How Our Current Lifestyles Have Become So Unhealthy? What Can Be Done To Re-Compensate?

Who out there doesn’t want to look good, fit, and have an athletic build that appeals and pulls in the crowd? However, making castles in the sky will never make anyone achieve or accomplish their goals in life. There are a lot of us who simply think that the time spent at the gym and bodybuilding workouts can be easy. The truth is that none of us is Thanos who can simply snap his fingers and let the infinity gauntlet manage the rest. Our current attitudes will simply not let us get anywhere. Time will fly by as usual as it always does and before you know it, your body has already suffered too much harm. How can we be so ignorant of our basic needs is still a perplexing situation for me to decipher. This is why in this post we would like to unravel the mystery behind our unenthusiastic behavior towards keeping ourselves fit. We will also take a look into some of the big reasons behind the failure of our efforts and initiatives to keep ourselves healthy. After all, there are still many of us who do get to give it a try however due to some predisposition we never reach the stage of fruition that can offer us the results that we so direly seek.

Unhealthy Diet & Non-Nutritious Food Consumption

The youth is cutting down on their nutrients; instead, they are all about consuming junk items, fast-food, soda drinks, and other unhealthy edibles. Sadly there is no one out there who is supporting organic vegetables and fruits. The marvels of Mother Nature have not a single billboard or advertisement running up online to support them. This is why when you do open your emails, log into your social media accounts, or surf the internet, there will be countless messages from restaurants, pizza parlors, and burger joints pouring out their offerings and discount packages on to you. While there will be zero effort made to support the intake of healthy and organic food that actually offers you the minerals and vitamins you need to support your wellbeing. Some of the most hazardous items popularly consumed by the masses today include:

• Alcohol: undoubtedly causes the low density in bones as it actively blocks calcium absorption in the body, leading to severe bone related problems over the years if left unmonitored.
• Burnt/Charred Foods: trigger inflammation as well as AGEs (Advanced Glycation End-Product) which causes chronic kidney disease, atherosclerosis, and diabetes.
• Caffeine: causes various musculoskeletal disorders and problems, since every 100 milligrams of caffeine results in a loss of 6 milligrams of calcium within the body.
• Hydrogenated Oils: one of the worst food additives that destroys Vitamin K found in organic and wholesome vegetables as well as increasing the risk of blocked arteries through trans fats.
• Non-Organic Fruits: include various pesticides and chemicals as well as various other contaminations. They reduce fertility and may also cause ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder).
• Pro-Inflammatory Fats: found in processed and packed food items including pastries, fries, cookies, chips, etc. They include trans fats which cause harmful levels of cholesterol to rise within your body.
• Sodium Enriched Food: around 40 milligrams of calcium within the body is lost due to every 2,300 milligrams of sodium we ingest. On average we consume 5,000 milligrams of salt daily!
• Soft Drinks/Soda: contains phosphoric acid resulting in the loss of calcium through urination. Consumption of 7 or more fizzy drinks per week increases the risk of fractures at an alarming rate.
• Sugary Snacks: excessive consumption of food items with additive sugars causes heart & liver damage, abnormal blood pressures, gout, and depletion of vital minerals and vitamins within the body.

Our Modes of Entertainment Have also shifted Over the Years!

There was a time when people actually took out time to play sports during their days, even if it was just for a couple of hoops in a backyard with a close friend. However, today, even the forms of our entertainment are quite unhealthy. Our playtime revolves around being fixated in front of a SmartScreen to please our senses. Social media, internet surfing, binge-watching, online gaming, you name it. Hence athleticism, daily workouts, & sports are losing their value day by day. When you consider all of them together you will find that there are huge industries that have captivated audiences from across the globe while cashing-in billions of dollars in revenue to previously held unsurpassable amounts. Records are being broken and they are expanding their offerings like crazy. Our unwholesome entertainment is comprised of the following components:

• Social Media

Nearly 3.2 billion social media user accounts have been found to be active on a daily basis which amounts to 42% of the entire population. On an average, nearly 2 hours and 22 minutes are spent on social media every day which includes 90.4% Millennials (ages 22-37 years old), 77.5% Gen X (ages 38-53 years old), and 48.2% Baby Boomers (ages 54-72 years old).

• Binge Watching

An alarming study conducted in Deloitte found that nearly 73% of all Americans are addicted to binge-watching out of which 90% of them were US Millennials. On average, nearly 5 hours every day were consumed to watch their favorite shows on TV and various other devices.

• Internet Surfing

Nearly 4.4 billion people use the internet as of January 2019 and there are currently over 1.5 billion websites in the world. On average Americans spend more time on the internet surfing than any other nation on the planet, which amounts to a staggering 28 hours every month for each individual user.

