These Five Things Completely Changed My Health

Small changes that have had a major impact on my health.

There are an infinite number of things you can do to optimise your health.

But some things things, even small things, can make a huge difference.

Here are five things I have found that have made a huge difference to my health.

These factors may not give you the same leverage as they did for me, but ask yourself what similar small changes you can make to gain a disproportionate benefit.

1. Sleep - Same Time. Every Night. Every Morning.

I used to think sleeping was a total waste of time. I kind of still do, but I have come to realise that without it, my life falls apart.

Over the years, I experimented with various approaches to getting by on less sleep.

None of them worked.

When I was training as a doctor, I frequently worked 100+ hour weeks and did overnight calls where it was not unusual to work for 36 hours in a row with maybe 2 hours of sleep overnight.

For a while, I thought I had gotten used to it.

I hadn’t.

I had just normalised feeling exhausted all the time.

It wasn’t until I started prioritising sleep that my quality of life during the day started to improve radically.

I genuinely thought people who said they were not tired during the day were just lying.

I didn’t think it was possible.

Until I started to go to bed and get up at the same time.

Seven days a week. All year round.

Yes. That includes weekends.

Kids have definitely interrupted this pattern, but in general, I try to stick to the exact same bedtime and wake-up time every single day.

Doing so means I wake up refreshed, I do not feel tired during the day and am usually always motivated to do the things I want to do.

I no longer feel ‘Tired all the time’.

It took me a LOOONG time to lock in this pattern, but when I did, the results were amazing.

In my view, if you get sleep right, you get everything else right.

The first step in getting sleep right is going to bed and getting up at exactly the same time every day.

Seven days a week.

2. Making Exercise A Daily Habit.

I played sports when I was younger, but when I went to college, that all stopped.

Some of my US college friends used to ‘Go to the gym.’

To be honest, I thought they were a bit weird for doing so.

I can probably count on two hands how many times I ‘went for a run’ during college. I can safely say that every single one of those occasions was miserable, and I distinctly remember feeling like my lungs were going to go on fire.

I just did not like exercising.

After returning from a trip to South America in 2007, I realised that I was about 15kg overweight. I was completely out of shape, and I felt like crap (Technically speaking).

Too many late nights, endless bottles of Malbec and way too much cote de boeuf. (Good times, though).

I knew I needed to focus on my diet and start exercising.

I started running. It was hell.

Every session was pure murder.

I had endless bouts of ITB (iliotibial band syndrome).

Then, I discovered zone training.

I didn’t know that term then, but a wise elder explained that I needed to run in a heart rate zone, not at a target speed.

This changed everything.

I started to enjoy my runs. I wasn’t fast, but I wasn’t moribund by the end of 5 km, either.

Over time, my pace increased, my distances extended, and I felt better and better.

It took a very long time, but I reached a point where exercising became something I felt I had to do every day, and if I didn't, I felt awful.

(I also lost those 15 kgs. That was mostly diet, though).

Today, I try to exercise every day. No matter whether it is a run, a strength training session or a hike.

On the days I do not exercise, I feel bad.

Regular exercise did not come easy to me, but it has radically changed my life.

I couldn’t do without it.

3. Effectively Eliminating Alcohol From My Life.

As you will recall, from my time in South America, I used to drink alcohol.

Probably far more than I should have.

When it comes to health, there is no amount of alcohol that is good for you.

But hey, there is probably no amount of flying that is good for you, but we still take the risk.

I still drink, but just WAY less than I used to.

A friend recently asked me when I last felt drunk, and I said, “A long time ago”.

He replied, “Like last year?”.

He was pretty shocked when I said it was probably closer to 2013, not 2023.

I had some great times when I drank more alcohol, but for this phase of my life, less alcohol means:

Way better sleep.

Way better weekends.

And I would argue a much better quality of life.

But that is for me.

Everyone has to answer this question for themselves, but I can safely say that effectively eliminating alcohol from life has done wonders for my sleep, mental well-being, exercise routine and weight management.

I do miss some of the fun, but the upside is far too much for me to lose.

4. Abandoning Dietary Approaches To Managing High Cholesterol.

I have high LDL cholesterol.

When I do all the standard things to improve my diet, it gets better.

By a little bit.

I have five gene variants that drive up my risk.

I do everything right from a lifestyle perspective, and my LDL cholesterol does not even come remotely close to an acceptable target for me.

I see this pattern in many of my patients, particularly those with an increase in LDL cholesterol during midlife.

They make all the lifestyle changes, and their LDL cholesterol barely budges.

They find this incredibly frustrating.

For some, their lifestyle changes make a big difference, but in general, these people are the exception rather than the rule.

I firmly believe that lifestyle measures are the most powerful tools for delaying the onset of heart disease and promoting longevity.

Appropriate nutrition to maintain insulin sensitivity is absolutely critical.

Regular exercise to improve fitness metrics is essential for lifespan and health span.

Good sleep hygiene and cognitive well-being are critical aspects of good health.

But using dietary strategies for managing high LDL cholesterol, I have found, in general, to be very ineffective.

In my experience, if you really want to reduce risk related to high LDL cholesterol, you have to hit very low numbers, and to do so, medications will be required to get you there.

That doesn't mean that everyone needs to go on a cholesterol-lowering medication.

It just means that if you want to maximally reduce the risk related to that aspect of your health, then diet is very unlikely to get you there alone.

That is why, for me, I pretty much eat whatever I want while keeping my visceral fat levels in check, and I pay very little attention to what foods might ‘increase my LDL cholesterol’.

For me, this approach has made life so much simpler.

I wish I had realised it sooner.

5. Designing My Work Life To Facilitate My Actual Life.

Up until 2014, my work was my life.

Work came first. EVERYTHING else came second.

A very distant second.

And I paid the price for it.

My health, relationships, my cognitive well-being all suffered.

I could not figure out how my work life would allow me to meet all the necessary metrics of exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management.

It seems foolish to say it now, but of course, I could never fit them in.

It was impossible.

It wasn’t my attitude to exercise or nutrition that needed to change.

It was my attitude towards work that needed to change.

Even though my work was incredibly important to me, I realised it was damaging so many other aspects of my life.

In aggregate, it was making my life worse, not better.

So I changed.

I walked away from a very highly-paid job so I could have the autonomy and flexibility to choose how I spent my time.

And not have my job make that decision for me.

I sacrificed a huge amount of my professional life to reconfigure my work to have more of what I really wanted, which was autonomy.

I make substantially less money as a result of that decision, but my life is infinitely richer as a result.

I can always earn more money, but I can never earn more time.

And it was more time that I wanted most of all. Not more money.

Reconfiguring my work life has undoubtedly been the biggest driver of optimising everything else I have discussed so far.

If you do not design your life, the world will design it for you, and you will pay the price.

I cannot claim that any or all of these factors will have the same impact on your life as they did on my own.

These are just the ones that have made disproportionate impacts on my life.

I suspect there is some overlap, but in truth, there are things unique to your situation that matter also.

The key is finding those high-leverage changes and having the courage to make them.

That transition will be scary.

But I promise you it will pay off.

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