Small changes to your environment can have outsized effects on health. Switching to a nicer tumbler made the host drink 4 liters of water in a day. Buying smaller, prettier bowls helped him eat slower and hit his calorie targets consistently.
In today's episode, I want to talk about how small tweaks, and often the tiniest of tweaks, can create really big results for your health. Now, we all know that habits and routines can be super powerful. Once you get them down, they can help you be consistent with actions that can have a big impact on your life. But here's the thing about habits and routines: they can become stale, and what used to work brilliantly can start to tail off and then not work so well after a while. And that's why you want to always be open to exploring small changes and tweaks to your environment, habits, and routines. Because sometimes just the tiniest of tweaks is all you need to completely revitalize a habit or a routine. And here's the kicker: often minor changes can lead to unexpected outcomes. You start with a really small change and you can end up being quite surprised by how much it helps. From there, it can often snowball into other tweaks and even bigger outcomes. Before you know it, what started as a small change has led to something quite transformative. But look, enough of the general talk. I want to jump in and give you a few recent examples from my own life, and I hope this will help you see just how much very small tweaks can help you improve your habits and your health. And to emphasize this as much as possible, I've picked literally the two smallest tweaks I've recently made. Just to show you how sometimes the smallest and somewhat most trivial changes really can lead to big results. So the first one is around my water consumption. And as you probably already know, one of my 7 foundational health habits is to drink 3 litres of water a day. Now, recently I have found myself struggling to hit that target and I couldn't put my finger on why. Just all of a sudden I seem to, to delay drinking water until later on in the day. And then it became just a bad habit and I started to struggle to hit my 3-liter target. And the habit had just become stale and it had stopped working so well. Then I made an unintended tweak. I bought some, some nice new tumbler glasses. And instead of drinking straight from my water bottle, one day I poured the water from my bottle into my new tumbler glass. And I just found I really enjoyed drinking it from the glass. I drank the whole glass in one go and then immediately refilled it. And then despite getting on with my day, I noticed that actually I didn't want to leave the refilled glass sitting there for too long because it was more obvious to me how the water would get stale when it was in a glass because, you know, you get those bubbles that appear when you leave a glass of water for too long on the side. So the first day I did this, I ended up drinking 4 liters of water. And by the way, that's actually too much. It had me up at night peeing 3 times. So the next day I actually had to be careful to only drink 3 litres. And it was crazy. I'd gone from struggling to drink 3 litres of water a day to now needing to monitor not over-drinking water, all from just a small change in how I was drinking my water. So that's the first example. And here's a second. And the second is around mindfully eating. So I went out for breakfast the other day at a lovely farm shop.. And I ordered the Greek yogurt bowl, and it came in a really nice bowl, and it was well presented. And I also noticed that the portion size was quite a lot smaller than I would typically mound into a bowl at home. Because of these things, I just felt like I should take my time with it. Not only did I enjoy eating it, but I actually felt light afterwards. And this is quite different to how I usually feel after eating yogurt at home, because I'm often left feeling quite bloated. And because it was a smaller portion and because I ate it more slowly at the farm shop, that was what seemed to make the difference. So before I left, I purchased some really nice bowls from the farm shop. And as it happens, the same bowls of yogurt that— sorry, as it happens, they were the same bowls that the yogurt was served in. And guess what? At home, when I was preparing my yogurt in my new bowls, I not only started to take a bit more care of the presentation, But I also started to mimic the smaller portions. And as a result, I ate more slowly and I felt light again after eating it. This then rubbed off on some of my other meals. I started to be more mindful of the size of my portions. For example, I have definitely have a habit of eating far too big a portions. And I also found I was eating my meals more mindfully, mainly slower. And this has gone on to have quite a big impact on finding it easier to hit my calorie targets for the day. I've gone from struggling to stay within 2,600 calories to actually now fairly comfortably eating within my 2,300-calorie target. And honestly, I never really saw that coming. And it was a combination of being inspired by a nice breakfast at a farm shop and the purchase of some really nice bowls that led me to eating smaller portions, more mindfully eating, and just finding it easier to stay within my daily calorie target. So as you can see, these two really small tweaks have made quite a big and immediate impact on my life. I'm now finding it much easier to drink 3 litres of water a day, and I've also made quite a nice improvement to eating more mindfully, improving my digestion, and actually just eating less overall. And remember, I went out of my way to pick the absolute smallest tweaks I could think of. We're talking drinking out of a nice glass versus a bottle. Just changing the bowl that I have my yogurt in. And it just goes to show how powerful these small tweaks to habits, routines, and your environment can be. So what's the take-home? Well, first of all, stay curious. Be self-aware of how well your habits and your routines are going. You don't want to get too comfortable, and you don't want things to start to decay and get stale. And if they do, you at least want to notice it. And secondly, it's really important to experiment. Don't hesitate to try small or seemingly trivial changes. Don't worry if the changes feel small or silly. Just remember, these small or silly changes can sometimes trigger a snowball of improvements, and they can then add up to quite a big impact. So I'll wrap with leaving you with a question, or perhaps even a bit of a challenge. Identify one small tweak that you can implement this week. Don't overthink it, just do it. And then observe its impact. And I think you might be surprised by the change that it causes. All right, thanks for listening and see you in the next episode.
