With age comes wisdom, experience, and confidence, but it’s also accompanied by health conditions that can negatively impact your quality of life. Aging is generally marked by signs of physical deterioration in the body. You look, function, and feel different as you age, and many of these signs of visible to others as well. This is the natural process of life and no one is immune to the effects of time.
Following healthy habits throughout your lifetime can slow the aging process and keep you looking and feeling younger for years to come. Conversely, falling into certain bad habits can accelerate aging, making you look and feel older than your years.
Here are 25 bad habits to stop if you want to look and feel great longer.
Aging Habit #1. Eating inflammatory foods.
Foods that are fatty, sugary, or processed can cause inflammation in your body, which makes you feel less than fabulous. Additionally, this inflammation can create wrinkles in your skin.
Instead, eat whole foods like fruits and veggies, lean proteins, and foods rich in healthy fats like omega-3 fatty acids. All of these will give you the energy and nutrients that are vital for maintaining your skin’s collagen.
Aging Habit #2. Cutting all fat.
Low- and no-fat diets sound like just the trick for weight loss, but like any extreme in dieting, they can be detrimental to your health. They deprive your body of healthy fats that are necessary for good skin, heart, and brain health. Eat the healthy fats found in oily fish, nuts, eggs, avocados, and other foods – only avoid saturated fats.
Aging Habit #3. Skipping the produce aisle.
Nothing helps regulate weight and nourish your body with vital vitamins and minerals better than fruits and vegetables. You’ll need those nutrients even more as you age and your body begins losing them more easily.
Make it your goal to get the recommended 2 servings of fruit and 3 servings of veggies each day to promote healthy organ function, oral health, and great skin.
Aging Habit #4. Digging into dessert.
A sweet treat here and there is fine, but if you’re serving up sugary, fatty sweets every night, you’re looking at weight gain, tooth decay, and even skin damage. Ingested sugar molecules attach themselves to the proteins in the skin, triggering a process called glycation that causes puffiness, fine lines, big pores, and circles under the eyes, making you look older.
Save dessert for special occasions or replace the cake and ice cream with nutritious fruit.
Aging Habit #5. Drinking alcohol.
Alcohol abuse has many serious effects on your body’s vital organs, but even controlled drinking can age you. As a natural diuretic, alcohol dehydrates your body, leaving your skin dry and exaggerating lines, blemishes, and wrinkles.
Abstain completely or enjoy an occasional drink, followed by adequate water to flush out the toxins in alcohol.
Aging Habit #6. Not drinking enough water.
The average adult is chronically dehydrated. Over time, this can affect your health and appearance. Water is necessary for just about every process in your body and for flushing out toxins, so obviously it’s important for maintaining your overall health.
Replace juices and sodas with water and bring a bottle of water with you when you’re away from home to help you get the recommended…
