Overeating, worshipping the sun, spending beyond your means—we all know these habits fall squarely into the bad-for-you category. But just how bad are they? Turns out, they can wreak plenty of havoc with your overall health. Keep reading to see how you can break 10 bad health habits.
Snacking when you’re not hungry
Losing touch with your body’s natural hunger and satisfaction signals can lead to chronic overeating and unhealthy extra pounds—which increases your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and other serious conditions. And if it’s junk food you’re snacking on—or even so-called “healthy” snacks that are secretly bad for you—you’re also flooding your body with unhealthy ingredients. (Learn the secrets that keep these countries the heart-healthiest in the world.)
Snacking when you’re not hungry “really does miss the concept of what it means to truly fuel your body and instead highlights a deeper issue such as boredom, stress, depression, or anxiety,” says Kristin Kirkpatrick, RDN, a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of KAK Consulting in Denver. “When I see this habit in my patients, I try to use it as a learning experience to identify the ‘why’ and to start healing the hidden reasons why food is becoming a remedy. I tell them to eat until they are no longer hungry, not until they are full. Finding the balance here can truly help tap into intuitive eating.”
By paying attention to your hunger signals and switching to healthy snacks, you can boost nutrition, control cravings, 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
Spending too much time on the couch watching TV
A sedentary lifestyle has long been linked to poor health. The less physical activity you get, the greater your odds of being overweight and developing type 2 diabetes. A growing body of research suggests it may also affect personality. In the largest study of its kind, published in 2018 in Journal of Research in Personality, researchers looked at data from three studies and found a link between a lack of exercise and a decline in character traits such as conscientiousness that can persist for up to 20 years.
If television is replacing time you’d otherwise be spending engaged in a favorite hobby, visiting with friends, or exercising your mind, you may also be speeding up memory loss. You’d be surprised at how many ways exercise and movement can radically improve your health and well-being. By 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.
Overspending your way into debt
Money worries can have serious health consequences. In a study of 640 middle-age adults, published in 2016 in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers found that participants going through financial stress had greater levels of inflammation—and not so much because of increased negative emotions, but because of decreased positive ones.
Regaining a hold on your finances takes time, can be hard on your ego and your lifestyle, and requires you to be constantly vigilant. But “recognizing that you can make change in your life is important,” says Nicole Bereolos, PhD, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Dallas. The results are worth whatever sacrifices you have to make.
Eating too much fast food
A steady diet of double cheeseburgers and fries washed down with an oversize soda or milkshake can obviously lead to a growing waistline, but it can also result in assorted obesity-related health problems like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. That’s not all: “Some studies show that fast food can reduce the effectiveness of the immune system and lead to poor mental health,” says Kirkpatrick.
The health benefits of making the switch to healthy food will be almost immediate and will have substantial lasting benefits.
Getting sunburned a few times every summer
A study of more than 31,000 adults in the U.S., published in 2018 in JAMA Dermatology, suggests that many of us still haven’t gotten the message about sunburns. Nearly 5 million people are treated for skin cancer in the U.S. each year and part of that is because we aren’t vigilant and consistent with sun protection. The researchers found that physically active people, and those who use sunless tanners or sunscreen for tanning purposes are especially prone to sunburns. Even just one blistering burn doubles your risk of developing melanoma later in life.
Bottom line: If you love sunbathing or make an effort to maintain a golden-bronze tan, you’ve unwittingly contributed to the aging of your skin. Sunbathing destroys the elastic fibers that keep skin looking firm and smooth, leading to earlier wrinkles, blotches, freckles, and discolorations. More important, sunburns contribute significantly to cancers of the skin. If you’ve included trips to the tanning salon, that’s even worse. Despite what ads suggest, there’s no such thing as a “safe” tan. Using a tanning bed actually raises your risk for skin cancer and wrinkles, according to the American Academy of Dermatology.
Behavior that leaves you angry, worried, or stressed all of the time
More than three-quarters of adults in the U.S. report being stressed, according to the American Psychological Association. And that was before Covid-19 ushered in a whole new set of stressors. When your body is flooded with a cascade of stress hormones that raises your blood pressure and blood sugar, lowers immunity, slows digestion, and makes you feel depressed.
Nature intended stress to be a short-lived fight-or-flight response to a threat, but modern life with chronic stressors can have far-reaching impact on your health, such as cravings for high-fat, sugary foods that increase your risk of being overweight, which only leads to a heightened risk for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Eating breakfast (or any meal) when you’re not hungry
Breakfast haters, rejoice. Turns out, the ironclad rule about never skipping breakfast isn’t so ironclad after all. A review of studies published in 2019, in BMJ, suggests that eating breakfast isn’t necessarily a good strategy for weight loss. The researchers even recommend that healthcare providers use caution when prescribing breakfast for adults who are looking to shed pounds, as it could have the opposite effect.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, however, recommends breakfast as an effective way to take in adequate nutrients and manage weight, says Kirkpatrick. “Multiple studies have shown that breakfast skippers are more likely to have a higher BMI (body mass index) and that breakfast eaters are more likely to make healthier choices throughout the day.” The need for further studies to solve the great debate about breakfast habits remains, she says.
Smoking cigarettes
No habit is as harmful to your health as smoking. It does a number on nearly every organ of your body, directly causing 20 percent of cardiovascular disease deaths, 30 percent of cancer deaths, and a massive 90 percent of all lung cancers, not to mention increasing your risk for mouth, throat, and, bladder cancer.
You may think there’s no undoing the damage, but that’s not true. Just a year after quitting, your risk for a heart attack drops sharply; within two to five years, your risk for stroke may reduce to that of a nonsmoker’s; your risks for cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and bladder drop by half within five years; and 10 years after you smoke your last cigarette, your risk for dying from lung cancer drops by half, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overusing painkillers and sedatives
When they’re not taken properly, long-term habitual use of prescription pain killers can lead to opioid addiction, causing more problems than they solve. But even over-the-counter drugs like ibuprofen or aspirin for arthritis or muscle pain should be taken with caution and should not be used for more than a few days unless necessary, according to a report published by Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.
The most common side effects of over-the-counter NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) affect the stomach and range from minor problems like indigestion and stomach ache to more serious problems like gastritis, ulcers, and bleeding in the stomach or bowel. Clues you’re taking too much of a calming Rx drug or sleeping pill, meanwhile, include memory loss, excess sleepiness, feeling unresponsive or confused, and falling frequently, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
