Categorizing Healthy Habits

Health is a highly contentious topic that is full of misinformation. We’re all susceptible to the placebo effect, especially when it comes to health products, strategies, and mindsets.

This was a pragmatic, research-based attempt to identify habits that are significantly likely to be healthy, then condensed into something easier to read.

Daily Life Habits

• Manipulate your environment to make healthy habits more convenient (e.g. make it more convenient to get water over soda)
• Chronic stress is exceptionally damaging. Constantly recognize and minimize causes of stress. Mindfulness meditation, regular breaks from work / study, and introspection / journaling may relieve stress in some people.
• Daily exercise is exceptionally important and has been shown to improve sleep, cognition, wellbeing, and more.
• Maximize time on enjoyable passions / hobbies. Especially those that may bring long-term rewards such as hiking, socializing, video games.
• Engage in frequent positive self-talk. The simple act of believing in yourself and being confident in your abilities can significantly improve wellbeing, exercise capabilities, and performance on exams.

Nutrition and Dieting

Dieting is exceptionally controversial. While there are a lot of conflicting opinions, some of the most universal include:

• Eat more veggies; cut down on processed foods, added sugar, alcohol, and animal fat
• Home-cook more, use a variety of seasonings, drink water / tea / coffee
• Maintaining low body fat may improve long-term health. Best accomplished by marginal calorie restriction
• Attempting to restrict calories by adopting a fad diet or temporary diet (over a few months) can be detrimental for one’s health. Rather than attempting a short-term diet it is significantly better to work on improving one’s long-term diet.
• Intermittent fasting is only worth considering if planning to maintain the eating pattern for years / decades. Its value comes from the calorie restriction often accompanied with the diet.

Sleep

• The vast majority of people would benefit from reaching 7-8 hours of sleep per night
• Sleep preferably without an alarm clock; if using an alarm clock, refrain from snoozing
• Power naps 7-8 hours after waking up may be beneficial but may be a sign of lack of nighttime sleep
• Sleep at the same time every day, have a 30+ minute pre-sleep routine, sleep in a cold room
• Caffeine has a half-life of approximately 5 hours. Avoid excess intake within ~10 hours of sleep
• Avoid stimulating activities before sleep (drugs, alcohol, blue light, snacking, exercise, social media, etc.)

Supplements

While there are hundreds of supplements proclaiming astounding benefits, the vast majority have little-to-no quality research backing them. Some easily available supplements with substantial evidence include:

• Exercise: Whey protein, creatine, caffeine
• Vitamins: Vitamin D, magnesium, fish oil (only beneficial if diet is deficient)
• Sleep: Melatonin (~0.3mg, little risk of dependency in adults)