Habits that Cause Your Metabolism to Slow

Who doesn’t want a great metabolism? The healthier your metabolism is, the healthier you are – think about your kids who have a healthy metabolism and can burn off the 6 million calories in birthday cake, juice and other junk they eat at birthday parties and school functions. You might work hard to ensure your metabolism is up to speed (see what I did there…go ahead and laugh). However, you might not realize that some of your habits are actually slowing it down rather than speeding it up.

Juice Cleanses

They’re all the rage right now (and I think they’re ridiculous). Juice cleanses have people going crazy. They’ll lose this much weight in this much time and look better in no time (why not just eat healthy and exercise like normal people?). When you go on a juice cleanse, you deprive your body of so many vital nutrients that it slows down your metabolism and actually makes it more difficult for you to lose weight.

Sitting

This is horrible news for those of us who do a lot of sitting (and terrible news for me who not only works from my desk at home but I’ve also been on bed rest for three months now) at work. The longer you sit, the slower your metabolism becomes. Try getting up every half hour and spending five minutes doing something active such as stretching or walking. Even if you spend a half hour at the gym or exercising each day, when you sit for an entire day behind your desk it’s considered sedentary.

Not Sleeping

You know how important and vital sleep is to your health, so why do so many of us skip getting enough sleep? We need seven to eight good hours of sleep each night to allow our bodies to maintain good health and a healthy metabolism.

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