Everyone should make an effort to be healthy. However, it can be overwhelming when you try to figure out how. There is way too much information on the internet. What advice should you follow? What kind of food should you eat? What workouts should you do?
Is healthy living difficult and bland? Can’t you ever eat sugar? Do you need to do agonizing workouts for an hour every day to stay healthy?
Well, there are certain things that we should do and certain things we need to be mindful of, but that doesn’t mean that healthy living should feel like a punishment. In fact, healthy living is more than just diet and exercise.
So, exactly how you can live a healthier life with minimal effort.
Let’s take a look!
Table of content
5 Ways To Live A Healthier Life With Minimal effort
1. Go Back to Your Roots When It Comes to Diet.
You don’t need a fancy diet to get healthy, nor do you need to skip meals or do extensive calorie counting to improve your eating habits.
What you need is homemade food.
It doesn’t matter what culture or which part of the world you belong to— a common feature of all traditional food is that it is usually very healthy in composition.
Traditional food includes a lot of locally sourced fruits and vegetables, and so they are rich in all the essential nutrients and contain a lot of fibre. For this reason, they don’t cause sudden sugar spikes and provide satiety for a long duration without making you feel heavy or bloated.
Eating a lot of fruits and vegetables ensures good health. You don’t have to worry about any nutritional deficiencies or where the antioxidants are going to come from.
Secondly, it’s difficult to overdo sugar and salt in home-cooked meals.
For reference:
- The recommended upper limit of salt intake is 5 gm per day (1 teaspoon per person)— this may seem less, but you will notice that when you prepare your food at home, you will rarely overdo this limit.
- The recommended upper limit for sugar is 9 teaspoons for men and 6 teaspoons for women.
Of course, cooking at home can be difficult for some in the beginning, depending on the culture/country they grew up in. But this small transition can benefit you greatly in the long term.
Another great thing about home cooking is that it saves you a lot of money.
So, how to get started with it?
Home-cooked meals need not be very complicated. Start with simple recipes that don’t require too many ingredients or spices. Experiment a bit to see what food you like and how a particular food makes you feel after you eat it.
You can also start with a few home-cooked meals per week and then build a habit of cooking every day at home slowly. Over time, you will find ways to be quick with it.
I can almost guarantee one thing: if you can get a handle on preparing food yourself at home, you will start losing weight without any additional workout, because I can tell you from experience that a healthy diet is the most important factor when it comes to weight loss.
The saying, weight loss is 80% healthy diet and 20% exercise— is true.
2. Do The Recommended Amount of Exercise
You don’t have to kill yourself exercising. By this, I don’t mean you don’t need to do any exercise. Of course, we need some sort of movement each day, especially because we stay seated a lot— be it at school, college, work or at home.
So, we need to work out regularly to get all the major muscles and joints moving to keep our body healthy.
Here is the recommendation for those who don’t like to work out too much: do only the recommended amount of workout each day, and it is not too much.
The recommended amount of minimum workout you should do per week (not per day) is as follows. You can do more if your time, health and endurance level allow it.
- 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic workouts (like brisk walking) with 2 days of strength training per week. Or,
- 75 minutes of high-intensity aerobic workouts with 2 days of strength training per week. Or,
- You can do a mix of high and moderate-intensity workouts with 2 days of strength training per week.
As per studies, 30-60 minutes of strength training per week is enough to maintain good health and prevent health issues.
You can divide the recommended minutes of the workout into days as per your schedule.
You can start with just 15-20 minutes of workout each day, with two days of strength training for 15 minutes each week (minimum value).
Strength training also includes workouts with your own body weight, like planks, squats, etc.
There are plenty of HIIT workouts— both low and high-intensity versions— available for free on YouTube. They usually have a combination of both cardio and strength training workouts. Most of these workouts don’t require large spaces or equipment, and the best thing is that you can do them at home. These are a great place to start.
Frankly, doing some exercise is better than no exercise. So, if in the beginning you can’t do a 15-minute workout, you can start with just 5-10 minutes of workout, and then increase the time as your body gets stronger.
3. Prioritize Sleep and Destressing.
Both lack of sleep and stress are known to cause many health issues. They are, in fact, related to each other: lack of sleep will increase your stress levels and reduce your ability to handle stress, and stress will make it difficult to get a good quality sleep.
Sleep
Lack of sleep can have some short-term and long-term health effects.
The short-term effects include lack of focus and concentration, poor judgment, fatigue, increased risk of accidents, anxiousness, etc. You will experience these short-term symptoms even with just one night of improper sleep.
The long-term effects of sleep deprivation include issues like weight gain, depression, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and an increased risk of cancer and dementia.
Chronic sleep deprivation can even affect fertility. Studies have shown that men who sleep for 5-6 hours a night have testosterone levels similar to those of men 10 years older than them. Having lower levels of testosterone can affect fertility, muscle mass and bone strength.
Stress
Similarly, persistent stress can result in sleep deprivation, weight gain, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cognitive decline, poor immunity, and an increased risk of cancer.
Some studies in animal models suggest that stress may even cause cancer to return after treatment.
