10 micro-habits for healthier living

Micro-habits don’t take much time or energy to implement, just the discipline to initiate and follow for a certain amount of time till they become an unconscious routine. Practicing them every day could likely yield long-term health benefits as supported by some of the research whose link I’ve provided. And the hope is it would therefore make us more productive for longer.

These 10 micro-habits are ordered through the chronological sequence of a day, but they are based on my day and can certainly vary for others.

1.?????? Wake up right: This is the simple act of getting out of bed in a manner that is least stressful to the spine. The procedure is:

a.?????? Ensure you have space to get outside your side of the bed and not banging a wall

b.?????? When you wake up, first, move your legs away from the bed and use it as a counterweight to raise your upper body, using very little of your arm for support along the way

A simple video to explain this procedure is here.

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2.?????? Drink lots of water: The immediate act following getting out of bed should be to drink lots of water. You are always thirsty in the morning as you’ve gone long hours without hydration and body temperatures drop while asleep making you even sweat occasionally which dehydrates you further. So, you are likely to reach for the bottle of water in any case, but just make sure you are drinking anywhere between 500ml-1lt first thing in the morning. It’s a good start to the amount of total hydration the body needs in the day and it even helps your next act for the day, going for potty.

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3.?????? Brushing with a sonic toothbrush: Enamels require a consistent sensitive care that a manual brush dependent on our mood may not always provide. A sonic toothbrush, preferably one with a timer to remind you to not go over 2 minutes is probably a better approach.

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4.?????? Brushing with leg balancing: “The 2 pillars of exercise, cardio-vascular and weight-training, rests on stability” said Dr. Peter Attia on Stability. Most of us are aware/practice cardio and/or weights, but very few do anything for stability, which is a miss as it tends to enable the optimal performance of both cardio and weights. It’s difficult to track or even train for stability, but one simple hack I found for this is to spend those 2 minutes brushing by balancing on one leg, alternating between the legs each day. It’s easier said than done as it took me quite a while to learn to balance on one leg, but I’m hoping it helps in the long run.

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5.?????? Coffee without milk: The simple act of drinking coffee without milk in the morning can help stretch those fasted hours a bit longer, helping you soak in the benefits of intermittent fasting. The best thing to do is avoid coffee altogether as the first hot beverage in the morning and replace it with tea or an infusion. But if you really can’t avoid coffee, trying to go with a decaffeinated option without milk. Many people tell me they can’t stand the taste of coffee without milk, but I think this is just a matter of experimentation. Play around with different coffee brands till you find one that works. I’ve found some Nespresso options to taste even better than my favorite Bru filter coffee with milk.

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6.?????? Hanging from a bar: At some point in the morning routine, try to get 2 minutes of hanging from a bar. And this is it, just simply hanging. No pull ups, chin ups, ab training, nothing. Just hang. This ensures spinal decompression and wrist strength, both under-leveraged and crucial for improved performances across other exercises.

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7.?????? Walking: Throughout the day, try to replace an existing action with walking. Take the stairs instead of the lift, walk during calls, walk to office if possible, or at least some of the distance from home to office. Getting in some form of walking has big benefits. Walking doesn’t strain any of our joints like running or cycling would and can burn just as many calories. And if you want to leverage walking for a good workout, try rucking. Our bodies are built for walking long lengths and we should aim to get as much of this done in a day as possible.

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8.?????? Monitoring pee color: There are some toilet seats in Netherlands where the water drain is placed in front rather than directly below where the potty goes out. It’s because at some point, in all their practical wisdom, the Dutch believed in checking their poop daily to ensure their bodies were functioning fine. While none of us need to go that extreme today, checking our pee color daily can still be useful. Our pee color should be as light as possible, as this is a sign of being well hydrated. If it’s too dark, it’s a sign of dehydration that can have problems.

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9.?????? Early dinner: When it comes to dinner, when you eat could be more if not as important as what you eat. Eating early allows the body to enter a fasted state sooner, once again soaking in the benefits of intermittent fasting. Carbs during dinner could be bad for the waistline and no carb could make you hypoglycemic which tends to have a ripple effect through the next day. The best balance could therefore be to have a little carb and little earlier in the evening to balance hypoglycemia and belly fat.

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10.?? Leg pillow: And then we come to the final act of going to bed and sleeping the right way. Of course, sleep is incredibly important for our overall wellbeing and Matt Walkers Ted Talk on sleep covers it quite succinctly. We certainly need to follow all those other practices of avoiding blue screen before bed, avoiding alcohol, ensuring zero ambient light and a slightly lower temperature in the bedroom. But one act that not many follow is the placement of a pillow just below the lower portion of our legs. Sleeping on our back with the pillow positioned this way is recommended as one of the best sleep positions by Jeff Cavaliere.