5 Ways to Ruin Your Health

I’m 35 years-old, and as far as I know, still in decent health. 

However, there’s a huge difference between how I feel today and how I felt in my early 20’s, and I know it’s not all due to age. 

My lifestyle has changed pretty drastically, and I think I’m beginning to pay the price. I’m a big believer that the actions we take on a daily basis have a huge, compounding impact on our future, and so I’m in the process of making some important changes to my life right now. I’ll be sharing those when I’m more confident that the changes have stuck.

But in the meantime, I wanted to reflect on where I went wrong and the mistakes I’ve made that have me on a trajectory I don’t want to be on. I hope you’ll learn from them as I have, and save yourself from ruining your health before your time.

5 Bad Health Habits in My Own Life That I’m Working On

Having 2 or 3 nights a week of really bad sleep.

There was a time in my life that I slept like a baby. But starting in college and continuing afterwards, that all changed. My problem is that I can’t turn off my brain. Sometimes I’m preoccupied about a certain topic, but other times I’m just alert and jumping from one idea to the next. 

The fact is, I enjoy being a night owl. Instead of disciplining myself to wind down at night, I consistently gave into this tendency until it became a habit that I can’t easily shake. I brought my phone into bed, and intentionally thought about stimulating topics instead of relaxing. 

Another theory I have is one that’s harder to admit. Sometimes I’m not tired at bedtime because I was too physically and mentally lazy during my waking hours. More on this in future posts, but for now I’ll say that your body keeps the score. Good sleep, a critical component of your health, must be earned.

Letting myself become aerobically out of shape.

In high school and college I was a competitive cross-country runner. I ran for more than an hour a day and lifted weights a couple times a week. But after college, without the camaraderie of a team or the motivation of competition, I let this huge part of my identity slip into a hobby and then eventually into nothing at all. 

I went from being probably in the top 1% of aerobic fitness to somewhere close to average for my age, and it’s because I never found another form of exercise I loved so much. I have gone through seasons of walking very regularly, but while great for your health and highly recommended, it doesn’t improve your fitness to nearly the same extent, or deliver the same mood-boosting hormones.

Using snacking as a way to address emotional discomfort.

My diet isn’t a disaster by any stretch, but in the past 3 years since starting to work from home, I have noticed it moving in a negative direction. While the quality of my meals has mostly stayed the same, I’m getting more and more of my calories from snacking. When you’re in the comfort of your own home, it’s easy to get up and grab a snack whenever you please.

The problem is that I’ve been noticing myself too often reaching for a snack because I’m bored or stuck or frustrated with a task. Not because I’m actually hungry. The end result of all this snacking is quite predictable: I weigh a good 5-8 pounds more than the baseline I had been at for the previous decade. While I’m not yet overweight, I want to get off the current trendline that I’m on and avoid those negative health effects.

Carrying around a low-level stress on a variety of topics.

Over the course of my life, I would not have considered myself a high stress person. Most of my friends and family would still consider me laid back. But beneath the surface, I’ve noticed a change in my personality in recent years— I’m much more likely to ruminate on things that are bothering me and carry stress from things that are outside my control. I also carry a good amount of stress from areas where I know could have been done better, but didn’t.

While the stress I carry isn’t overwhelming, I do wonder if the low level stress on a consistent basis might be at least contributing to several symptoms I’ve had in recent years which include ocular migraines and brain fog. I know it’s had a negative effect on my sleep, and that it could put my entire health at risk if not managed.  

Spending the vast majority of my living hours sitting or laying down.

It didn’t really hit me until recently how little I stand up. The realization came one day when I was playing with my kids and devised a game where I sit down and they run around me while I try to throw soft balls at them.

How could I possibly need or want to sit in the evenings after having spent nearly the entire day sleeping on my bed, working at my desk, or sitting at the table to eat? But honestly, the more I sit, the more often I want to sit. It’s like my body has gotten used to the minimum effort of holding my bones upright and decided it prefers to slouch in a chair instead.

Not only is the evidence becoming more clear, but common sense says that sitting nearly every hour of the day is a completely unnatural way of living that is only possible in this crazy modern world. Eventually, there are bound to be consequences of this sedentary choice.

You Can Change The Trajectory of Your Health Starting Today

It’s never too late to improve your health. If you’ve tried and failed in the past, it’s probably because you reached a point where you decided the effort wasn’t worth the reward. I’m here to remind you that it feels amazing to be healthy and in shape. 

Everything about life is improved when you are feeling good to the best of your ability, and taking care of yourself. That’s why I’m taking action in my own life.

The discomfort of change isn’t permanent. Eventually the psychological effort to maintain your new lifestyle becomes drastically less. Just don’t give in before the pay off arrives!