Musing 19

So often in life, it’s taking care of the easy or low hanging fruit that reaps the most benefit.

And truly, there were 2 things that improved my physical health above all else.

First was getting more sleep.

I have been accused of being a robot at various points in my life, usually because I had no problem staying up late (by nature, I’m a night owl), and at various points in my life, I’d go to bed late and get up early.

And as I’ve aged, I definitely feel the lack of sleep more than I used to.

Without harping on too much about it, sleep has myriad health benefits, and just practically, you can think better and do more when well rested. If we are to truly give our all as if we’re working for the Lord, good sleep is essential.

The second was – drinking more.

Dehydration is a big problem, and I’m the first to admit that one of my many faults is that when I get stressed, I tend to forget to drink liquids (not just water, but also juice, or flavored water, or tea, etc).

And dehyrdation is linked to lots of weird stuff you wouldn’t think are related to not having enough water in your body.

For those losing weight, a great life hack is “15 minutes before snacking, drink 1-2 cups of water and only eat if you’re still hungry” because surprisingly, we suck at discerning between hunger and thirst. And many times, our desire to snack when we feel “hungry” is really our body telling us to take in water, but because we’re so conditioned to eat frequently, we default to eating more (leading to weight gain).

But between these two habits, I fixed a fair bit of the worst of my health. Over the last 2 years I’ve lost 40 years, and these two habits formed the basis of the beginning of that journey.

While there are other habits I’ve been building (such as for exercise), it’s really been these 2 habits that have given the most return on investment. And they’re so easy. Don’t neglect the easy wins, people. They set the path to getting the hard wins.