Bad habits are the cause of stunted and slow progress towards your goals - be that losing weight, gaining muscle or shaving 5 seconds of that sprint time. This shows the importance of breaking them. As soon as you change your ways, you will be one step closer. Over the years I have found that many of these bad habits are the same for a lot of people so have a look below, see if any apply to you and learn to break them!
1) You skip breakfast!
I recommend that you need to have breakfast every day. You need a nutritionally balanced and use things like honey as a substitute for sugar if you have a sweet tooth. You can even start experimenting and adding protein powder to you oats! If you want to lose weight a black coffee (hold the milk!) in the morning will also wake you up and help burn fat due to the caffeine speeding up the metabolism.
2) You drink a lot of sugary, fizzy drinks!
You need to stop drinking fizzy drinks. Each fizzy drink you consume will likely have an alarming amount of sugar in it, spiking your blood sugar, affecting your training and your mood - while pre-disposigng the body towards fat storage. It's also thought that cutting fizzy drinks from your diet can secure a better night's sleep - supporting better recovery. It has been shown that also 8 hours of sleep a night can boost free fat weight loss. Switch to water!
3) You drink too much!
For most of us, sometimes going out is inevitable. I mean it's fun and important to let loose and enjoy yourself once in a while. Just learn that if you do go out, try not to overdo the usual binge, just take it easy. The usual binge can lead to a hangover where you will often crave junk food afterwards. Without even mentioning the fact that alcohol will take its toll on the liver and dehydrate the body. And rememeber, a dehydrated cell is not geared for efficient functioning for performance or fat burning.
4) You eat a lot of pizza and high salt ready meals!
Easy to cook meals such as pizzas and microwave ready-meals are easy and will be out of the oven quick and the food is done. However nutritionally they are not ideal - often far from it. If time is a common issue, a good solution to this is to precook a day's food the night before with things such as sweet potato, chicken, salmon, rice etc. This way the healthy food is all prepared and it just needs to be reheated. So no excuses!
5) You eat a lot of sugary, sweet snacks!
Hopefully as you start eating better quality food the snacking will subside but what I can do is provide healthy snacking alternatives. Dry fruit and nuts is a great way to keep the hands busy and keep the calories down. The nuts have good fats in and particularly almonds are good for filling up. Beef jerky is also brilliant and so tasty to snack on and gives you some extra protein to repair those muscles!
6) You miss meals!
By missing a meal you are denying the body the nutrients it needs to function, grow and repair. This is particularly true for anyone training regularly. When you train, the body will need more of these nutrients so if you don't eat you will be in a deficit and be in danger of losing weight rapidly and unhealthily. It is important that you stay in the recommended guidelines for your age.
7) You don't drink enough water!
Relating back to the fizzy drinks you need to increase your water intake so to keep the body in a constant hydrated state. This will allow you to perform and feel better. 2hr before exercise you should have up to 500ml of water, during you will need 200ml every 15 minutes and post 15% of BML (body mass levels) to keep yourself hydrated.
8) You're not getting the your RDA of fruit & veg!
Here's the big one, you will need to up you veg and fruit intake. This is because these food items will provide yourself with nutrients and minerals. These foods are also low in fat and calories and will fill you up so can be used for snacking also. An easy way to hit the recommended daily allowance and take in a whole host of key vitamins and minerals would be to supplement with a greens powder such as SUPER GREENS.
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