Lifestyle is a very popular category online. There are even some people who became famous by blogging about lifestyle. This is no surprise when we know how intense the times we live in actually are. Stress is the leading factor when talking about many health issues and people are striving to find the perfect work-life balance, where positive lifestyle choices affect both professional and private spheres of our lives.
While these positive lifestyle choices can positively reflect on our health overall, they also have a dark side – something that is very rarely addressed, if at all. This is why we have decided to share 5 positive lifestyle choices you have to be careful about.
Healthy Diet
The internet is filled with articles on how to build and follow a healthy diet plan. Many people still have poor diets based on refined foods and junk foods. When they recognize that their diet as an obstacle between them and a sense of tranquility, people tend to make rash decisions.
What they fail to see is that food can easily become an obsession, both junk food and the healthy kind. Calorie-counting can turn to an obsession and people very soon discover that they have cardiovascular problems, a loss of their muscle mass and a damaged immune system.
This is why you have to be extra careful with your diet when you decide to make a radical switch. Forget all about those articles that teach people how sugar and fat are bad and how fibers and lean proteins are the only way to a healthy life. In fact, it’s all about timing and quantity. Find the best resources to educate yourself and don’t restrict your diet to only a few products.
Regular Physical Activity
Every list of positive lifestyle choices online has at least one “Maintain Regular Physical Activity/Choose To Exercise Every Day/Workout is the Fountain of Youth” or a similar subheading. We don’t want to tell that regular physical activity is bad, we just want to inform you not to take it lightly, especially if you are getting older.
When was the last time you have visited your doctor to talk about physical activity? Did you check your blood pressure? Have your joints examined? Got a professional consult? In combination with irregular sleep and poor diet choices, physical exercise can turn into a backfiring gun.
If you do it impulsively and without a plan, you will almost certainly experience one, if not several adverse effects of exercise – feeling very weak, dehydrated, tired and extremely prone to injuries. In some severe cases, you can also increase the chances of having a stroke.
Healthy Sleep Cycle
The ultimate question that revolves around sleeping is – “Can you have too much of it?”. The fact is that we have to sleep, and we have to do it for at least 7-8 hours per day if we want to remain functional and remain healthy. But where is the catch?
People who have slept irregularly for many years and who decided to make a switch to a healthy sleep cycle, have several pitfalls to avoid. The first one is, of course, oversleeping, which is the same as irregular sleep, at least in terms of adverse effects. Oversleeping has been linked with an increased fatality risk, as well as diabetes and heart disease.
The second pitfall is having your focus entirely shifted towards maintaining the most healthy sleep cycle. You can easily find yourself reading and watching reviews of the best memory foam pillows and mattresses, how to arrange your furniture to get better sleep, and so on an so forth. You catch our drift. So, when it comes to sleep, abundance does hurt.
Active Social Life
In the age of social media, it seems that people have neglected their social lives – sitting or just hanging with friends, talking about personal problems, plans, and experiences. This is why it is almost inevitable to see words like “Become socially active” in almost all lifestyle posts.
It is quite easy for people to misinterpret this message and hear it as “become a social butterfly”. No, an active social life doesn’t mean that you have to be around new people at parties 90% of the time. It means that you should be with people whenever you feel the need. If it is 90% of your time, then you are a social butterfly and some of your good friends might get the impression that you are not devoting enough time to them.
An active social life means not only to build meaningful and deep connections with your friends but also to visit cultural events, not to be afraid to exchange opinions or engage in conversation with complete strangers.
Live the Life Full of Excitement
Living an exciting life is not a synonym for being an adrenaline junkie. Excitement plays an important role in our lives – it pushes us forward, gives us a sense of meaning and adds up to the list of reasons why our lives are beautiful. Some find excitement in their careers, some in raising their children, while others perceive excitement as a surge of adrenaline. It all depends on which definition of excitement floats your boat.
While the more common problem is identifying the thing or action that makes you authentically excited, the bigger problem is pursuing only that one thing, after you have identified it. This may lead to procrastinating with important tasks in life which can ruin your plans in the long run.
Now at the end, it is quite obvious that there is a fine thread that tailors this entire post – “moderation in all things including moderation”. If you decide to make any of the positive lifestyle choices, even if they are not mentioned here, make sure not to do it impulsively. Instead, do a little research and get familiar with the problems at hand.
