198. Back to the Basics: The 4 Habits That Matter Most for Your Health

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Are you making your health more complicated than it needs to be?

With all the advice about what to eat, how to exercise, which supplements to take, and which habits to follow, it's easy to feel like you're never doing enough.

You start tracking your protein, worrying about your workouts, trying new routines, and looking for the next thing that might finally make you feel better.

And before you know it, taking care of yourself feels like a full-time job.

But here's something I want you to consider: What if you don't need to do more? What if you just need to focus on the right things?

We spend so much time trying to optimize our health that we often skip over the things that make the biggest difference.

So today, we're getting back to basics. I'm sharing four areas of your health worth focusing on, why they matter, and how to make them manageable without overhauling your entire life.

1. Hydration: Are You Drinking Enough?

Before we talk about supplements, nutrition plans, or anything else, let's start with a simple question.

Have you had enough water today?

It's such an easy thing to overlook, especially when you're busy, running around, or reaching for coffee first thing in the morning.

And here's something interesting: Drinking coffee can sometimes make you feel less thirsty, which means you might not think about drinking water as much.

One thing I encourage people to do is front-load their hydration.

Instead of getting to 7 p.m., realizing you've barely had any water, and trying to make up for it before bed, start drinking earlier in the day.

Try drinking some water before your morning coffee and keeping a water bottle within reach throughout the day. Small things like this can help you get into the habit of drinking more water without having to think too much about it.

Start here: Tomorrow morning, drink a glass of water before you reach for your coffee.

2. Nutrition: Focus on Consistency Before Perfection

There's so much conversation about nutrition right now.

How much protein should you eat? Are you getting enough fiber? Should you track macros? What's the ideal meal plan?

Those things can have their place, but there's something I want you to work on first.

Are you eating regularly throughout the day?

If you're going eight hours without eating and then trying to squeeze all your nutrition into the evening, let's start there.

Regular meals help provide your body with a more consistent supply of energy. Long stretches without food can also leave you feeling hungry, irritable, or completely drained.

And when you're already stressed, exhausted, and overwhelmed, the last thing you need is another complicated set of food rules.

Think of nutrition in levels.

• Level 1: Eat at regular intervals throughout the day.
• Level 2: Start paying attention to whether your meals include protein and fiber.
• Level 3: Work on getting adequate amounts of those nutrients.
• Level 4: Fine-tune your nutrition based on your personal needs and goals.

You don't need to jump straight to level four!

Build consistency first. Once that feels manageable, you can work on the next piece.

Start here: Look at your usual eating schedule. Are you regularly going long stretches without food? If so, focus on creating a more consistent routine.

3. Movement: It Doesn't Have to Be a Workout

When I say movement, I don't mean you need to spend an hour in the gym every day.

I'm talking about moving your body in whatever way is accessible to you.

Maybe that's a walk around the neighborhood, some stretching, gardening, or a few minutes of movement between meetings.

It all counts.

Movement supports your physical health, of course, but it can also be a helpful way to manage everyday stress.

I like to think of stress as a bucket.

Throughout the day, things keep adding to that bucket. Work, responsibilities, family, decisions, and all the little things that pile up.

We need ways to empty it. And movement is one of those ways.

A short walk might not solve everything that's stressing you out, but it can help you feel a little more regulated and give you a break from everything going on around you.

You don't need to push yourself to exhaustion to get something out of it.

Start here: Find 10 minutes in your day to move your body in a way that feels good and works for you.

4. Sleep: Stop Treating It Like an Afterthought

You can focus on hydration, nutrition, and movement, but if you're consistently not sleeping well, everything else can feel harder.

Think about how you feel after a terrible night's sleep.

You're more irritable, it's harder to concentrate, you might feel hungrier than usual… and those everyday problems suddenly seem much bigger.

Sleep affects how we think, feel, and function.

And while we can't always control how well we sleep, we can pay attention to what's getting in the way.

For some people, it's staying up too late watching Netflix or scrolling on their phones.

For others, sleep problems may be related to hormonal changes, including perimenopause and menopause, or other health concerns.

The important thing is not to ignore it.

If your habits are keeping you up, look for small adjustments you can make. And if you're giving yourself enough time to sleep but still struggling, talk with a healthcare professional.

You don't have to just accept feeling exhausted all the time.

Start here: Think about one thing that's regularly interfering with your sleep. Is there something you can change this week?

Don't Try to Fix Everything at Once

Now, here's where I see people get stuck.

