How Can I Be More Healthy? Here Are Six Things to Focus On
Our bodies are amazing, complicated machines but how we best support them is not all that complicated at all.
It’s nearly impossible to avoid all of the quick-fix solutions and wellness fads that clutter up our TikTok feeds, social algorithms, and the ads we see every day. Just subscribe to this simple product for $49.99 a month, and everything will be fixed right away, right? Not so much.
The reality? There’s a quote that goes, “Champions are brilliant at the basics.” This perfectly summarizes my outlook on health and wellness. Being a “champion” of your own health isn’t about buying a brand new, extraordinary product that just hit shelves or relying on some complex, mysterious handbook. At the end of the day, wellness is primarily built on the basics. The stuff that I often call “boring” or “not sexy” or “the things we all know we should do but are hard to actually do.”
This is the framework that informs how I practice, the advice I give, the way I support my own health and wellness. Our bodies are amazing, complicated machines but how we best support our bodies (and our brains!) is not.
There are six things that I consider fundamental to our every day wellbeing and to preventing illness (as much as is possible).
The medical system can often feel really impersonal and sterile. I started Whole Person Well Care because I wanted to offer the kind of care I spent years hoping to find:
Care that feels personal. Care that creates safety. Care that sees you as a whole person.
The Six Basic Building Blocks of Wellness
Not in any ranked order (and see the caveats below!):
1. Movement: Move your body daily
You’ve probably heard it before: Movement is medicine! It improves cardiovascular health (think your heart and blood vessels), it’s been proven to reduce the risk of chronic diseases, it makes us stronger, and better yet it has major benefits for our mental health and acuity.
Movement doesn’t just have to be squats at the gym or going for a jog. It can be dancing in your apartment, doing chair yoga, practicing tai chi — whatever feels good for you and your body.
Need a more specific goal? Shoot for 7,000 to 8,000 steps a day. Like I've written previously, moving your body doesn’t necessarily mean hitting the oft-referenced 10,000 step goal every day – which actually came from an ad campaign for pedometers in the 1960s, not a specific recommendation from health care providers. Getting 7,000-8,000 steps will help you maximize the major health benefits of walking.
Whatever you choose, make it something fun that you can enjoy doing consistently And of course, it may not always be possible, particularly for people with disabilities.
2. Fuel: Fuel your body with nourishing food and hydration
Food might be the thing that has been complicated the most by companies wanting to sell us something. There are so many health buzzwords out there, and it’s hard to wade through all the marketing tactics to get to the facts.
As a health care provider, I believe this: Our relationship with food is key as much as the food we put into our bodies. Ideally, we would eat in a way that serves our cultural heritage, our bodies, and our souls. I am always careful not to stray into diet advice or participate in diet culture as someone working in medicine.
So you might be asking, “how do I eat healthy?” Here are three basic principles I emphasize with my patients:
Stay hydrated. Eight glasses of water a day is a good benchmark, but it can vary based on your activity level, the medications you’re on, and other factors. A good way to gauge your water intake, of course, is your pee. If you’re well-hydrated, it should be light yellow to clear.
Eat as little processed food as you can. That word gets thrown around a lot, but it really just means less food from packages and boxes.
And the biggest one? Eat regularly! Diet culture has really messed with people’s perceptions on this one, unfortunately. Having a consistent eating schedule is vital for your physical, emotional, and mental health. Regular meals stabilize your blood sugar, give you ample opportunities to get the nutrition you need, regulate your digestive health, and more. Your body needs fuel.
We say it all the time for babies: Fed is best (whether that’s formula, breastfeeding, or some combination of the two). I had a patient recently tell me she has started saying that to herself, which I thought was so powerful! At the end of the day, fed really is best for all of us. Eating consistently matters more than eating “perfectly.”
3. Sleep: Establish a consistent sleep schedule
If we don’t get good sleep, it’s hard to feel good about anything. That’s because sleep affects everything in our bodies, from how we function mentally and physically, to our immune system and ability to fight disease, to our metabolism, and more. In fact, several studies suggest that “being awake for 24 hours is similar to having a BAC of 0.10%,” which is like being above the legal limit to drive.
Everyone needs a different amount of sleep, based on a lot of different factors like age, sex, health conditions, genetics, etc. Generally, adults should be getting at least 7-8 hours each night but it can vary from person to person.
Here are three things I emphasize with my patients when it comes to sleep:
Consistency and routine matter most. Create a routine that you do each night before bed, like journaling or taking a shower for example, that signals to your brain that it’s time to start winding down for the day.