Just like sleep, stress can also be a cause of infertility.
So, as you can see, no organ system in our body is not affected by lack of sleep and persistent stress.
This makes prioritizing sleep and stress management so much more important because just by sleeping well and relaxing, you can prevent so many diseases— and it doesn’t take much effort to do it.
4. Socialize a Little More.
I know many of us either don’t like to socialize too much or don’t have the time I know many of us either don’t like to socialize too much or don’t have the time to socialize as much as we would like. But socializing with others is important for us.
You don’t need a crowd of people. We only need a few reliable friends and family members with whom we can share moments of joy and laughter.
Also, socializing with others doesn’t include socializing on social media — which is the more to avoid, the better it is.
I’m talking about real in-person interactions with others.
Why is socializing with others important, you ask?
Well, as per studies, socializing with others has many health benefits.
- As per research, the death rate among people with poor social ties is 2 times higher than in people with good social ties , in the presence or absence of an existing health issue.
- People with good social ties live longer and are more likely to adopt habits that promote good health — like eating well, working out and complying with treatment for an underlying illness.
- In addition, people with poor social ties are more likely to develop diseases like cancer, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
Good social ties not only increase life span but also promote habits that, in the long run, help us stay healthy.
Now, most of us do have some reliable family members or friends. All we have to do is continue showing up for each other to strengthen the foundation of our relationships and, therefore, our health.
5. Take Some Time Out To Do Nothing.
Yes, doing nothing is one of the best things we can do for our mental health and to upgrade our creativity.
Often deemed as boring, sitting down and doing nothing may have some great benefits, especially if we are overwhelmed by everything going on around us.
So, what do I mean when I say do nothing? It means to sit quietly with no distractions — no TV, cell phone, computer, book, or anything else that we usually do when we have free time.
You have to sit and focus on what is going on within; focus on your thoughts, or don’t — either way is fine. It doesn’t have to be meditation style, but if you prefer that, you can do that too. Just sit and do nothing.
What are the benefits of not doing anything?
- You get better at noticing what is going on within and around you. You can use this time to figure out some common patterns in the various aspects of your life, including your health-related issues (like your triggers).
- Studies say letting your mind wander is a great way to improve your problem-solving abilities and to have more creative ideas.
- Doing nothing helps us be in the present — also known as being mindful. Numerous studies have shown how beneficial mindfulness can be. It can help us with things like less rumination, improved memory and focus, destressing, improved sense of satisfaction in relationships, increased openness to learn new things, patience, reduced emotional reactivity, etc. Mindfulness can help us improve our mental health and the overall quality of life in various ways.
All you need is 10–20 minutes of sitting and doing nothing.
So, How To Live A healthier Life With Minimal Effort?
Cooking simple dishes at home, exercising 15–20 minutes a day, sleeping well, managing your stress levels, socializing more and taking time to sit and do nothing can yield many health benefits.
You don’t need to do anything extra special to get healthy. If you can get the hang of these five things, you will be able to prevent many health issues.
Remember to be patient with yourself, as change is often a slow process.
Create healthy habits, not restriction.
— Unknown
Reference
- World Health Organisation (WHO). Salt intake. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/3082
- School of Public Health, Harvard T.H. Chan. Added sugar. Retrieved from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates/added-sugar-in-the-diet/
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Physical Activity, Adults. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/physical-activity-basics/guidelines/adults.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/adults/index.htm
- School of Public Health, Harvard T.H. Chan. Evidence mounts on the benefits of strength training (2022). Retrieved from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/strength-training-time-benefits/
- Vijay Kumar Chattu, Md. Dilshad Manzar, Soosanna Kumary,Deepa Burman, David Warren Spence, and Seithikurippu R. Pandi-Perumal (2019). The Global Problem of Insufficient Sleep and Its Serious Public Health Implications. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6473877/
- Science Daily. Sleep loss dramatically lowers testosterone in healthy young men. (2011). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110531162142.htm
- Habib Yaribeygi, Yunes Panahi,Hedayat Sahraei,Thomas P. Johnston, and Amirhossein Sahebkar. (2017). The impact of stress on body function: A review. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579396/
- National Cancer Institute. (2021). Study Suggests a Link between Stress and Cancer Coming Back. Retrieved from https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021/cancer-returning-stress-hormones#:~:text=Now%2C%20a%20new%20study%20suggests,up%20and%20form%20tumors%20again.
- C.D. Lynch, R. Sundaram, J.M. Maisog, A.M. Sweeney, G.M. Buck Louis (2014). Preconception stress increases the risk of infertility: results from a couple-based prospective cohort study — the LIFE study. Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/29/5/1067/2913997
- Debra Umberson and Jennifer Karas Montez (2011). Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150158/
- Akins Yamaoka and Shintaro Yukawa. (2020). Mind Wandering In Creative Problem-Solving: Relationships With Divergent Thinking and Mental health. Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0231946
- American Psychological Association (2012). What are the benefits of mindfulness. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/ce-corner
— Featured image: Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
© Sneha 2023 (Previously published elsewhere).
Updated December 2025
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