7 Deceptive Morning Habits That Only Seem Beneficial
The way you start the day often dictates
how you’ll feel and carry yourself throughout the entirety of the day.
Humans have known this for millennia. In fact, the famous saying “get up
on the wrong side of the bed” is believed to have originated from an
Ancient Roman superstition, which means that humans have known about the
massive influence of mornings on their daily lives for centuries and
centuries.
As ancient as the idea of morning rituals
is, it’s safe to say that no generation in history was as fixated on
them as we are today. Optimizing your morning - which includes breakfast
tips, journaling, and other habits - is often touted to be the solution
for all your foes. But is chasing the perfect, most productive, and
energizing morning routine doing the opposite of what it’s supposed to
do?
Psychologists and nutrition experts say that there is a number of
seemingly beneficial morning habits that may actually be depleting your
energy and render your day more stressful. Here are 7 such deceptive
morning rituals.
1. Having a smoothie in place of a breakfast
Most healthy eating blogs and fitness
influencers will tell you that there’s no healthier breakfast than a
smoothie, especially if you’re looking to lose weight. Alas, having a
breakfast smoothie every morning will most likely not yield the intended
health and weight loss results.
First and foremost, look at the ingredients of the smoothies you’re
preparing. Do they contain mostly fruit? If so, you could be actually
getting too much sugar from a smoothie, which will prevent you from
losing weight and may mess with your blood sugar. Another prominent
issue is that breakfast smoothies actually have a reduced fiber content.
According to some nutrition experts and doctors, blending whole fruit
and vegetables reduces their insoluble fiber content, which means that
you won’t be getting all the benefits from the apples, kale, oranges, or
whatever plant ingredient you prefer in your smoothies.
But there’s a bigger danger to this process too: Robert Lustig, a
pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California-San Francisco,
compares a smoothie to soda, suggesting that the lack of fiber can
affect blood sugar and insulin levels much like harmful carbonated
beverages. Lastly, smoothies are less filling than whole fruits and
veggies, as the action of chewing actually makes food more satisfying
and filling, with studies showing that solid and semi-solid food is
superior in maintaining satiety than liquids.
It’s fine to enjoy a smoothie from time to time, but it’s not a
replacement for a proper meal. If you do decide to make a breakfast
smoothie, make sure to add some protein and healthy fats (such as
avocados or nut butter), as well as no more than 1 cup of fruit. This
will make your smoothie more filling.
2. Reading the news first thing in the morning
Reading the news is what any informed
citizen should do every morning, right? Well, it actually depends. While
many people enjoy reading the news with their morning cup of coffee, it
may be quite stressful and time-consuming to others. Research points
out that just a short three-minute read of stressful news headlines can
trigger a stress response in the brain and make you more irritated and
nervous all day.
In an experiment where participants either read something positive or
negative news headlines, "Individuals who watched just three minutes of
negative news in the morning had a whopping 27% greater likelihood of
reporting their day as unhappy six to eight hours later compared to the
positive condition," writes one of the authors of the study in a Harvard
Business Review article.
As you can imagine, reading a terrible news
story, especially during a worldwide pandemic, may not be the first
thing you encounter throughout the day. Of course, this doesn’t mean
that you should stop being informed and be cut off from society, but
there is a better time to do so. If you notice that reading the news
makes you grumpy or irritated in the morning, replace it with a lighter,
more uplifting read and get your daily news updates later in the day.
3. Sacrificing sleep for waking up early
"The early bird catches the worm," the
famous idiom goes. But should all people abide by this age-old wisdom?
The answer to this question is neither obvious nor unambiguous. If
you’re an early riser, waking up at 5-6 AM may be easy for you. And if
that’s the case, by all means, follow your natural sleep cycle. But that
doesn’t mean that everyone should wake up early in the morning,
especially if that means sacrificing their sleep.
If you’re a night owl, and you can barely fall asleep after 12 PM,
getting up at 5 AM would be actually quite unwise for you. Receiving an
adequate amount of sleep every night should be your priority. Several
studies point out that even minor sleep loss can impair the functional
connectivity in the brain and has a dramatic negative effect on several
important mental faculties, such as alertness, decision making,
attention, and cognition. If a clear and healthy mind is the reason why
you want to perfect your morning routine, adequate sleep and not waking
up at 6 AM should be your priority.
4. Beginning your day with a to-do list
Starting your day with a to-do list is
another frequent feature of the influencer productivity checklist. The
advice is well-intentioned, as writing down your plan for the day can
certainly help some people concentrate and manage their anxiety. Alas,
this advice too can often backfire, depending on your perception of
to-do lists.
Han Ren, a licensed psychologist, pointed out in an article in
Huffington Post, “It could be stressful if you’re overly ambitious and
have written down more things than you can realistically do.” If you’re a
perfectionist and will beat yourself up for not accomplishing
everything on the list, to-do lists can actually become the bane of your
existence.
Instead, consider writing a weekly list and use that as a guide to
creating daily “done” lists, which are more positive and will help you
recognize that some chores don’t have a hard deadline.
5. Having your coffee before breakfast
The order in which you choose to have your
morning coffee and breakfast may seem like a matter of preference, at
first glance. But there’s actually some compelling new research that
suggests a preferred order with health in mind. The research manipulated
the order of food and coffee intake in the morning, and it was
conducted at the University of Bath, in the UK, and published in the
British Journal of Nutrition in 2020.
The researchers suggest that drinking coffee first and following it with
breakfast affects blood sugar control. Reduced blood glucose control,
also known as insulin resistance, is associated with extensive negative
health effects, including an increased risk of diabetes and heart
disease. "As such, individuals should try to balance the potential
stimulating benefits of caffeinated coffee in the morning with the
potential for higher blood glucose levels and it may be better to
consume coffee following breakfast rather than before,” stated Harry
Smith from the Department for Health at Bath, the lead researcher of the
study, to Science Daily.
6. Eating breakfast while doing other tasks
Do you prefer to have your breakfast while
also watching TV, reading the news, or doing other tasks? This may give
you a false sense of being more productive, but it’s actually not nearly
as beneficial for you as you think. There’s actually quite a lot of
research on the topic of multitasking while eating, and most studies are
consistent in the findings that eating while watching TV or other
distracting tasks can make you feel less full, so it’s not ideal if
you’re trying to lose weight.
Working at the desk and eating, on the other hand, does even more harm, a
recent study found, as it actually increases your stress levels.
Moreover, it seems that those who work at the computer and have their
meal at the same time are rarely as productive as they would like to be,
mostly only accomplishing minor tasks.
So, the next time you combine breakfast and other tasks, pay closer
attention to how it actually makes you feel: Does it increase your
appetite? Does it make you feel stressed out? If so, you will most
likely benefit from separating eating and other tasks in the future.
7. Don’t hit the snooze button
A surprising majority of people tend to set
their alarm half an hour to an hour early, leaving themselves the
“extra time” to hit the snooze button and sleep in just a little more.
At first glance, this does sound reasonable, but it also reinforces your
procrastination habits. With each time you decide to snooze the alarm,
you’ll feel increasingly more self-conscious about the time you were
just lying in bed.
In addition, the sleep you think you’re getting in those 20-30 extra
minutes is actually less restorative than uninterrupted sleep. So, as a
result, you’ll get up groggy, sleepy, and tired. There’s also some
evidence suggesting that hitting the snooze button has negative
neurological implications.