10 Incredibly Easy Ways to Improve Your Health

Incredibly Easy Ways to Improve Your Health is the first in a series of incredibly easy ways to improve your life.

Watch for upcoming entries including “Incredibly Easy Ways to Improve Your Mental Health,” “Incredibly Easy Ways to Improve Your Sleep,” “Incredibly Easy Ways to Improve Your Finances,” and more.

Incredibly easy ways to improve your life

Incredibly easy ways to make your life better are the best ways to improve your life.

Because, well, they’re incredibly easy.

Many gurus and motivational posters insist only difficult things are worth doing.

That’s ridiculous. It’s easy to breathe, and you wouldn’t stop doing that to seek out a greater challenge.

There are some challenging life-improvements worth pursuing. But if they’re hard, that means you won’t succeed at all of them. And you can only do a few hard things at any one time.

By contrast, easy things are easy.

When you find an easy way to improve your life, that’s a big win. Your life gets better without any struggle.

Incredibly easy ways to improve your life are wonderful. There’s practically no limit to how many of them you can use. 

And there’s never any doubt as to whether you’ll succeed. Incredibly easy means success is automatic.

By “incredibly easy,” I mean things that take little-to-no effort or willpower, and under five minutes a day. Often they take no time at all, or save you time.

Collecting incredibly easy ways to improve your life

This blog is about easy ways to improve your life. I’ve read over 50 self-help books, as well as hundreds of articles while finding content for Five Boosts, my weekly newsletter that recommends five articles on easy life-improvements.

Here are some of the easiest life improvements about health I’ve found, or come up with myself.

This is a subject I have particular expertise in. Twenty years ago, I lost 30% of my body weight. I did this after spending half my life obese. And I’ve kept the weight off since.

As I explain in my book The Weight Loss Habit, the reason the overwhelming majority of diets fail is because they’re too hard. The real path to permanent weight loss is to find the right strategies to make losing weight easy.

Note: Some links here are affiliate links, meaning I get a small commission when you purchase them, at no additional charge to you. I only suggest things I honestly believe in.

Incredibly easy ways to improve your health

1. Switch to Diet Soda

This is literally the easiest possible thing you can do for your health. It takes zero effort, cost, willpower, or time.

Just buy the diet version of soda instead of the regular version.

It costs the exact same. Everywhere that sells Coke also sells Diet Coke.

If you drink two Cokes a day, just switching to Diet Coke should lose you about 31 pounds in a year.

For no work at all.

(Math: It takes cutting approximately 3500 calories to lose a pound. There’s 150 calories in a can of Coke, and zero in Diet Coke. 150 x 2 x 365 = 109,500 / 3500 = 31.29)

While you may have heard warnings about artificial sweeteners, there’s no credible evidence that there’s anything remotely harmful about them. 

2. Build a habit of looking at calorie counts

Before you buy or eat food, take a second to flip over the package and look at the back to see how many calories are in it.

That’s it. Just look.

What you do with that information is up to you.

Maybe you’ll decide not to buy or eat it. Maybe you’ll decide it’s worth it.

But the first step is knowing how many calories you’re eating, and to do that, you need to take a moment to look.

3. Use smaller plates

Use smaller plates when you’re eating.

Buy smaller plates than you currently have, or use salad plates/saucers instead of entree plates.

It will make it look like you’re putting more food on the plate, which psychologically will lead to you eating less.

And it will physically prevent you from loading up the plate with too much.

It sounds silly, but it works.

4. Take smaller bites, especially with junk food

You know what tastes exactly as good as a handful of M&Ms?

One M&M.

You know what tastes exactly as good as a mouthful of ice cream?

A small lick of ice cream.

You know what tastes exactly the same as a handful of potato chips?

Half a potato chip.

It doesn’t take much for your taste buds to get saturated.

They don’t know the difference between a little bit of something delicious, and a whole mouthful.

But your waistline knows the difference.

So take a much smaller serving of junk food, and eat it slower, taking smaller bites.

You’ll enjoy it just as much, while consuming far fewer calories.

Yeah yeah. You shouldn’t eat junk food at all. We all know it.

But quitting junk food is hard.

Let’s be real: You’re not going to do it.

Sure, it would be easy for me to tell you not to eat junk food.

But I just checked the top of the page, and this list is called “Incredibly Easy Ways to Improve Your Health,” not “Incredibly Easy Ways to Write a Useless Blog Post That Will Make People Feel Bad About Themselves and Won’t Actually Help Them.

Sure, it would be easy for me to tell you not to eat junk food. But this list is called “Incredibly Easy Ways to Improve Your Health,” not “Incredibly Easy Ways to Write a Useless Blog Post That Will Make People Feel Bad and Won’t Actually Help Them.

5. Use a smaller spoon

An incredibly easy way to force yourself to take smaller bites is to use a smaller spoon.

Does your silverware set include teaspoons and soup spoons? Always use the teaspoons. Even to eat soup.

Or go out and buy some cheap small spoons.

An important thing to note is that there’s a delay between when your stomach notices it’s had enough food and when your brain gets that signal.

So anything that slows down your eating is going to make you healthier.

If you go out and order ice cream, use the sample spoon.

