You aren’t a stupid person –not by any means.
In fact, I believe that you’re healthier than most. You exercise regularly. You watch what you eat. You keep up-to-date on the latest health concerns. You don’t binge on sugar. And you never – ever - eat fast food. Well, almost never.But you do have a few unhealthy skeletons in your closet – ones that you probably aren’t even aware of.
The following 5 Stupid Habits are frequently committed by health conscious people. Once you break these bad habits, you’ll find that achieving your weight loss goals just became a whole lot easier.
1. You’re Dehydrated
- It has been said that 75 percent of the population is chronically dehydrated. Would you disagree? When was the last time that you actually drank 8 glasses of water in a day?
- Dehydration occurs when more fluid leaves your body than is taken in. Symptoms include: fatigue, irritability, headaches, nausea, rapid heart rate, and, in extreme cases, even death.
- Dehydration also slows your metabolism, which hinders weight loss.
- Research suggests that most people eat out one out of every 4 meals and snacks. That’s an average of once a day.
- Restaurant food is designed to do one thing: to taste good. In order to increase eating pleasure, each item is loaded with fat, salt and sugar. This causes you to eat way more calories than you actually need.
- Even when you order ‘healthy’ items, you’re still taking in more calories and fat grams than you would if you had prepared the item at home. Imagine the last salad you ordered out. Didn’t it come with cream dressing, croutons, cheese sprinkles and a piece of butter laden bread on the side?
- In Gallup Poll surveys, 56% of the adult population reported that drowsiness is a problem in the daytime. That’s more than half of us that clearly don’t get enough sleep.
- Healthy adults require 7-8 hours of sleep each night. When you fail to meet this need your body goes into sleep debt, which continues to accumulate indefinitely until you catch up.
- A lack of sleep negatively affects your immune system, your nervous system, and interferes with healthy hormone release and cellular repairs.
- Stress creates an increase in the hormone cortisol, and chronic stress creates a chronic increase in cortisol. This is a problem because is slows your metabolism, leads to cravings and is linked to greater levels of abdominal fat storage.
- The vicious cycle of stress and weight gain goes around and around. Stress causes you to eat emotionally, and your raised cortisol levels cause that food to be stored as fat.
- You do the same thing each and every time you exercise. Same machines, same pace, same duration. While your routine sure feels comfortable, your results have long since halted.
- A plateau occurs when your body adapts to your routine and weight loss stops. It is incredibly frustrating, and totally avoidable.
- You don’t have to increase the amount of time that you spend exercising in order to see quicker, faster results. It’s all about challenging your body.
Confidence Booster
Have you ever wished that you had more confidence? People who exercise regularly report experiencing a boost of confidence. Think about it: when you set a higher standard for yourself confidence grows naturally. As you lose weight and feel better than ever your confidence will sky rocket.