Everyone has bad habits, from unhealthy eating to serious addictions that can seriously impact your health and longevity. No matter what your habits are, there are always healthy, positive alternatives available. The key is to recognize your unsavory practices and do everything you can to turn your life in a more positive direction.
Habitually Unhealthy Eating Habits
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Obesity is an epidemic in the United States. Over half of all adults are overweight and 35.7 percent are obese. Worse, 16.9 percent of children in America qualify as obese. Between fast foods, saturated fats, refined carbs, chips, sodas, and increasingly sedentary lifestyles, obesity causes far too many health issues and contributes to far too many deaths.
In theory, the idea of eating more fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean protein is completely effortless. In practice, reversing a lifetime of poor eating habits is much more difficult. With perseverance, willpower, and an eye toward eating good things instead of counting calories, however, you can improve your eating habits. By doing so, you’ll improve your heart health, brain function, and overall longevity.
Vices That Can Cause You Harm
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Smoking, drinking, and abusing drugs are all severely unhealthy habits that inhibit your life in many ways. You can lose your sense of self, your self-respect, your job, your money, your family, and your life. Addiction is a disease and it can completely take over your life. Whether you’re addicted to nicotine, alcohol, or narcotics, there is help — and hope.
Giving up cigarettes is arguably the easiest habit to change, but it’s still difficult. You’ll have to look into many things, from patches to gum. You may even want to try hypnosis. For stronger addictions to more serious substances, a holistic drug rehab with therapy is a better option. You need to learn different ways to cope with sober living to increase your chances of success.
Dangerous Money Mismanagement
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Money mismanagement is a more serious bad habit than you might think. Whether you’re a chronic over-spender or a gambling addict, poor financial habits can ruin your life. In addition to going into debt, you might miss your bill payments, lose your home, or have difficulty qualifying for loans.
To correct this habit, you need willpower. Hire a money manager if your problems are serious enough, because you’ll need professional help. If you feel like you can climb out of this problem yourself, invest in budgetary software. You simply have to hold yourself accountable for your spending.
Engaging in Environmentally Unfriendly Behavior
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Failing to recycle, using too much water or electricity, or driving everywhere might not seem like bad habits, but they’re some of the worst. They impact future generations and the Earth itself, not just you.
Fortunately, environmentally unfriendly behavior is the easiest bad habit to break. You may have to train yourself to stop taking long showers, leaving the lights on, or throwing away your soda cans and paper products, but you can. Once you get into better, greener habits, they become second-nature.
Every bad habit has a positive, healthy alternative. Do you have a bad habit that you want to replace with a better one?
