10 Small Steps To Improve Your Health

Many of us make health-related resolutions, such as to lose weight, stop smoking or join the neighborhood health club. While it is common to set high goals, experts say that setting smaller action steps goals could do more for our health.

“Small action steps are achievable and are easier to fit into your daily routine,” says James O. Hill, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. “They are less overwhelming than a big, sudden change.”

Here are 10 to try:

1. Become aware of the way your living. Take small notes on your habits (we think we know them all by heart, but you will be surprised….). Only awareness can lead you to change the things that are not working for you.
   
   
2. We were made to move. Moving is part of our nature but our lifestyle is making us more and more sedentary. An effective way to start to move is to walk and count your steps. If you want to take it to next level set the number of steps you want to do daily, start with a smaller number and then increase it on a daily basis to push you a little bit. A 10 minute walk daily helps to reduce stress, support weight loss, improve energy levels and improves sleep.
   
   
3. Avoid breakfast. YES, you read it right. Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. The line “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was invented in the 19th century by James Caleb Jackson and John Harvey Kellogg to sell their newly invented breakfast. Yes, you also read it right the food industry people told us what was important for our body. Balanced Rebel opinion is that if you really need to have breakfast have it but avoid simple carbs (cereals made of grains, bread, refined sugar) to avoid higher blood sugar spikes.
   
   
4. Become aware of how much veggies, fruits, protein you eat vs rice, pasta, bread (by the way we don’t think simple carbs are the bad guys, we think that we eat way more than we need).
   
   
5. Have at least one moment a day for you, even if its only 3 minutes a day. Use these 3 minutes to become aware of your breathing and your thoughts at that moment. Its a great strategy to recover during working hours. We recommend this strategy to all our customers.
   
   
6. Did you ever consider having a sleep routine. A sleep routine is a habit that prepares our body to go into sleep = recovery mode. We are not computers (even though our lifestyle makes us believe we are) and our body needs to move from working mode to recovery mode and nothing better than having a sleep routine to improve your sleep quality and duration and recovery.
   
   
7. Consider supplements. The nutritional value of the food we eat nowadays, even the organic stuff do not contain same quality of nutrients as they had in the past, so giving a little bit extra love to your body will improve your needs of nutrients.
   
   
8. Use recovery strategies to lower your stress levels. When well managed stress is good and can helps us achieve great results but when it becomes unmanageable we start to have insomnia, digestive problems, our immune system becomes weaker, inflammation becomes more recurrent, etc….Recovery strategies are small action steps we can do daily, weekly or monthly to help us maintain stress at the level that works for you. At work do a break every 90 minutes and speak to a work colleague about anything but work or go for a short walk or do some squats (yes you can do squats at work, its a strategy used by a lot of top executives)
   
   
9. Don´t numb your emotions. We are not taught how to deal with difficult emotions (we call it difficult because there are no good or bad emotions, they all have a purpose). Normally when we tend to numb our emotions we try to compensate that emotion with something that gives us pleasure so we don’t need to deal with it. Example: sadness is probable (Balanced Rebel opinion) the most important emotion we have because it tells you what is not working for you at that point in time, if you numb sadness with pills or alcohol or anything that tries to beat that emotion you will never be able to understand the root of the problem.
   
   
10. The most important one. Happiness happens by choice not by chance! So look to all the things that really bring you happiness and those are the ones you should really value. A good exercise you can do in case you get confused is to imagine you are dying what would be the things you missed the most….we are 100% sure that no one will say the house on the beach or the car I drive, or the all the time I give to work and take it from my family