10 Simple Lifestyle Changes That Will Transform Your Health

I spent most of 2023 buying things. A standing desk, a sunrise lamp, a blender expensive enough that I felt obliged to use it, an app that charged me monthly to tell me I had not slept well — which I already knew, because I had been awake for it.

What actually moved the needle was smaller and cost nothing, and I only noticed because I write things down. Here is the list, in the order I adopted them.

The ones about mornings

Light before screens. I go outside for ten minutes before I look at a phone. Not a walk, not exercise, just standing on the back step with a cup of something. It took about nine days before I fell asleep noticeably faster at night, and I have not needed the sunrise lamp since.

Water before coffee. A glass, all at once, standing at the sink. I resisted this for years because it sounded like the kind of advice that comes with a supplement attached. It is not. I am simply less headachy by eleven.

One thing before the inbox. Anything: the dishes, twenty minutes of writing, a phone call I have been avoiding. Opening email first hands the shape of the day to whoever wrote to me last.

The ones about food

I stopped trying to eat well and started trying to eat on purpose, which is a different and much easier thing.

• Cook one pot on Sunday. Not meal prep with containers and a plan — one pot of something forgiving, eaten in whatever order the week requires.
• Keep three dinners you can make without looking anything up.
• Buy the vegetable you will actually cook, not the one you feel you should.
• Eat sitting down. All the way down, at a table, with the laptop shut.

The change was not what I ate. It was that dinner stopped being a decision I made at seven o’clock while tired and mildly annoyed.

The ones about the rest of it

Walk after dinner. Fifteen minutes, around the block, in whatever the weather is doing. This is the single habit I would keep if I had to give up the other nine.

Put the phone in another room to charge. Not face down. Another room.

Write one line a day. Three words is fine. The point is not the record, it is that noticing becomes a habit, and once you are noticing, the rest of this list writes itself.

What I would tell you if we were sitting at my kitchen table

Pick two. Not ten. I added these over about eight months and the ones that stuck were always the ones that fit a gap that already existed — the walk replaced scrolling, the water replaced standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle. The ones I tried to wedge in on willpower alone lasted about a fortnight, every time.

It is nearly a year now. I sleep better, I cook more, and the blender has been given to my brother, who uses it.