Try to keep your routine for weekdays the same on weekends, too. This one can be hard, because sleeping in feels really good. But as often as you can, try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day instead of throwing out the routine on weekends.
Let your nervous system relax! I suggest taking a break from screens 60-90 minutes before bed. If that’s not possible, try to at least stay off social media!
4. Mental health: It’s just as important as physical health–and often linked to it!
Our mental and physical well being are inextricably linked.
Did you know that depression, for example, can make someone more at risk for chronic physical conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and stroke? And of course, chronic disease can weigh heavily on a person and make them more at risk of depression and other mental health conditions, too.
How do we create emotional and mental stability in our lives? How can you improve your mental health? Much of the other basics on this list – social and spiritual connections, physical activity, sleep, and nutrition – can help. But evidence-based care like medicine can really help, too!
Mental health is deeply personal, and I approach it with compassion, curiosity, and patience. Whether you're managing anxiety, depression, ADHD, or a mood disorder, I’m here to support you with evidence-based care that doesn’t rush or judge you.
We can work together to explore what’s going on beneath the surface and create a care plan that includes both medical and lifestyle-based support.
5. Spiritual health: Build a connection to something bigger than yourself
I chose to name my practice Whole Person Well Care because I believe health care really should be about your whole person, including your spiritual wellbeing. To be clear: This doesn’t have to be a specific religion and for many people, it won’t be! It certainly is not for me.
This quote from Dr. Christina Puchalski in “The role of spirituality in health care” summarizes my perspective well:
“The technological advances of the past century tended to change the focus of medicine from a caring, service oriented model to a technological, cure-oriented model. Technology has led to phenomenal advances in medicine and has given us the ability to prolong life. However, in the past few decades physicians have attempted to balance their care by reclaiming medicine's more spiritual roots… Spiritual or compassionate care involves serving the whole person—the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual.”
As a provider, I care about your mental, physical, and spiritual health. We all need a connection to something bigger than ourselves. Make time to go on that (lifelong) journey to figure out what that is for you!
6. Community: We’re healthier together
We hear a lot about the epidemic of loneliness in our world today. In fact, about 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. report feeling lonely. Social isolation and loneliness isn’t just painful – it can increase a person's risk for heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes, mental health issues like depression and anxiety, dementia, and more.
Our health doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Connection with other humans who are supportive, kind, and loving matters. That doesn't mean that we all need to have a big group of friends who meet regularly and are texting back and forth in the group chat all day long. For some folks, this might mean 1-2 really close relationships. For others, the big group chats are key. For still others, connections made online are what feel most sustaining.
Even knowing your neighbors enough to say hello to or recognizing the same people on your daily commute can support our well being.
A Few Important Caveats
Whether or not we are healthy or have habits in each of these categories is not a reflection of our value as humans or of our morality.
The basics are general categories that need to be made to work for your body, mind, and life. As with all health advice, read and take what serves you. Leave the rest.
It’s likely that we won’t be operating at 100% in all categories at all times and that is just fine. That is life! We need capacity and space in our life in order to execute on these basics and depending on what season of life we are in, that capacity may be quite small.
Most health advice and the research that supports it is really based on able-bodied, neurotypical folks. I make these categories pretty broad and general because I believe we can also adapt them to chronic illnesses, disability, neurodivergence. It will look different for everyone, as it should.
It would be lovely to assume that if we all just did these things consistently, we’d be healthy, happy, and never get sick! This isn’t reality. The basics are areas where we have some control. In large part, we can’t control what our bodies do and whether or not we get sick. Our genes, lived experiences, environments, access to food, clean water, education will all impact our health and well being.
We must start with the basics! If you want to add red light therapy, saunas, cold plunges, supplement protocols, etc… go for it! But it will not replace the impact of the basics and it’s often just not affordable monetarily or time-wise for most people.
Focusing on our own building blocks for health, especially if you are from a marginalized community, is resistance and revolution. We are the foundations of change. Focusing on ourselves in difficult times can feel selfish or not like a priority but it is actually fundamental to creating the change we want to see in our society!
We get to decide what health and wellness means to us and what our priorities are for maintaining them. These six basics are a great place to start or a list to check back in with regularly to see where we might want extra support.
I built Whole Person Well Care to offer the kind of care most people wish they could find: Care that is thoughtful, holistic, and deeply personal.
Do you need extra support on your health journey?