Today I'm counting down the top 10 worst foods and habits for our health I want you to leave me a comment and let me know what you think the worst most unhealthy food or habit is so you can see if you guess correctly.
1-Not eating enough healthy facts
The first mistake is not getting enough high-quality fats in our diet and I know that that's actually backward from what we have been told there was this huge craze of non-fat foods fat-free products telling us that we needed to avoid fat but the truth is our body needs fats they are essential to our mental health literally these healthy fats compose our brain cells they're also essential to helping us feel full and satisfied and satisfying our hunger so if you're somebody that craves really fattening foods like fried foods or potato chips this is probably an indication that your body is needing fats and the trick is you just need to be eating the right fats and not the wrong fats so, of course, we want to avoid fried foods we also want to avoid trans fats and oftentimes you won't see the word trans fats on the label we're gonna have to turn it over and read the ingredients and look for words like hydrogenated oils or partially hydrogenated oils these are trans fats and they are really horrific for your health and what we do want to do is increase our intake of good healthy fats so this is nuts avocados fish good high-quality oils like coconut oil or olive oil and the more that we just incorporate these into our diet or even take an omega-3 supplement if that's easier for you-you're going to find increased mental clarity you're going to find that you actually become full and satisfied when you eat rather than still feeling hungry after you eat and you're also going to find that you have less cravings for really fattening foods.
2-Drinkin from plastic
The second worst habit is drinking out of plastic containers and especially microwaving plastic containers so bisphenol A or BPA got a lot of attention because it is a really horrific chemical that's known to be an endocrine disruptor it also has been linked to obesity it's been linked to hormone imbalances and even to fetal development issues so at this point the FDA has actually banned BPA from use in baby bottles but there are still a lot of groups who would like to see it banned completely from all food storing containers because it's found in baby bottles it's found in plastic water bottles it's found in a lot of different kinds of plastic and even if it's a plastic that doesn't necessarily contain BPA you want to recognize that pretty much all plastics have the potential to leach into the food especially when they're heated and none of these plastic chemicals are good and healthy for our bodies so the best solution is going to be avoiding drinking or eating from plastic containers as much as possible and especially avoiding microwaving things in plastic containers so glass drinking out of glass is a great alternative there are also stainless steel water bottles available if you need something that's a little more durable just recognize that the plastics industry is really going out of its way to prevent this information about the dangers of plastics from getting out to us making a big fuss about oh it's really not a health issue but in 2010 Canada's Department of the Environment did officially state that BPA is a toxic substance so just recognize that even though there's some controversy about the safety of plastics you're going to be a lot better off just avoiding them completely.
3-Toxic skin care products
The next mistake is lathering up with a chemical soup every time we shower so this tip is about recognizing that your skin is a direct pathway into your bloodstream so things we put on our skin actually do enter our body and can affect our health so the Environmental Working Group estimated that the average woman uses twelve different skin or cosmetic products that have a total of 168 different chemical ingredients just contained in those twelve products while the average male uses only six products with a total of 85 different chemical ingredients and you should know that there is no oversight over the safety of these cosmetic ingredient products so all of these chemicals that we are putting on our skin and into our bloodstream none of them have been tested for safety many of them are known carcinogens so we want to actually turn over the labels of the products that we're using on our skin and apply the same rules that we do to food and if it's a big long list of chemicals that we have no idea where they came from we want to avoid those products as much as possible coconut oil sweet almond oil shea butter these are really great natural moisturizers for the skin if you are somebody who uses a lot of acne creams or skin clearing potions this also applies to you too if it's got a huge list of crazy chemicals I would avoid a product like that you should recognize that even the American Academy of Dermatology has officially stated that a healthy diet is very important for good clean skin and clear skin so as we improve our overall health just do simple things like drinking more water eating more fruits and vegetables taking the chemical junk out of our diet and out of our skin products we should see our skin clear up anyways and actually not even need those crazy acne potions.
4-Dependence on caffeine or stimulant drugs
Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee every single day and while caffeinated beverages can be a good quick fix for energy issues depending on them all throughout the day or every single morning for several years of your life can actually lead to a situation where you're going to have such severe fatigue that even a cup of coffee won't help so it's important to recognize that every time we artificially create energy in our body by drinking a caffeinated beverage or by actually doing a stimulant drug or anything like that we're kind of creating an energy deficit and it's really just a matter of time but before our adrenals are so just fatigued and overworked that they're going to just poop out completely and then you end up with a really severe issue like chronic fatigue syndrome so I'm not saying that you can never ever drink a cup of coffee or caffeinated beverage but if you are somebody who drinks them really regularly or who has been drinking a cup of coffee every day for 10 or 20 years just recognize that within your body the health effects are negative and the effect on your adrenal glands is negative and this isn't a good habit that we want to be doing on a really regular basis so this is not popular information I know you guys don't want to hear this but this is a really important tip for protecting our health and our energy.
