A Bad Habit I’ve Had and How I Kicked It

It has often been said that there are no bad people, just bad habits. From a young age we are all taught how to behave and, perhaps more importantly, how not to behave. Yet bad habits persist and we carry them on into adulthood.

A bad habit that I used to struggle with in the past was having a poor diet and, more specifically, eating late at night. We all have had experience with having a late night meal or perhaps, after a long night of drinking, deciding to soak up some of the alcohol with fast food. For some reason it is always the unhealthiest food that tastes the best after drinking alcohol. However, eating late at night is the worst time to consume food because at that time of day our digestion is in need of rest and should not work into the night.

After many years of not giving a passing thought to proper eating times, I decided that this was a habit to change. For the most part, I now refrain from eating meals past 8 pm at night and if I am going to snack in the evening I try to make sure it is something light, easily digestible and healthy, such as fruit.

The most important consideration we can give to what we eat is the impact it will have on our digestion. The common prescriptions for diet and proper nutrition are generally not going to work perfectly for everyone, because every single person’s body is unique and you should create a diet according to your specific body type.

What is a healthy diet? It is different for everyone, but there are certain bad habits that we can easily minimize or take out to promote better health. One place I started was with processed foods and frozen foods. A convenience store may be convenient for time but it certainly won’t endow you with good health! Processed and frozen foods are very high in sugar and salt and often not healthy or fresh, and eating them too often is a bad habit that can easily be avoided.

Snacking was also a bad habit that I found difficult to control on a daily basis. For some people, the more emotional they feel the more they tend to snack on foods that are especially unhealthy. If we eat a healthy and balanced meal, we should generally allow a minimum of 3 hours before eating anything else and, if possible, it is better to allow 5-7 hours between meals. In my experience, constant snacking does not give our digestive system the necessary amount of time to rest and will eventually result in health problems.

One last thing that we can do to minimize our bad habits related to food is to base our diet on more fresh foods, especially green vegetables. Generally, a healthy ratio to follow for a plate of food is 25% protein, 25% percent carbohydrates, and 50% vegetables, particularly leafy green vegetables. Following a diet in this way as much as possible helps us to decrease the bad habit of overeating and supports digestion for a much healthier body and mind.

There are still certainly bad habits that I am presently working on and going to bed too late and waking up late is one of them. This is a very difficult habit to break, but my body certainly feels much happier when I go to bed early and wake up early. I will continue to work on this bad habit by limiting my screen time in the evenings, going to bed early and making an intention to wake up each day at 6 am.

Marcus

Vocabulary

persist (v) - to continue or keep happening; to not stop
soak up (phr. v) ? to absorb; to use something to suck up liquid (similar to a sponge)
give a passing thought (idiom) - to consider or think about something
refrain (v) - to stop or limit an action or activity
prescription (n) - advice or suggestion for a particular situation
endow (v) - to give support to something; to help