They read something like this and immediately decide:

"Okay, starting Monday, I'm drinking more water, meal prepping everything, walking every day, and going to bed at 9 p.m.!"

And then life happens…

By Wednesday, the whole plan has fallen apart.

This is exactly why I encourage people to slow down.

Pick one thing. Work on it until it feels manageable. Then add something else.

You don't need to change your entire life in one week.

We tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a single day and underestimate what we can accomplish over several months.

Those small habits might not feel especially exciting, but they add up.

And once you've built a solid foundation, you can always fine-tune things if you want to.

Your Health Doesn't Have to Be Another Source of Stress

Here's what I hope you take away from this.

You don't need to constantly chase the next health trend, perfect routine, or new strategy to make progress.

Sometimes, the most useful thing you can do is look at what you're already doing and ask:

Am I consistently taking care of the basics? Am I doing them consistently? Is there one area I’ve been neglecting?

You don't need to change everything at once. Pick one thing to focus on, make it manageable, and build from there.

Once you've got those habits in place, you can decide whether anything else actually needs your attention.

Want to hear more? Listen to the full podcast episode for a deeper dive into the basics that matter most, where to start, and why doing less might actually help you feel better.

TRANSCRIPT:

Disclaimer: The transcript below is provided for your convenience and may contain typos, errors, or grammatical inconsistencies, as it has not been professionally edited or proofread. Please enjoy it as-is and read at your own discretion.

Please note: The content shared in this podcast and blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized medical guidance.   

 Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you all doing? Today is gonna be a super short episode. I wanna talk about just how important the basics are. I know I say it all the time, but truly, I think we really overcomplicate it. Real quick, a few life updates. I think I told you in a previous episode how I am having a coloring book made. I wrote all the things that I wanted in it, and it is really for the person that is working on their health, and yes, wants to use coloring as a stress reduction technique, but you want it to have less pressure and be more joy-filled and sort of like a gentler version to getting to your health. Think that this could be a tool that could be really helpful. I have been obsessed with coloring for years now. It is one of the only habits for me that has actually really stuck around, and I'm a massive proponent of people figuring out what hobbies are necessary for them to get into a little bit of a flow state, to be able to calm down their nervous system, to be able to help in this world that honestly is really noisy. What's been really fun about this, I wrote... It was actually over 100 pages. of exactly what I wanted my illustrator to do. You know, I want this in the image, and I want it to say this, and have this and that. Anyway, she did a fantastic job. I absolutely love who I hired. And I never knew how many edits go into making a coloring book, at least the way that I'm doing it. She did the initial illustrations. I gave feedback. She got that back to me, and we now several times, I have printed it out, and I feel like, what was the name of who ran Vogue for all those years? If you remember, there was always, like, a master book that she would take home, and they have this magnifying glass when they look at things. And guys, I literally had a red pen, and I was sitting there looking at every single inch of it, 'cause I just don't wanna miss anything, and then someone thinks that AI did it or something like that. So anyway, this is so fun. I had hoped by the end of October it would be out. At this point, I'm hoping mid-November, but definitely coming up in that timeframe. I'm really pumped about this. This is honestly a passion project, and I hope that some of you will find that to be fun. Now, here's something that's interesting that's come out of in the past few years doing a lot of creative things. My hand hurts at times, and I notice that it's, the more I'll write or the more I was honestly doing prolonged periods of coloring, 'cause sometimes it'll be a few hours. And I really just thought, "Okay, well, if I keep practicing, that'll get better." You know, I'm just, my hand's not used to this. And then I started to go down the rabbit hole of understanding with occupational therapy, honestly mainly because my son has really bad handwriting, and he's been working with an OT the posture's not correct with how he's holding things. So anyway, so I'm learning more and more, and I'm realizing, "Oh, my lord, this is not just keep practicing. This is, I actually need to strengthen the intrinsic muscles in my hands." Okay. So, to work on these intrinsic muscles, and I'll explain in a second what that really helps with, I got something on Amazon called a boulder ball, or it can be called a finger climbing ball or a finger bouldering toy. And long story short, think it's like a wooden circle, and it has on it little rock climbing holes. Like, you know, like the little nubs that would be if you were climbing up a rock wall? But it's smaller, right? Like, think each one's maybe the size of a quarter. And then you quote unquote "climb" with your fingers across it. And it does engage those intrinsic muscles of the hand. Those are the small muscles of the hand that help with finger positioning, pinching, fine control, and it's also uses the muscles that originate in the forearm. It works a combination of muscles. How much strengthening occurs is really gonna depend on the resistance and how you use it. But long story short, practicing hand strength, finger coordination, dexterity, that has been something you can literally be watching TV and doing it. And honestly, I just a few minutes a day was playing around with it, and I've noticed over two, three weeks here that I'm not getting pain anymore with coloring. So that's a massive win. Honestly, that was the inspiration for today's episode because I was thinking we kind of go in our mind to the most complicated things. It's gonna take me a really long time to get my strength, and then things aren't going in the right direction. You're like, "But I'm trying this and I'm doing that." And then at the end of the day, it ends up being the simplest thing ever. I mean, honestly, it's a toy that I'm playing with that has helped my hand, this particular experience honestly was the motivation for today's episode, and just reminded me that we need to revisit the basics. I wanna go today over some of those basics, and I don't care how many times you've heard it, because here's what you need to hear. The basics work. We don't need to overcomplicate it. So question one, have you had hydration today? Have you gotten any water in? Have you gotten... You know, everything counts, by the way. Unless you're having more than 500 milligrams of caffeine a day, it is negligible the extra amount of urination that you have based on that. So have you hydrated? The only reason I'm not a super fan of a bunch of caffeine, number one, people become more sensitive as they're getting older, but number two, a lot of the time when you have caffeine, the thirst drive is dampened. Typically, if we wouldn't have given you a coffee first and you were to first have some water and then the coffee, you would get in more hydration than if I give you the coffee and I'm like, "Okay, now sit here and get in a bunch of water," you don't have the same appetite for it. It's like caffeine and nicotine have that kind of effect on you. So anyway, have you hydrated? And if not, it is never too late to start. Now don't... If it's after 5:00 PM and you go to bed sometime 10, 10, 11 o'clock, don't start sitting there and chugging all the water in the world to, quote-unquote, "make up for it." What we want to work toward is how can I front load my day more? How can I get more of the things that matter to me earlier in, in the day so that I don't need to worry about it so much? Okay, so that's number one, hydration. Number two, with nutrition, before you go down the rabbit hole of thinking about the perfect amount of protein and fiber and macros, the first thing that I care about is are you eating at some type of a regular interval throughout the day? So let's just say three times a day. You might not have as much in the morning if you're not as hungry, but you have something in the morning, you have something within a four to six-hour period. It is not eight hours by the next time you're eating, and then you have something again at night. The regularity with which you are giving yourself nutrition matters. There's this fun field emerging, and it's called neuronutrition, and basically what it explains is, look, the-- how the nutrients are hitting your body is telling your nervous system whether you are safe or not. When you go these prolonged periods of time without eating, your body perceives starvation and things get activated. A lot of this is out of your conscious control. You know what is in your conscious control, though? If you're eating or not. So this is so much more complicated than just getting the right metabolism, the right metabolic rate, and losing weight. This is really about how can we help you honestly, overall, in general, feel better. This Sunday in my 3030 group, we're deep diving into the nervous system, and as I was writing out all this stuff, I was realizing, oh my gosh, I have a lot to say about this. So maybe I'll see over the next few months if I bring some of