5-Sedentary lifestyle
The next worst habit is a sedentary lifestyle bottom line is that our bodies were made to move and if we're spending a lot of our time sitting at a desk or driving in a car and then we get home and we sit on the couch a good way to think about it is how much of my time and my spending doing these different things and if you're spending most of your time sitting around than that can be a problem so the point of fitness and exercise is not only to strengthen the muscles that we can see on the outside but also to strengthen our heart and our other organs so cardiovascular disease heart attacks all of these things are going to have increased likelihood if you are living a sedentary lifestyle and you aren't regularly getting your heart pumping and getting your heart working so you can actually, strengthen your heart which arguably is one of the most important muscles in your body it's also important to do flexibility and stretching something like yoga because this not only improves our circulation of our blood but it also improves circulation of our lymph which is important for clear skin and reducing cellulite which we were talking about in the last tip and it's also going to help prevent pain probably most importantly is that if we are spending a lot of time sedentary then we're likely going to be spending a lot of time with chronic pain so whether it's something like arthritis or whether it's just nagging back pain all the time these things are significantly prevented and relieved by doing something like regular stretching or yoga so hopefully this tip encourages you to get out there get moving there are a million different ways to move your body and hopefully you will find one that you really do enjoy and can do on a regular basis.
6-processed foods
Fast foods, junk foods, processed foods, and that includes the genetically modified foods unfortunately the foods that are the most convenient the most advertised the most addictive and least expensive are also really really horrific for our health and you don't need me to tell you that fast foods and junk foods aren't good for us but what it's important to realize is that processed foods in general so that's anything that comes in a package anything with a really long ingredient list especially when that ingredient list is a bunch of really long chemical names anything that is a prepackaged meal or a microwave dinner and also pretty much anything that we get from restaurants these are processed foods and that means that they are not natural foods they have a whole host of different chemicals added to them so that's preservatives that's artificial flavors artificial colors it also includes chemicals that are added to food specifically to purposefully make the foods more addictive and that's one of the reasons that it can be so hard to stop eating these foods and to resist these foods but as we can transition our diet to things that are more natural so fruits and vegetable beans grains that have not been processed or have not been breached we will be able to regain our health we're going to not only have more energy and probably more mental clarity but it's going to help protect us from obesity diabetes heart disease cancer all of these different diseases which are now being linked to a diet of processed foods.
7-Drugs & medications
So drugs are bad okay we know that we shouldn't be doing illicit illegal drugs we know that addictions to alcohol and really any addiction is not a healthful habit to have in our lives but what may be a lot of people don't realize is that depending on over-the-counter medications or even prescribed medications to keep us healthy is really kind of bass-ackwards so the ideal scene is that our body is in such good health that we don't need to take a prescribed medication in order to quote-unquote keep us healthy and if you are taking a prescribed medication like a statin drug for instance then this doesn't really mean that the medication is making you healthy it's compensating for something that your body is not able to do on its own but that it should be able to do and we can think about the almost comedic list of side effects that accompany any kind of prescribed medication and that is just evidence of the fact that these drugs affect our bodies in a myriad of ways so maybe we're taking the drug for this one problem but we're actually going to have side effects because the drug is affecting a lot of different organs in our body and it's affecting our overall health so we want to avoid relying on prescription drugs and if you're taking a lot of different prescription drugs together then that would also be something that I would recommend you look for a functional doctor a doctor of functional medicine who can maybe help you address these issues and figure out how to get you out of a situation where you're relying on those medications to keep you healthy and really those medications are just there to keep you alive. Now sadly this applies to the over-the-counter medications too because all of these medic medications whether they're over-the-counter or whether they're prescription drugs they are going to be really hard on your liver in many cases they're really high on hard on your digestive tract and you will know that when you take them because they make you feel really sick to your stomach Tylenol is actually the number one cause of liver failure it is actually even more so than alcohol because the effects of tylenol and aspirin and all of these different drugs are really hard on your liver which has to detoxify your body and try to get rid of toxic chemicals that we ingest so even tylenol and aspirin are things that I'm not going to say you can never take them but if you're taking these types of drugs on a really regular basis like several times a week you want to recognize that these aren't like vitamins these aren't giving nutrients to your body these are medications these are toxic chemicals that while they may help with your headache, for instance, are going to have an accumulative effect of toxicity in your body so I would hope that this information is useful to you and that you're able to lay off some of the over-the-counter and prescribed medications that you're taking.