And buy your own set of tiny spoons to eat ice cream and other desserts at home. They’re called tasting spoons or espresso spoons, and you can find them on Amazon for $5 – $10 a set.

6. Include how you feel after you eat in how much you like foods

Whenever you’re feeling run down, bloated, cruddy, icky, etc., think about what you ate recently.

Could that food be responsible?

And, to put things delicately, whenever you’re using the toilet and not happy with how things are going, do the same.

Learn what foods have an unpleasant effect on your body.

Then include those effects in how you think of the food, and how much you like it.

For example, I enjoy the taste of creamy pasta. But eating it makes me feel run down and bloated. So I don’t like creamy pasta.

By thinking about it that way, I can turn down creamy pasta without using any willpower.

I just don’t want it, anymore than I’d want a Vegemite sandwich. (I find Vegemite repulsive.)

7. Learn how many calories are in your favorite meals at your favorite restaurants

Go to the website of your favorite chain restaurant.

Find the section that says “Nutrition Information,” or something like that.

Look up how many calories are in your favorite meals.

That’s it. Just look.

You may find that the salad you assumed was healthy is actually an 1800 calorie monstrosity. Or look at two dishes you like equally, and see one has half the calories of the other.

Or you may not make any changes to what you eat. It’s your choice.

But simply knowing is the first step, and also the easiest.

You should also do this with your favorite fast food chains. But there’s an even easier alternative:

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Self Promotion Interlude

These last seven suggestions come from my book The Weight Loss Habit: The No BS, No Gimmick, (Sort Of) Easy Way to Lose Weight and Keep It Off Forever.

I spent half my life obese, then found the right way to lose weight. I’ve kept it off for 20 years, without relying on willpower, and still eat my favorite foods.

The book explains how to change your mindset to lose weight for life without struggling, as well as 41 chapters of easy tips like this.

It even shows how you can even lose weight while eating fast food. Plus it includes a guide of what items are okay to eat at America’s top fast food chains.

It’s only $6.99, or free on Kindle Unlimited.

End of Self Promotion

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8. Buy your own equipment instead of going to the gym

If you absolutely love going to the gym, skip ahead to #9. This advice isn’t for you.

For everyone else, here’s the dirty secret of the gym industry: gyms are only for people who love going to the gym.

If that’s not you, don’t buy a gym membership!

You won’t keep a habit of going to the gym if you don’t love it. 

Traffic, parking, being shamed by people more athletic than you, waiting for equipment that some jerk didn’t wipe down, bad music, the smell, old men wandering the locker room with their thingies flopping around, creepy dudes creeping on you – all so you can do exercises that you find boring or painful.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

It’s just not a habit you can build or keep.

You’re far more likely to build an exercise habit in your own home on your own schedule, alone, watching the TV shows on your DVR, and using your own shower after.

Unlike the other items on this list, you will have to spend a fair bit of money. But you can look at it as an enormous savings if you do this instead of joining a gym.

A cheap treadmill, stationary bike, or weight set costs less than a few months of gym membership.

For more alternatives to the gym, see Twenty-Eight Ways to Exercise That Aren’t Going to the Gym.

(Note: I researched low-cost equipment on Amazon with at least 4 stars, 1,000 ratings, and no obvious flaws. However, I cannot personally vouch for those items. My own equipment is all older models I bought years ago that are no longer for sale.)

9. Use chopsticks when eating Cheetohs, chips, and other crunchy stuff

Using chopsticks for chips and similar items will slow down your eating. It forces you to eat one at a time instead of a handful.

Like with taking smaller bites and using a smaller spoon, this gives more time for your brain to get the signal that you’re satiated, so you won’t want to eat more.

No willpower required.

And as a bonus, it will keep your fingers clean.

10. Get flavored creamer and Torani syrup to make your own low-calorie tasty coffee drinks instead of buying high-calorie drinks

I’m not going to tell you to stop buying expensive coffee drinks to save money. You’ve already heard that eleventy-bajillion times.

Sometimes it’s worth spending a few bucks on something that makes you happy.

Other times, you’re better off with something almost as good, but much healthier.

International Delight Caramel Macchiato creamer is 35 calories a serving. Sugar-free Torani Syrup is zero calories.

Mix those with your own coffee and artificial sweetener, and you’ve got something pretty close to a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato, but one tenth the calories. (35 vs. 350)

Or use your own favorite flavored creamers and sugar-free syrups.

Also, you’ll save a ton of money.

You can even use some of those savings to buy a fancy Keurig machine to up your coffee game even more.

Use these incredibly easy ways to improve your health, and make a better life

So there you have it.

Ten incredibly easy ways to improve your health.

No effort. No willpower. Minimal to no time.

Whoever said “if it’s worth it, it won’t be easy” doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

If you have suggestions of incredibly easy ways to improve your health, or any other aspects of your life, please send them to me so I can include them in a future entry. You can comment here, e-mail stevenraymarks at gmail.com, or tweet/DM to @YourselfHelping. I’ll give credit, and if you wish, link to your (family-friendly, non-scammy) Blog/webpage/product.

Like learning about easy life-improvements? Subscribe to Five Boosts to receive five weekly suggestions of articles on easy ways to make your life better. You’ll also receive a free copy of 24 Ways to Improve Your Life, featuring summaries and analysis of 24 of the top self-help books.