It directly causes 30 percent of heart disease deaths, 30 percent of cancer deaths, and a massive 80 to 90 percent of all lung cancers, not to mention increasing the risk of developing mouth, throat, and, bladder cancer. This bad habit also astronomically raises your odds for heart attacks, strokes, and high blood pressure, on top of possibly triggering or aggravating breathing problems like bronchitis and asthma attacks.
Break the bad 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.
- Get support: Join The Life Habit community.
- 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.
Join The Life Habit community today and find more really helpful tips and support to build great sustainable habits