If you’re just joining the Bare Minimum Mondays posts, here’s the premise…
Action always gets more results than ideas. (Related to this: the thing you do is better than the thing you don’t do, progress is better than perfection, consistency, even with something small, is more effective than occasional bursts of excellence).
Every Monday, we send out things to try in four areas: movement (exercise), nutrition, sleep, and stress management. These are, without question, the four most powerful tools available for tackling a massive number of maladies. The goal isn’t for you to do all of them forever. It’s not even for you to do all of them this week. The goal is to give you enough things to try that you can find a couple that stick, and then for you to have some intentionality in each of those areas that you can stick with for the rest of your life.
Take what you need, discard the rest.
Let’s get into it.
Move
Do 10 push-ups before your morning (or evening) shower. The single best thing you can do when it comes to exercise is find something that you can do consistently. A great way to make a new habit consistent is to link it to another habit you already have (like a shower). This is called “habit stacking,” and is incredibly powerful. Rather than try to carve out time for movement, find something you already do regularly, and add 30 seconds of movement right before or after you do it.
Eat
Eat a piece of fruit instead of a processed snack. As a general rule of thumb, whole foods tend to be more nutritious than things made in factories. That’s not to say processed food isn’t delicious (it usually is) or that it’s all bad for you (it’s not). But if you can swap out one of your processed snacks this week for one that’s a whole food (fruit is an easy one here), you’ll be getting more nutritional bang for your buck.
Sleep
Avoid screens 30 minutes before bedtime. Most all of us have heard this, but very few of us do it. But the research is overwhelming that blue light exposure before bed suppresses melatonin and disrupts sleep. Read more HERE.
Manage
Spend 10 minutes outside in natural light. Exposure to natural light improves mood and reduces stress. Read more HERE.