14 small changes that will make a big difference to your health and wellbeing
Small, consistent changes can make a world of difference to your life and your wellbeing.
Changing your life for the better doesn’t have to be a marathon or a mammoth task. Just making small but meaningful changes across a range of areas can really be life-enhancing.
Here, six experts share their tips.
At every meal, take three mindful mouthfuls, recommends Kathryn Stewart, registered dietician at Dublin Nutrition Centre. “Engage all your senses. How does the food look, and taste? What is the temperature, the smell?”
Chew each mouthful really well, remembering that digestion starts in the mouth.
“Eating more mindfully can help digestion. The more you chew — and do most of that mechanical work in your mouth — the less your stomach has to do to break food down, so it can pass through the gut quicker.
“This helps minimise bloating and reflux — reflux happens when food is too long in the gut.”
The American Gut Study found that people who eat at least 30 different plant-based foods each week had a higher diversity of gut microbes, which may contribute to improved overall health and well-being.
“Thirty seems a lot, and most people think it means chickpeas and tofu, but it can be wholegrain oats or a slice of bread. It can include seeds and two different fruits added into your porridge — in that way, you already have four plant foods in one meal on one day of the week,” says Ms Stewart.
Other examples include nuts or chickpeas and lentils added to stews.
“On your next shopping trip, get some different fruits or switch up the vegetables, so you’re getting a variety and not the same types coming in every week.”
A 2019-published paper [exa.mn/herbs-and-spices-health] noted “ample evidence” that herbs and spices have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, and glucose- and cholesterol-lowering activities, as well as properties that affect cognition and mood.
Stewart suggests sprinkling cinnamon into yoghurt or porridge, mixed herbs into spaghetti Bolognese, cumin into chilli con carne, oregano/chilli powder/paprika into soup, or pepper onto eggs.
By doing so, you are also contributing to your ‘30 different plant foods a week’.
New, hybrid working conditions have blurred the physical and psychological boundaries between work and non-work life — making it harder to separate the two domains (and gain energy from each to bring back to the other), says Dr Melrona Kirrane, associate professor of organisational psychology at DCU Business School.
“If you’re constantly feeling ‘always on’, when do you rejuvenate, recover, re-energise?” asks Kirrane, who is academic director of Let’s Lead! The DCU Leadership Development Programme for Women
Switching off must happen in a tangible way, she says.
“When you’re leaving work, you shut the door, and close the laptop. And you have to get good at managing your anxiety around ‘I’d better check my emails, I’d better see if I got a reply’.”
Kirrane explains that managing your mind around work when you’re ‘off’ means saying, “‘I’m not at work now. I have done my job well and fulfilled my responsibilities professionally. I have confidence that enough is enough and tomorrow’s another day’.”
“How are we spending our time? What is the value of that? Are we paying attention to the right things or getting caught up in stressful, panicky thought processes?” asks Kirrane, who suggests practising gratitude as one way to gain insight into these issues.
“Take a moment to identify the facets of your life – people, resources, activities that pass you by, but that are actually things to be grateful for. Stepping back and identifying these things can help you get perspective on where to direct your energy.
“If you’re paying attention to the right things, it’s easier to locate yourself in your non-work life — ‘I have all this other richness in my life to participate in and contribute to, and that I can switch my mind to’.”
“It’s not about doing as many squats as possible in 30 seconds; you’ll end up with a sore back and knees,” says personal trainer Ray Lally, aka The Happy Fitness Guy.
“With people of all ages and fitness levels, I encourage them to do three squats and to do them as slowly as possible.
"Doing them in slow motion, you’ll feel the muscles getting shakier. You’re challenging the muscles because the ‘time under tension’ is longer.
“By slowing down, you’re not as short of breath. There’s more tension on the muscles, you’re working the body more intelligently — it’s quality over quantity.”
Doing ‘as many squats as possible in 30 seconds’ might mean you’re only getting 15 seconds of tension, Lally explains.
“But doing three reps of your favourite exercise and spending 10 seconds on each will give you 30 seconds of tension.”
It’s all about motivation — and keeping yourself motivated, says Lally. “You’re not judging yourself against your next-door neighbour who walks 5km a day — do that and you’ll be in pain and lose motivation.”
Instead, Lally encourages doing 75% of whatever you think you can do.
“That way you’re still smiling, you have a bit left in the tank. It means the next day you’re not exhausted. I’m very much into positive reinforcement.
“You’re better off doing something small — a 1km walk — and then doing it again the next day, and the next.”
“Pain is a blocker,” says Fiona Oppermann, sports performance coach and founder of Dublin Sports Clinic.
“Anything that affects your ability to move will have a massive impact on your physical activity levels.”
So that sore knee, those pains in your shoulder? Don’t ignore these messages from your body, Oppermann warns.
“If you don’t address them, they won’t disappear and you’ll become weaker, less mobile, as you get older. Go to the physio, see someone who can help you.”
Regular exercise improves every system in the body — and the good news, says Oppermann, is that this doesn’t change as you become older.
“You are never too old to start. Our muscles, tissues and ligaments will always respond to stimulation.”
“There’s something very meaningful about reconnecting with people who have been [positively] important in our lives,” says Anne Kehoe, senior clinical psychologist and president of the Psychological Society of Ireland.
“We can be shy about reconnecting and worry about rejection,” she acknowledges. Yet reconnecting can reap emotional dividends.
“It connects you to what that person meant to you, how important the connection was and to what they brought you,” says Kehoe.
"It brings you back to yourself, the version of you that you were then. It reconnects you with your values and reminds you of how far you’ve come."
Kehoe recommends using language in a way that’s kinder to yourself.
“Reframe your experience. Instead of saying. ‘This is hard, I’m struggling’, reframe it to ‘I’m learning’.
“If you feel really scared and anxious, tell yourself ‘I’m really excited for….’
You’re re-labelling the physical feeling of being nervous in a way that’s a little more positive.”
“There’s a lot that can trip us up in our busy daily lives. We can forget to do something, miss an appointment,” says Kehoe.
But rather than give out to yourself and say ‘I must do better’, there are many ways to nudge yourself more gently.
“If you’re constantly forgetting your phone charger, having a spare in the car can save the day.”
And instead of writing a to-do list that you promptly lose, why not have a WhatsApp thread with yourself about all the little things you have to remember?
“It doesn’t feel so punitive – more like ‘I just need an extra hand to do all the stuff I have to do’.”
A study published in 2021 reported that ‘breaking up prolonged sitting by intermittent standing, or low-to-moderate physical activity may be an imperative measure for improving cognitive function’.
Health psychologist and neuroscientist Dr Sabina Brennan says our brains perform better when we stand.
“In addition to being bad for your health, sitting for prolonged periods can lead to mental fatigue, and lack of motion can push your body into sleep mode,” says Brennan.
Reducing daily sitting time from eight hours to six hours — by standing for two hours every day instead — is the equivalent of running six marathons a year.
A review of studies that looked at laughter as medicine found ‘spontaneous laughter is associated with a greater reduction in cortisol levels as compared with usual activities, suggesting laughter as a potential adjunctive medical therapy to improve well-being’.
Brennan says that poorly managed chronic stress impacts negatively on the structure and function of the brain.
“Laughter is nature’s natural stress-buster – it lowers levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.”
“Turn down the volume on your headphones, wear ear defenders when working with noisy tools, get your hearing checked regularly and wear aids if needed,” says Brennan, adding that hearing loss is one of the biggest modifiable risk factors for dementia.
“It is critical to protect hearing at all costs... wearing hearing aids, if needed, mitigates this risk,” she says.
