We are health conscious. We are so health conscious that today food is measured in not kilos or grams but calories. We see someone running and do a mental calculation about the calories he or she is burning. But our system of measuring ‘what is healthy’ and ‘what is not’ is many times faulty. Even with the amount of health information we have, these are some of the common health mistakes that we make…
Skipping Breakfast
Every day as you wake up in the morning there are thousand things that are going on in your mind, the list for things to do is already ready and your mind is furiously telling your body to wake up and hurry up. You zoom fast at break neck speed and get ready to go to work and as you step out of your house, you remember that you haven’t anything except a cup of chai or coffee! Too late to eat anything now you plan to have a heavy lunch instead!
Health-o-meter says “Starving your body= gaining weight”
Skipping reakfast comes as one of the foremost health mistakes. It is indeed a grave mistake to make. After last night’s dinner, your body has been working with no source of energy for almost 8-9 hours; if you skip having a healthy breakfast in the morning; you are enforcing an additional period of starvation on your body and providing the body with no energy to do activities that itneeds to do.
This slows down your metabolism with the body hoarding the calories and makes you extra hungry at lunch time which makes you overeat thus bringing in more weight gain.
So, to remain energetic throughout the day and increase your metabolism, have a heavy and nutritious breakfast!
Not getting enough sleep
You consider yourself to be very active and productive and hate lying down during the day. You pride yourself in the long hours at work and the activities at home. With so much to do and so little hours in the day, you try to squeeze some hours at night for the things you love namely reading, watching movies, writing and chatting with friends, not realizing that you are denying your body of its quota of restful sleep.
Health o meter says, “Be kind to your body”
Not getting enough sleep or sleeping too late has a negative impact on your health. Our body clocks have been evolved to work in the day and sleep at night and messing around with the body’s rhythm will only increase your health woes.
Not sleeping can make you gain weight as the hormone ghrelin that regulates your appetite, making you eat more is released at night. Apart from that your body is unable to rejuvenate from its wear and tear, making you feel tired and your immune system suffers damage as the body does not get time to repair and maintain the body. Also, your body releases Cortisol, the stress hormone, to deal with the task of staying awake at night making you jittery.
In other words you will be tired, more prone to illnesses; stressed, unfocused you stay up late or sleep less than your required quota.
Just like you take care of charging your laptop’s and cell phone’s batteries, make sure you charge your own reserves before you get ready for another day!
Smoking
When you work, you stress out and when you stress out, you need your dose of nicotine to deal with it. For those who smoke, cigarettes have already become a weakness, a crutch to rely on when stressed, tired, sleepy, happy or bored. Any occasion and emotion needs to be marked with a drag of the cigarette.
Health-o-meter says, “Stop now”
Forgetwhat health o meter says, every smoker knows that smoking is injurious to health; the cigarette manufacturing companies say it on the pack itself. It is only when you decide that this addiction to nicotine needs to be controlled can you take the leap. Here are some of the hazards of smoking, just to convince you once again,
Smoking causes cancers, causes premature wrinkles, decays your teeth, kills your appetite, increases the risk of impotence in males and increases the chances of complication in pregnancies in females, dehydrates you and increases the risk of hypertension and heart disease.
Before someone asks you to quit smoking once again, why not snuff out the cigarette and give your own health a break!
Drinking your calories
When you eat outside, you spend a long time thinking what you should order; you consider each option and mentally calculate the calories each one of them contains as you sip on your soft drink. What you don’t realize is that you are making a big diet mistake. You forget that you not only get calories from what you eat but also from what you drink. Since you were so caught up with the calories gained from foods, the calories you gain from health drinks, milkshakes, soft drinks, coffees, protein drinks gounnoticed and you fail to lose weight.
Health-o-meter says, “Ignorance is not bliss”
Drinks and liquids are ‘calorie dense’, that is, they contain more calories per gram than solids; calories in liquids are empty.They are not nutritionally rich; liquids generally do not contain fiber that is needed to absorb the nutrients and lose weight. Moreover, liquid calories do not satisfy hunger which is why one glass of your favorite soft drink will give you 200 calories that will not do anything to satiate your hunger;This makes you grab an extra burger. End result- you gain unnecessary weight!
So remember the best drink when thirsty is water and if you care for something else try- lemonade with honey, ice tea, chaas or buttermilk and panna or ripe mango squash instead.
Not doing weights
Who says that you don’t exercise - you do go for the occasional walks, you run to catch the train, you climb up and down the stairs when the lift is out of service and you sweat it out on a hot sunny day! However small the step, you have at least started including some steps that will help you be fit and lose weight. But did you know that while walking, swimming, jogging are all cardiovascular activities that increase heart and breathing, rate you still need strength training to get an overall workout.
Health-o-meter says, “Weights are good for you”
Weight or strength training is an essential part of workout. Here is why-weight training increases your muscle mass; muscles play an important role in burning calories hence increasing muscle mass means continuous weight loss since fat gets burnt. Muscle training helps in strengthening of bones, it improves balance and co-ordination and helps increase muscle strength in elderly and reduces risk factors for diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
Not consulting the Doctor
You show a brave front to everyone, you are constantly working - always efficient. Because of this habit of constantly working; you ignore the small illnesses- headaches, fevers, body aches that come your way. It is not until some ailment hampers our ability to work that we give a thought to consulting a doctor. This habit of ours can be very risky.
Health-o-meter says, “Pay attention to your body, listen to what it says”
Symptoms like unexplained lethargy, headache, excessive sweating and excessive urination can be precursors of many major diseases like Diabetes, heart attack, stroke, etc. You cannot consult your doctor every time you have a cold or fever but if there is persistent head ache or body ache or cold or fever, consulting the doctor is recommended. If you are experiencing symptoms like breathlessness, dizziness and chest pain, then rushing to consult the doctor is of utmost importance!
Other than consulting the doctor when not feeling well, remember to have yearly tests for blood sugar level, lipid profile for your cholesterol levels and pap smear tests, breast examination for ladies and other tests like bone density tests as recommended by the doctor.
Just believing the Scale
You want to lose weight, period. You are so determined in your goal that you have even brought a weighing scale to yourhome and weigh yourself the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. You may have supplanted ‘weight’ in your mind for ‘health’, but that is not how it is, in reality.
Health-o-meter says, “Health is not a number”
Even if you look thin, the fat deposited in your body can be high, if a person looks chubby but contains more muscle and water content, he is healthy. So rather than believing the weight scale alone, there are other figures that you need to know. These are –
- Fat percentage of about 20% is normal for males and upto 25% for females,
- Water percentage of anything around 55% is good,
- Visceral fat (fat content of internal organs index- it should be between 1-9,
- Waist in inches- In adults, it should be under 35 inches for females and less than 40 inches for males is recommended.
Bone mass- you should have a healthy number according to your weight. So next time you see a super thin model and wish you were like her, remember that looks can be deceptive and her actual health can be worse than yours!
Now that you know the common health mistakes you make, don’t repeat them – in your own interest.