8-Factory-Farmed Meat & Dairy
Americans consume a lot of meat like 25 billion pounds and that's just beef now I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't eat meat I think it's important that we really pay attention to the way our body feels when we eat different foods and then make our own choice accordingly but what you do need to know is that when you do eat meat or any animal products so that would include dairy products eggs and even fish it's important to look for something that is grass-fed or wild-caught in the case of fish organic if you can find it and from a local farmer if that's available to you because when we're eating conventional animal products these come from factory farms so what does that mean a factory farm means that these animals are kept in very close quarters with one another oftentimes with chickens they actually have to cut the beaks of the chickens off because they would peck each other to death due to this high-stress highly confined environment that they are forced to be in some of these mo animals never even see the light of day one time over the course of their whole lives so if you can just imagine these animals are stressed out their whole lives they're sick their whole lives because they're fed an unnatural diet of grains or corn and they're actually given antibiotics just to keep them alive all of these different chemicals that the animals are being given all of the stress the animals are under while they're alive this equates to very negative health effects when we eat those animals so if you're going to eat animal products look for the words grass-fed look for the words if you're buying fish you want to look for the words wild-caught and just recognize that the conventional meats that we get in the grocery store or restaurants, of course, anything that's in junk food or fast food this is coming from factory farmed animal and is really really bad for our health.
9-Sugar,hfcs & aspatame
I love sugar just as much as you do I promise but we really need to wake up and realize that sugar is not good for us and if you are eating the conventional American diet of these processed foods then sugar is in just about everything from white bread salad dressing to spaghetti sauce you name it if you actually turn over the label and look at the sugar content you will see how much sugar is actually found in these products now high fructose corn syrup is another sweetener that I definitely want to warn everyone about so we take everything from my video our food chemicals killing you and combine it with the fact that high fructose corn syrup is even sweeter than sugar so it can be even more addictive we want to avoid things that contain high fructose corn syrup avoid things that contain huge amounts of sugar and we definitely want to avoid the artificial sweeteners so that's aspartame any of those little colored packets that you find there's the white packet that says sugar and then there's a couple of other ones that are different colors and those are your artificial sweeteners so if we're looking for something sweet our best bet is just eating a whole piece of fruit because the fiber in the fruit is going to kind of ease the effects of all the sugar that's contained in the fruit you also want to just become aware of how much sugar is in the foods that you're buying because a lot of times we don't even realize how much sugar it's estimated that each American eats somewhere between 143 and 200 pounds of sugar every year and that's just way too much sugar sugar has been linked to cancers it's been linked to all kinds of different immune system problems mental health type of issues so if you're somebody who eats a lot of sugar or considers yourself a sugar addict I would highly recommend that you work on removing those artificial sweeteners and huge amounts of sugar from your diet and look for some natural sweeteners like fruit honey even stevia is going to be a better substitute for sugar or high fructose corn syrup.
10-Stress
Not only is stress incredibly uncomfortable and unpleasant but it's also really terrible for our health when our body is surging with cortisol and we are really stressed out it's going to stress our immune system our digestive system our reproductive system and in general is just going to lend us to higher blood pressure and all kinds of other health related issues so we live in a crazy society where we're always rushing around there's always a million things to do and one of the things that really helped me is just accepting that there will always be more stuff to do then I have time for and recognizing that's okay it's going to be a lot more important for us to prioritize our health taking some downtime avoiding stress avoiding staying really stressed out and just being stressed out all the time as much as we can and at the end of our lives really it's going to mean a lot more healthy if we can avoid stress then if we had actually been stressed out our life but we got all of our errands are done so things like yoga meditation just having a fun hobby that you enjoy are really good ways to decrease the amount of stress in your life just breathing deeply is really a good way to decrease the amount of stress in our lives stress has been linked to infertility and a whole host of other issues just the amount of weakening your immune system and making you more likely to get sick may be one of the number one reasons to try and avoid being stressed out as much as we can.
So in this list I was counting down the top ten worst foods and worst habits for our health did you know all of this stuff going in leave us a comment let us know what you're thinking and if you like this list.
