I always prioritize eating less to have optimal health both physically and mentally. Although eating less is crucial, one thing that can ruin the proper digestion of your nutritious meal is making slight mistakes after having a meal. It is so important to understand that making these mistakes can be harsh for your body, mind, and overall health. The mistakes I will be showing may be habits for some of you. When these things become your habit, they will have a huge harmful impact on your body. So I will try to give you a simple and clear understanding of these mistakes and practical solutions that will help you get rid of these habits based on my personal experiences.

Drinking Water After Meals

Do you gulp a glass of water right after a meal? Then hold on, you need to rethink it. After having a meal, our body temperature rises to digest the meal, but having a glass of water after a meal will dilute the body temperature. As a result, the food will rot in your system, thus inviting various diseases. One of the main reasons for your gas, bloating, or weight gain problem can be a glass of water after a meal.

Solution: Simply rinsing the mouth with water can help with the urge to drink water. Still, one or two sips are okay, but it is recommended to drink water 30 minutes after a meal.

Having Fruits After a Meal

Am I the only one who has the urge to eat sweets after a meal? Probably not; we all have the urge to eat sweets after a meal. Being in healthy mode, we tend to satisfy that urge by eating fruits, which is a terrible idea! Usually, fruits get digested quickly, but the meal we consume takes time to digest. As a result, the fruits start fermenting before reaching the intestine. It just disrupts your digestive system altogether.

Solution: It is recommended to have fruits before the meal as the fruits will get digested first and quickly, then the meal will be digested.

Lying Down After a Meal

If you have a habit of taking a nap after a meal or you go to sleep right after a meal, then it will have a direct impact on your weight gain, mainly increasing your belly fat. Our food gets digested better when we are moving rather than lying down. It not only causes weight gain but also spikes our sugar level, causing diabetes.

Solution: Try to do some work after a meal and have a gap of 2 hours between your dinner and sleep.

Drinking Tea or Coffee After a Meal

Oh my God, to be honest, I really struggled with this one. I had a massive addiction to having a strong cup of tea or coffee right after my meal. One thing I noticed was that I had this urge to have tea or coffee because I was overeating. Because of that, I had iron and zinc deficiency. Tea and coffee have tannin and caffeine that can cause iron and zinc deficiency. It also caused me extreme fatigue that eventually hampered my productivity.

Solution: First, stop overeating and have at least a 1-hour gap between meals and tea or coffee. One easy hack can be having ginger hot water to have that similar satisfying effect.

Exercising Immediately After a Meal

Do you hit the gym, go swimming, or play sports right after a meal? It will cause a divergence of blood flow. After we have our meal, the blood flow increases to our stomach and intestines, but doing some heart-pumping activities can divert the blood flow to other directions, creating a hard time for your body to digest that food.

Solution: Wait a minimum of 1 hour to do any kind of exercise or heart-pumping activities.

Smoking After a Meal

Though I am not a smoker, this one is for all the lovers of cigarettes. Smoking after a meal is massively harmful. When you smoke a cigarette after a meal, it’s equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes together. Damn, it is shocking! After our meal, the blood flow in our stomach is high. As a result, when we smoke after a meal, the nicotine gets easily absorbed in our body in large quantities. We all know how harmful cigarettes are and can cause various life-threatening diseases.

Solution: As I have no addiction to smoking, I can only suggest that you quit smoking altogether.

Having Sex After a Meal

Masturbation or sexual intercourse is best avoided after a meal. During sexual activity, the blood flow rises in the genital area, thus redirecting your blood flow from your stomach to your genitals. So it can cause discomfort, bloating, and indigestion.

Solution: It is recommended to have any kind of sexual activity 1 hour after having a meal. On the other hand, it is beneficial to eat immediately after having sex.

Bathing After a Meal

As you now know, after a meal, the blood flows towards the stomach and intestines. Taking a bath after a meal can redirect the blood flow to all other parts of the body to maintain overall body temperature. It results in indigestion, causing the food to produce toxins in our body.

Solution: Always take a bath first, then have your meal. If you can’t do that, then take a gap of 1 hour to have a bath after a meal.

So here are some mistakes I made after eating a meal, and hopefully, you are not making those mistakes. In a short span of time, those mistakes may look beneficial to some of you, but over time they will have little to no benefits and eventually lead to extreme health hazards.