Four easy things you can do right now to start improving your health

Getting healthier isn’t a quick fix, as much as we’d love to click our fingers and make it happen.

Slaving over a hot stove to prep meals, dragging your body outside every day to get sweaty, and waving a despairing “goodbye” to guilty pleasure foods aren’t the only paths to a healthier life.

The big changes to diet, exercise, and routine are a key part of things, but getting some quick and easy wins to kickstart a healthier you can help build momentum and motivation to make bigger long-term changes.

Here are four things you can start doing right now to improve your health ...

Hydrate, hydrate, and hydrate some more

What you eat has a big impact on your health, but what you drink is just as much (if not more) important. Put simply, our bodies need water to survive, and rely on regular water intake for vital functions including:

• Protecting our organs and tissue
• Helping to absorb nutrients
• Regulating our body temperature
• Pushing oxygen around the body
• Helping cell growth and reproduction
• Lubricates joints
• Helping to make hormones and neurotransmitters in the brain
• Keeping our eyes, nose, and mouth moist.

Eat slowly

When you’re busy, working, or your kids are about to draw on the walls for the millionth time, it’s easy to shovel in what you can, when you can at mealtimes. But taking a little extra time to let your body digest food is a quick and simple way to start improving your health with every bite you take.

Eating slowly and taking pauses during a meal can help with:

• Allowing your brain time to receive the signal that you’re full
• Ensuring you’re chewing your food properly to help with digestion
• Eating smaller amounts to avoid gorging and weight gain
• Enjoying food more thoroughly and being mindful at meals
• Enjoying five minutes of destress time

The number of things that demand our attention at any given time can be astronomical. While we’re spinning all our daily plates, it can be easy to let our destress time slip in favour of just “getting things done”.

Carving out five minutes of our time can help us pause, reset, and feel more mentally equipped to tackle life’s demands. Five minutes of destress time could involve:

• A quick meditation session or breathing exercises
• Stretching muscles and joints to release tension
• Enjoying some silent time to be alone with your thoughts
• Petting or playing with your animal/s
• Checking in with your posture

How is your posture while you’re reading this? Are you slouched? Is your neck bent? Is your environment set up in the best way for your posture? How you work, eat, sleep, relax, and do virtually everything will involve your posture, and poor posture can lead to poor health outcomes. 

Making a mental note to check in with your posture and readjust where you need could save you pain, poor digestion, injury, and tension, and you can start fixing it straight away. •