it into the podcast. But one of the things that really strikes me is there are so many factors that go into our health, and at the end of the day, there's really only so much that we can do. There's this principle, the Pareto principle, which is honestly, it's usually a little percentage of what you're doing that's getting you most of the results. About 80% of it's junk and we could cut out, and so we need to figure out for you what are those real bang for your buck activities. Hydration's gonna be one of them. Regular intervals to eating is gonna be another. Sure, later you can say, "Okay, do I at all have protein or fiber in the meal?" Okay, that's step two. Okay, step three is, all right, am I getting at least 15 grams of protein with the meal, at least five grams of fiber? Okay, great. Step four is optimizing even more beyond that, bringing in a body composition scale and seeing month to month what's going on. Do you see how there's levels to this? But step one is just regular eating intervals with nutrition, and then you keep building on it because you start to feel more regulated. You have the bandwidth to do that. You've unlocked the next level of the game. All right. So number one was hydration. Number two was regular eating intervals and working on your nutrition. Number three is gonna be movement. I want you to move your body at all every single day. Now, maybe five days a week you get in a longer walk or you do whatever it is, but my point is practically every single day you should be moving your body. I don't know that there's a world where you don't move that day. It doesn't need to be intense. It doesn't need to be crazy style, but why would you not walk for 10, 20, 30 minutes if you can? If you can. I understand there's different ability levels that are listening, and the point is not to shame anyone. But if you can move, why would we not? And yes, there needs to be rest and recovery, but I'm not talking about hitting an hour of strength training every single day. So at all can we move your body? You know how we just talked about the nervous system? This is part of it. If you are not going to be helping to empty your stress bucket, I want you to think about it. It fills up during the day. We need to empty it. You can either at night be emptying it some, in the morning with your walk. That might help empty it even more. We have to maintain ourselves being in a regulated zone. This is part of it And yes, we can get into heart health and all the rest of it, but just in general feeling okay, are you moving your body at all? The last one that I wanna have on here is gonna be sleep, but we could say sleep st- slash stress. Now, I'm not even throwing stress in here because when I say stress, people are like, "Well, I don't know. How do I get it to go down?" Honestly, you'll be a lot less stressed if you are hydrating, getting regular meal intervals, and if you are moving your body at all. I'm gonna guarantee you, you are 9 out of 10 regulated if you're doing those things. Okay, last thing is sleep. Why? We cannot function without it, and if you're not getting good sleep, you need to see a healthcare professional. I definitely went to my physician recently 'cause I was getting headaches in the morning all the time, and I was like, "This is not normal." So I got a workup, okay? When you are not doing okay with sleep, there is a reason. We do not just wake up 24/7 without there being something going on. If you're going through perimenopause, menopause, the hormone levels change. Progesterone going down means you either can't get to sleep or stay asleep. There is a reason for what is happening. But if we're not sleeping, our hunger's going up. We're not thinking anymore. We literally do not have access to the thinking part of our brain. What I want you to realize when we are really stressed, the amygdala, the emotion center of our brain, takes over, and when that happens, you quite figuratively and literally have reduced visibility over things. So before, when you were creatively solving problems and thinking what could work in your world, you saw a lot of options. You thought, "Okay, out of all of this, what am I gonna pick to do?" When we get stressed and sleep deprived and undernourished, all of those things, we stop seeing that there's possibility. We start to get into burnout and hopelessness. We don't want to get there. We try to control what we can control. If you're sitting there watching Netflix really late into the night, that's something we can change, and you have to decide, "I care more about feeling better than I do watching a Netflix show at night." That's a decision. Now, if you're trying to do all the things and sleep still isn't working out, of course, get help. It's the reason that there are good clinicians in the world. But my point is that you need that sleep. You need to hydrate yourself so you're not a wilted plant. You need to get that nutrition in and move your body. That's it. I know I just said a lot. If you're new to me and- I know that's a lot to go do all that, but you can slowly build these things out over time. My program in January, the next chapter, that is the goal, that we're going to slowly do the Atomic Habits workbook and see, okay, in my life, that thing that I keep wanting to do but I can't, how could I approach it differently? Okay, what is it that I'm doing that makes my nervous system feel bad all day long? Okay, what's one thing over the next six months here that I can work on? Work on things slowly. We all overestimate what we can do today and underestimate what we can do in the long run. Today, you're not gonna get all the things done, but you will over time if you keep going. All right, stay focused, my friend, on the basics, because that will always get you to just a really functional, great place. You can always optimize and crank it up at different times. That's always an option. But to first establish the basics, most people are feeling so great at that, they don't really need to take it much more intense than that. I was actually gonna share this in another episode, but I just feel like it's a good time to say it. I was watching a clip the other day about Sylvester Stallone, and he was talking to, I think, some, some type of reporter, and he shared for the first time that he had a history with bulimia, that when he started to make these movies and he started to get really popular and and when his body started to be idolized in pop culture, that he started to want more and more and more to think of it like a machine, and if I do this and if I do that, and he talked about how he got to the place where he couldn't keep any food down. He was taking massive amounts of steroids, and he was like, "Come on, everybody did that was looking that way," and how he hated his body and his life. And that's so sad, right? Because you think about everyone thinks about Rocky. That's like, that's like the main thing that everyone comes back to, the theme song, the message of it, all of it. And think about how much he was hurting. Here's my point. We don't need to get to that. We don't need to get to the point where we're sitting there and all day long our body has to be perfect, things like that. That's not a life that's built around purpose and love and satisfaction. That's not what's happening there. All right. Go do the basics, my friend. Slowly build these things out over time. If you've really been off course for a while, start with just hydration. Don't say, "I'm gonna all the things, I'm gonna have all the meals prepped on Monday, and then all these things are gonna happen all at once." Ease yourself into it. You can do it. I believe in you. If you have not left a review for this podcast and you're loving it, please leave a written review. It really helps other people to be able to find the podcast. All right, I hope you all have a great rest of the week. We'll talk soon.