• Online Gaming

In 2018 alone the gaming industry earned global revenues amounting to $137.9 billion. Last year the number of gamers reached a figure of 2.2 billion. People ranging from 18-25 years of age spend nearly 7 hours each week playing video games.

• Video Streaming

Nearly 236 million Americans are found to be actively (or inactively should we say?) indulged in online video streaming activity. YouTube alone amounts to 500 million hours of videos being watched by users each day. Millennials are the ones who watch the most vides and men spend 40% more time than women watching videos online.

The World of Marketing Has a Tight Control Over Our Decision Making Ability

We are living in the part of the 21^st century where technological advancement and electronic gadgets have made everything easy-peasy for us all. However, with this development marketing has become even more ruthless over the years. Manufacturers, service providers, multi-national organizations, even small firms are taking the initiative to seek out further insights. However many of them end up targeting the worst possible traits of human behavior, like compulsive buying, instant gratification, more for less, obsessiveness, vanity, and the list keeps on growing. Only last year studies revealed that nearly $100 billion were spent for digital marketing on a global scale. Investigations and researches also show that this year in 2019, an average American is exposed to a gargantuan amount of 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day. But to think of them, how much (or should we say how little) of them do actually promote healthy lifestyles or physical fitness? The answer is quite heartbreaking!

Even Our Office Life is Sedentary…Sniff!

In accordance with the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average American works around 8.8 hours per day which roughly amounts to 44 hours per week. Furthermore, if you add in the number of hours commuting from home to the workplace and then back to home, it adds up to a total of 100 hours of traveling alone every year. Hence you will find that many of us who have indoor jobs are almost living the main part of our day sitting and traveling, which is a sedentary lifestyle. We just barge into our offices and sit in our cubicles crunching numbers, completing file work, and whatnot. No wonder people often ask for neck pain treatment since many of them barely even move away from their desktops. At most we only get up from our seats if there is a call for a meeting, you need to go to the washroom, it’s time to have lunch or coffee, or the worst of them all which is taking a smoke break. No wonder that almost half of the Americans complain work as their number one source of stress, since sitting for hours can never do you any good. This is why office work builds stress and it is estimated to be the 5^th biggest cause of death in the US. All this sitting also makes you gain weight as studies have found that nearly 26% of Americans gain 10 pounds of weight and 11% gain even more as much as 20 pounds.

There is Always Hope!

After hearing all of this I am pretty sure you would be wondering how we can undo the harm that is being inflicted on ourselves. The answer is pretty clear, we need to make a difference in the way we have adopted this current lifestyle of ours. Change has to come from within and the more aware you are the better you will be in the future. We need to start making better lifestyle choices and put our health and fitness as our topmost priority otherwise we will not be able to stop this deterioration from happening in the first place. There are various means available for you to make the quality of life reach a satisfactory level. The answer lies in taking control of your life and awakening yourself to this alarming scenario before it’s too late.

The 7 Step Guide To a Better, Faster, and Healthier You!

After going through all that we have mentioned above you should know that there are effective remedies available that can guide you to a better, healthier, and more physically fit version of yourself. However, it is important to understand that all of that can only be achieved if you make the decision yourself to change in a conscious manner with unbending will power. It is not like we have lost ourselves completely to this current order which the world wants us to operate in. We can make better choices and informed decisions to safeguard our health. Here are 7 ways through which you can re-compensate for the current loss of health and fitness that we experience in our daily lives:

1. Take our diet seriously, avoid eating harmful food items. Know about nutrition and learn more about a suitable balanced diet. Speak with a professional and develop a regimen that gratifies your needs the best.
2. Make an effort to play or actively involve yourself in a sporting activity or collectively join a gym with a group of like-minded friends. Take out time from your current routine to make room for exercise and workouts. A professional trainer can provide you with a much better routine suited to your individual needs.
3. Prefer commuting on foot or even owning a bicycle. If your destination and route allow you to reach your desired venue in time, then walk. Walking is great for health and so is cycling as well.
4. Limit your idle time spent in front of smart devices. Take control of your compulsions and direct them to a more positive outlook. Same goes for online gaming, internet surfing, binge-watching, and social media.
5. Encourage your colleagues, professionals, and the human resource department to introduce healthy practices within office hours. Ask them to provide you with healthy food items during lunch times which might include fresh fruit juices, wholesome vegetables, and organic meat items.
6. The next time you consider taking a vacation make sure that it involves a lot of physical excursions like hiking, camping outdoors, traveling on foot, etc.
7. Repeat the process and never stop fighting for your health. Encourage others and make them aware of such problems and their solutions as well. Involve the community and make a difference not only for yourself but others as well.

We hope this post was able to offer you some great insights as to how our lives are continuously being hampered for their health and fitness value. Together we can make a difference and the more aware we are about our health the better we will be able to comprehend our individual needs. For any questions or queries regarding the topic, please feel free to let us know of your feedback in the comment section below.