Unhealthy habits can hold you back from your fitness goals. They include wrong exercise selection, unclear goals, lack of motivation, poor diet, and lack of sleep.
We all know that a big part of being fit and healthy is getting regular exercise. Despite this, so many of us still struggle to get to the gym or play sports consistently. If this sounds like you, then reading about these 5 unhealthy habits and their effects could be preventing you from smashing your fitness goals.
Choosing the wrong type of exercise
The number of people trying to improve their health by performing exercise they hate is staggering. People are fighting an uphill battle trying to fix their unhealthy habits by enduring dreaded workouts.
When selecting a fitness regime, choose something you could see yourself doing multiple times a week. If you can’t stand running but love swimming, then leave your running shoes and hit your local beach or pool. Breaking unhealthy habits is not always easy, but selecting a workout that you look forward to and are excited about will have you crushing your health goals.
Unclear goal
If you want to be a machine in the gym or on the sporting field, you need to have a clear goal you are working towards. Without a goal, it becomes too easy not to take your health and training seriously and succumb to unhealthy habits.
What to do about this unhealthy habit? It is recommended you write down your exact goals and what you hope to achieve on paper. You should create a short (1-3 months), medium (12 months), and long-term goal (3 to 5 years). Goal-related unhealthy habits can’t withstand meticulous planning.
Lack of motivation
When starting your fitness journey, you need to tap into a driving force that will keep you persevering even when you feel like quitting. Otherwise, you will go straight back to your unhealthy habits. Common motivating factors include looking good, feeling happy, being pain-free, and inspiring your family. If you have a strong motivating force, you are less likely to give up on your fitness goals and return to unhealthy habits.
How to avoid this unhealthy habit? Whenever you are feeling a lack of motivation, it is best to think back to why you started your health journey and visualize your idealized healthy future. You want to create some sort of emotion. This should light a fire in you and get you back to the gym. Once you experience this wave of emotion, lack of motivation won’t plague your fitness journey.
The mother of all unhealthy habits – poor diet
How are you supposed to train like a lion when you eat like a mouse? To crush your gym workouts and overcome your unhealthy habits, you need to fuel your body with high-quality food. You need to experiment and find the foods that work for your body, but you can’t go wrong focusing on eating lean meat, vegetables, fruit, and some carbs pre-workout, such as rice and pasta. Consistently eating healthy foods is the secret to breaking diet-related unhealthy habits.
If your goal is to drop some extra weight, you need first to calculate the amount of calories intake and then start off by eating 250 to 300 calories less than you usually consume. You should keep carbs at a moderate level but load up on protein, 1 gram per kg of body weight is ideal. With this strategy, no diet-related unhealthy habits will ruin your health goals.
By supercharging your diet, you should feel a surge of energy and an overall lift in your general sense of well-being. If you are consistent, you should have the body you desire in no time and finally rid yourself of diet-linked unhealthy habits!
Lack of sleep
Lack of sleep is a major cause of unhealthy habits. Did you know people who average less than 5 hours of sleep per night are 4.5 times more likely to catch an infection compared to those who get 7 hours? Unhealthy habits like this can wreak havoc on your entire body.
If you find that you are often hungry, constantly tired, unable to recover from your fitness routine, then it is likely you have developed sleep-related unhealthy habits.
To fix your unhealthy habits and improve your sleep, try:
- Going to bed at the same time, routine is crucial to getting good sleep.
- Being asleep by 11 pm.
- Avoiding devices using at least 1 hour before sleep.
- Removing all light from your bedroom, you can even try blackout curtains.
Unhealthy sleeping habits can have a profoundly negative effect on all aspects of your health, not just your gym workouts. If you want to live a long and healthy life, make sure you are getting at least 8 hours of sleep per night to finally break your unhealthy habits.
Conclusion
The definition of an unhealthy habit is a custom that has a negative impact on your life. While the types and causes of unhealthy habits vary, we have given you some easy to implement
solutions to get your health back on track. Make sure you choose a workout routine you enjoy, create a clear goal, and fuel your training with plenty of nutritious food and 8 hours of sleep per night. If you implement these healthy habits, there is no fitness goal you can’t achieve.
We would love to hear about some of the unhealthy habits that have prevented you from achieving your fitness goals and how you overcame them. Please comment below and share your experiences.
Rebecca Shinn is a freelance writer for hookup sites and dating and relationship expert with a psychology degree. Her field of expertise is relationship, dating, and marriage. The important part of Rebecca’s practice is to help couples with communication skills, problem-solving skills, stress management, or financial skills.
Rebecca started writing 2 years ago to inspire and help people to have a better dating life, healthy relationships, or find a way to keep a marriage strong for long years.
With all said above, Rebecca is proud to be a mother and a wife so she doesn’t only use her knowledge for helping others but keeping her family strong and happy.