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9 Things You Should Avoid Doing After Eating

Many people can appreciate a good and filling meal. What each person does after eating often varies from house to house, and culture to culture. And while it is very common for numerous people to do certain things, our activity or lack thereof after a meal is often a detriment to our health.

Here are a few things you should absolutely avoid doing after eating:

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1. Sleeping Right After a Meal

People often slip into what has been dubbed a ‘food coma’ when they either eat too much or have such a satisfying meal that all they want to do is sleep it off. But you might want to avoid that cat nap after you devoured those to Big Macs.

You risk bloating, heartburn, and loads of unpleasantness. When you lie down, those fluids you hear gurgling in your lower body can make their way back up your pipes, eroding the lining of your esophagus.

Sleeping after eating can also increase your chances of having a stroke. So make sure you wait a couple of hours before taking that long nap.

2. Smoking

Sure, it feels good, and I admit I’ve been guilty of having a cigarette or two after a meal. But smoking tobacco itself is already bad enough, considering the more than 60 carcinogens in cigarettes.

Surprisingly, the effects of smoking are ten times worse after a meal. The act of smoking can rob you of the nutrition you’ve been dying to get. It may also dilute how much vitamins and minerals your body absorbs from the foods you ingest.

3. Drinking Cold Water

Water is considered the basis of all life on our planet. It is also one of our most precious resources. As far as we know, nothing on this green Earth can survive without it in some form or another.

The problem with drinking it after a meal is when it’s too cold. At the wrong cold temperature, your food can clump up in your intestinal tract, leading to poor absorption. If you’re going to drink water, let it get to room temperature first.

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4. Eating Fruit

There’s nothing like having a tasty snack after a filling meal. We all want a little something extra before we stop eating for the next few hours. The problem with fruit as an after-meal snack, the simple sugars of the fruit get stuck during the digestive process and decompose in the stomach, causing possible gas.

5. Taking a Shower

You know that sleeping or smoking after a meal is bad for your health, but did you know that taking a shower is also bad after a meal? If you’re like me and love hot showers, doing so is bad for digestion after a meal.

The hot water causes the blood to rush to your skin to adjust to the temperature, robbing your digestive system of the blood it needs to process your recent meal. Good news, though. If you still want to take a shower after a meal, experts say to wait a minimum of thirty minutes before getting under the water.

6. Drinking Tea or Coffee

Tea and coffee have a lot of health benefits when consumed in moderation. Each of us likes some form of tea or coffee, so there are few strangers to the either beverage. Tea is known to phenols and phenolic acids, which can severely affect the body’s iron intake.

And if your iron intake is affected, you can suffer iron deficiency and risk anemia (severe lack of iron).

If you’re still looking for that tasty cup, wait at least an hour after your meal to eliminate that risk.

7. Walking

A lot of people believe that it’s necessary to ‘walk the food off’ after a meal. But as with a shower, you should wait at least thirty minutes before going on that walk. Walking right after a meal can cause acid reflux and indigestion, risking erosion of the esophageal lining.

8. Exercising

I honestly don’t know why anyone would, but you should definitely not work out after a meal. Everything else on the list you can wait to do or drink, but you’re risking your health if you exercise after a workout.

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The digestive process will be disrupted and may result in impaction.

9. Strenuous Activity

While exercise is bad itself, a strenuous activity that weighs on both the body and mind can be bad. Participating in paintball, for example, can result in you seeing your food a second time from all the running and ducking.

You may also get hit right in the stomach, despite the protection offered.

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