Nowadays, work stress, busy lifestyles and responsibilities have taken our focus away from what comes before any of these, ‘Health’! Many of us are too busy to plan what we eat, or calculate if we are having a balanced diet. It does consume time and discipline to chalk out a diet and stick to it. Well, if you find it difficult to do so, lets start with cutting down some of these basic unhealthy habits that we never realised did most of the harm.
Below are 4 unhealthy habits its time to ditch:
1.Skipping breakfast:
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. When the body has been starving for long, it results in slowing down the metabolic rate. The body starves overnight, and when you skip breakfast on top of that, it would just have a negative impact on the metabolism and make you gain weight eventually. Plus, a lot of nutrients of the body get used up while one sleeps to repair the wear and tear of muscles and tissues. And when the body fails to receive those nutrients in the breakfast, it creates temporary deficits in the body. This in turn makes you crave more food throughout the day to make up for for the missing nutrients. In the end, you just end up eating more and consuming more calories than you would otherwise.
2.Eating while you are distracted: When you eat while you are distracted you tend to eat more than you are aware of. While sitting on a couch, watching a movie, we tend to keep reaching into the bowl of chips, even when we aren’t hungry. This makes one consume unnecessary calories, and overloading on junk. If you really like eating while watching movies, then decide a healthy quantity in advance to avoid eating excess. Also, do time your snacks, so as to have proper intervals in between, so that the body has time to digest it.
3.Emotional eating: This is one habit that we somewhat do intentionally. Had a break up? Lets swallow down an entire ice-cream tub at a time. Stressed out from work, lets have a gigantic bar of chocolate! Yes, we all do it. And it may make us feel better momentarily, but we load in more calories at a time then we would do in an entire day.Once in a while it is fine, but one shouldn’t make this the only rescue habit every time one’s stressed out. Instead, switch to a healthier stress buster, like exercise. A brisk walk, swimming or hitting the gym can really help one beat stress. And its healthy too.
4.Loading on weekends: Some of us feel that yes, I have watched what I eat the entire week, time to cheat during the weekends. And that’s when we nullify all the pains we took throughout the week to remain fit. If you eat healthy 5 days, and load in carbohydrates and sugar the remaining two days, however unfair it sounds, it completely takes you down to zero. You can cheat a bit, but don't eat after the point when you are full. Avoid too many desserts, and try eating them in the first half of the day rather than around dinner. Detox your body during weekends. This just helps you reap better results from all those hours in the gym throughout the week.
5.Eating late at night:
When you eat late at night, the body tends to store it as fat and gain weight, rather than burning it as energy. People feel that a calorie is a calorie in the end no matter when you consume it. But apparently, the timing is extremely important as it determines how the body would treat the food. So eat at least an hour before you sleep. The food settles down by then and doesn’t store it as unnecessary fat.
