You’re always taught that exercise is the key to a healthy life. On the contrary, I believe it’s one of many things that helps contribute to an overall healthy lifestyle. In truth, it doesn’t matter how much you exercise if you continue to do things that harm your health. Any effects you hope to see are cancelled out by other things you do. This could be why you struggle to see any fitness results; the bad stuff you do outweigh your exercise routine.

In my eyes, exercise is almost meaningless unless you stop doing these things as well:

Eating too much

A considerable advantage of regular exercise is that you burn calories. As a result, you can potentially lose a lot of weight. The mistake you might be making is that you assume exercise equals weight loss. Realistically, exercise is only part of the equation. It won’t matter how often you work out if you keep overeating. Putting more calories in your body than the amount you burn will always lead to weight gain.

The key is managing your diet and ensuring you don’t go overboard. Stick to a nice balanced diet – you can still eat healthily and enjoy your food! But, always keep your calories in mind. If you consume 3,000 ‘healthy’ calories per day, but only burn 2,000, then you’ll still gain weight.

Smoking

You don’t need me to run through all the health risks associated with smoking. If I did, you’d be here all day reading through pages and pages of information. I often see people in workout gear with a cigarette in their hands and want to pull my hair out. You’re not doing your body any good by smoking – it will cause health complications that make all your exercise worthless.

I understand it’s hard to just stop doing this, but it’s not impossible. Take small steps, maybe even use a vape kit to help you quit the habit; there are ways you can quit. But, if you continue to poison your body while exercising, then the cigarettes will eventually win that battle.

Drinking alcohol

Like smoking, drinking alcohol has grave consequences. There’s nothing healthy about it at all, and it will lead to weight gain, problems with your heart, and loads of other things too. So many people follow a healthy life all the way until Friday every week. Then, any positive habits are undone by a weekend of boozing. Here, you consume so much alcohol that it damages your system and adds loads of empty calories to your diet.

Obviously, I’m not asking you all to become T-total. But, cut down on your alcohol consumption and drink things that aren’t high in calories or sugars. Limiting yourself to one night out a week is an excellent way to start.

If you don’t stop doing these things, then exercise is basically just papering over cracks. It might make you feel like you’re doing something, but you’re never tackling the problem. Eventually, the cracks become too big to paper over. Make sure that all the effort you put into exercising isn’t for nothing!