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
Take a 2‑minute light activity break every 30 minutes of sitting (e.g. leg raises, marching in place, walking to the kitchen). Interrupting prolonged sedentary time with short activity bursts improves both cardiometabolic health and mood.
Eat
Reduce one high-calorie snack this week (e.g. swap cookies/chips for fruit). Calories add up. There’s nothing inherently wrong with higher calorie snacks, but if you’re working to change your body composition, being mindful of calorie intake can be helpful.
Sleep
Limit naps to before 2:00pm. Naps are great. They feel good and they can boost alertness. But too long or too late and they can cause some real problems for nighttime sleep. Try to wrap them up so that you’re awake and back at it before they cause problems.
Manage
Spend 5 minutes doing structured positive reflection (e.g. “three good things” exercise) twice this week. Positive psychology interventions such as writing down “Three Good Things” that happened today improve well‑being and reduce stress. (Note: if it’s hard to come up with 3, try 2, or even 1. But do at least 1).