Aging is a natural process we try our very best to combat, often to little avail. However, have you ever wondered that all the anti-aging steps that you’re taking may be getting negated by a few silly mistakes you make in your daily life? Incidentally, this is precisely the case for most women. While the subject raises the fundamental problem of how we work towards something without realizing that our actions themselves are proving detrimental to it, we shall today stick to the lifestyle mistakes we make that accelerate aging.
4 Most Common Mistake That People usually do
1) Dietary omissions
Often, persons who are taking anti-aging remedies tend to exclude fats from the diet. This poses a problem since there are many fats that are beneficial for the body; take for example omega-3 fatty acids that help in maintaining brain health and burning fats. A decrease in omega-3 can lead to problems with regard to cognitive functioning and memory, both of which are signs of mental aging.
Another dietary mistake is avoiding meat. If you completely avoid meat, there is no other source from which the body can obtain vitamin B12, which is necessary for good nervous and metabolic functioning.
While the above two are the more obvious maladies, numerous other substances (especially vitamins and minerals) that are essential for the body may witness a fall in levels if you stay away from specific foods. The solution is that while you stick to diet plans and limit the intake of certain foods as part of your new lifestyle, you shouldn’t entirely stop eating other stuff.
Remember that the human body eats to gain nutrition, and has selected foods to be consumed based on certain criterion they fulfill. Do not take the extreme measure of completely cutting out a certain food from your diet; eat anti-aging foods and cut down on the ones that accelerate the aging process, but don’t completely stop consuming them.
2) Sleeping enough, but not cutting down on stress
Though you get your full eight-hour quota of sleep, this does not necessarily ensure that you get enough ‘rest’. There is a difference between rest and sleep. The human body clock is divided into three distinct parts:
- Sleep (8 hours)
- Work (8 hours)
- Recreational activities (8 hours)
Despite this knowledge resting with us since 1817 when Robert Owen first proposed it, we still tend to be a little confused about the idea of recreation. Recreation is doing activities of ‘leisure’, like reading a book, playing a sport for enjoyment or a board game, watching television and other things that are dedicated to personal enjoyment, which in turn help us relax; i.e. help us distance ourselves from stressful activities.
If this clock can’t be followed within the span of a day due to professional obligations, you should try making up for it over a week. However, it is necessary to follow this pattern since otherwise it does not relax the stress that builds up overtime. Rest includes the relaxation phase as much as it involves the sleeping phase.
This also brings us to the next point: is exercise to be treated as recreation or work?
3) Exercise: If you ‘have’ to go, you’re doing it wrong
Exercise is a way of staying fit, not for the body alone, but for the mind as well. Thus, if you’re treating it as a chore or a task, you’ve got the entire concept wrong. Pick a physical activity that you like, it need not necessarily mean hitting the gym; it could also be long walks. Irrespective, if you aren’t enjoying it, it’s really not worth the effort. You should ‘want’ to do a physical activity for it to be considered an anti-aging exercise; you shouldn’t ‘have’ to do it.
A practical way to view exercise (if you utterly hate any form of it) is by categorizing it as ‘work’. This means you need to include it as part of the work ritual that you do, and calculating the time dedicated towards it as such. Needless to say, you will have to dedicate recreation time correspondingly.
4) Deal with the psychological aspects
Psychological aspects play a much larger part than we think they do, be they inherent or lifestyle induced. These include anxiety, isolation and other socio-psychological problems; what’s worse is that women are more prone to psychological problems, and this may include something as small as a phobia, which in turn is a direct cause of anxiety; which is going to result in a hastening of the aging process.
Thus, identify the psychological issue due to which all your anti-aging remedies may be proving redundant. Seek help if required, but be certain to deal with it as quickly as possible. In fact, many experts firmly believe that every person ought to undergo an evaluation from time to time, irrespective of if they have a problem or not. This is deemed necessary, since denial is after all the first step towards addressing a problem and the most predictable human emotion. This statement applies not only to those amongst us who are resisting the onslaught of aging, but does indeed hold more validity for us: undergo a psychological evaluation to ensure that there are no demons that are pegging you back.