Healthy habits that aren’t quite as “healthy” as you thought...

When it comes to being quote on quote “healthy” I want you to ask yourself what this truly means to you. I think over the years with social media, fad diets, and all the trends out there that we have lost sight of what being healthy for our own personal lifestyle looks like as we get caught up in all the things we think we need to be doing to better our health. That being said, I want to take some time today to dive into a few healthy habits you might be following or doing that might not be as healthy as you thought…

1. Eliminating foods from your diet.

When it comes to cutting foods out of your diet entirely, this is never something I recommend unless you have a medical reason to support or justify needing to eliminate the food or food group. Cutting out gluten just because you heard it’s “inflammatory” and causing you to not be able to lose weight or removing all sugar from your diet is not what you need in order to still live the healthy lifestyle you want.

Sure there are more healthful properties to less processed and more whole, nutrient-dense foods that we can be consuming.. But that’s not to say that the piece of cake at your friends birthday party is going to make or break your health. It’s all about incorporating those fun foods you truly enjoy in a balanced way where they aren’t making up the majority of your food intake, but you aren’t swearing them off to the point it makes you feel like a bad person for having refined sugar.

2. Working out longer and harder to achieve the results you want.

More does not always equal better, especially when it comes to workouts! A longer, higher intensity workout isn’t what you need to see the results you want. I used to think the more calories burned and the longer that I was in the gym was better and meant I would achieve my goals quicker.. Turns out rest is actually a very beneficial thing and that for your workouts to be effective, you need to be resting appropriately. Just because a workout is longer, doesn’t mean that you are going to achieve better results either and you might be just burning yourself out and causing yourself not to be able to recover properly and reap the benefits from your training. If you constantly find yourself drained and more tired after your workout than when you started and if you are consistently sore, these are key signs that you aren’t recovering well form your workouts and there are many other factors that need to be addressed!

3.Clean eating.

Did you wash the food before you ate it? Then as far as I am concerned it’s probably clean!! In all reality, buzz words like clean eating have become such a trend/habit that people think they need to follow. At the end of the day, a well balanced diet that promotes your fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean meats, and healthy fats is really what you need rather than to be obsessing about every little ingredient in your food. Sure it’s great to be aware of these things and keep an eye out for the frequency of your consumption of more heavily processed and fast foods, but keep in mind that just because you cannot pronounce an ingredient on a food label doesn’t mean it’s toxic or the worst thing you could be consuming.

4. Taking supplements without doing your research.

Supplements are not regulated. This means that you or I could hypothetically make our own supplement, slap a label on it, and start to make a profit without going through any sort of third party testing for quality assurance that what we are saying is in the product is actually there in the amounts we are claiming. Not to scare you into thinking that every supplement is sketchy and to not be trusted, but you really do want to make sure you are doing your research with brands you are choosing and really just asking yourself why you are wanting to take something rather than just taking it because someone on TikTok said that it helped them to shed pounds. Don't just pop anything into your mouth or shaker bottle without first taking some time to look into the product. When looking for supplements, make sure that you are looking for third party tested supplements with a USP, NSF, Informed Sport, or Consumer Lab label on the bottle.