Health Must-Haves vs. Nice-to-Haves
Before supplements and trends, here’s what actually moves the needle for your health
We’re constantly exposed to health advice—on social media, TV, and podcasts—promising quick ways to improve our health.
Everyone seems to have a magic bullet that guarantees health, without a lot of effort. From supplements and cold plunges to sauna and peptide injections, it can feel like there’s always a new “must-have” solution. (Remember that celery juice craze?)
But the truth is, most of these health trends don’t make a big impact if your foundational habits—like sleep, nutrition, stress management, and movement—aren’t in place first.
I think all the above listed are great interventions that can improve our health. I myself take a couple supplements and use a red-light therapy device.
But these nice-to-have health interventions are just not that effective if your foundational pillars to health are not in place. The marketing on social media makes you feel like you need these things. But without improving your actual pillars of health you are spending time and money on things that don’t provide as much bang for your buck as the foundations.
The main pillars to health are the must-haves and will give you beautiful levels of health. Once they are in place, then go crazy on all the nice-to-haves as your time and wallet allow.
The must-have foundational pillars to health
In health coaching school I learned that the main pillars to optimal health are sleep, exercise, nutrition and stress management. Sometimes we add in social connection, which can also nestle nicely under stress management.
Many of the nice-to-have health interventions augment one of these pillars. So for example, we can take Omega-3 supplements to support brain health (one of the supplements I do take) in conjunction with daily lifestyle habits that create brain health.
I’ve found that Dr Rangan Chatterjee does a great job at providing simple explanations about the main pillars of health and how they improve our body and brain. His books and podcast are some of my favorite resources to learn about practical lifestyle interventions we can adopt in our busy everyday lives.
In this article I will outline the four main pillars of health, and offer a couple places you can begin implementing lifestyle changes for your health today.
Health Pillar 1: Stress Management
Am I the only person who always starts with this pillar? I think it is the missing link to health for many of us working moms. We can eat a perfect diet and work out every day, but if our stress levels are out of control, we are sabotaging those efforts.
Dr Chatterjee calls this pillar “relax.” I like to talk about stress management as balancing your nervous system, and finding time to rest.
No matter what you call it, utilizing stress management techniques in your life is imperative if you want to continue through life with health. High levels of stress are linked to all sorts of diseases, symptoms, pain and mental health struggles.
If you are just starting out on your wellness journey and are looking for a place to start, choose stress management.
Ideas to get you started:
a short guided meditation practice. Check out Insight Timer or Headspace for free options
gratitude journaling
deep breathing
walking in nature
Health Pillar 2: Nutrition
Dr Chatterjee calls this foundational pillar to health “eat,” because it is just that.
We don’t need to argue which diet is better for you: paleo vs keto vs vegetarian. We can find studies that support each of these diet types. They can each be beneficial because the one thing all diet tribes agree upon: do not eat ultra processed foods.
There is no perfect one-size-fits-all diet that will work for every human. Many different foods will work for different people, depending on where they live, culture, family traditions, and what’s grown locally.
As a health coach I do not prescribe meal plans or recommend one type of diet over another. What I do help my clients with is choosing whole foods they can enjoy and eat consistently, without struggle.I hope that makes your food decisions simpler for you. Eat simple food. Eat fresh, local food that is in season.
Eat food with people you love. Drink enough water. Treats are definitely OK as long as they are eaten at special times, like holidays and family meals together. (I wrote a blog post about eating treats at work because that habit means we are eating processed grains and sugar far too often).
Try to eat a variety of foods from protein, fats and carbs (grains and plants) that is sustainable to you, and not a fad you read about online.
Ideas to get you started:
incorporate protein at every meal to keep you full longer
bring healthy snacks to work when you are tempted by treats (hard boiled eggs, nuts and seeds, hummus, cheese, meat sticks or olives
add more berries into your daily fruit and veggies
eat one serving of fermented foods (yogurt, kimchi etc) a day to improve your gut health
Health Pillar 3: Sleep
I love all the main pillars of health and my favorite pillar tends to switch from time to time. Currently I am in a massive sleep phase. When my kids were young and waking up throughout the night I felt a lot of anxiety before bed. I would start to worry, will I get any sleep tonight? How much will they wake up? I want to sleep so badly but am afraid I won’t get enough sleep and then feel terrible tomorrow.
Having young kids is hard, but many of us do not try to get back into a good sleep routine once the babies are a little older and sleeping through the night. At least, that’s what happened for me. Even once everyone was sleeping well I was still sleeping terribly!
I had to start working through my emotions and thoughts and putting good sleep hygiene habits into place to start sleeping better. Now, instead of feeling anxiety I feel excited to go to bed!
We cannot underestimate the power of good sleep. Our brain is washed and cleaned out during sleep, much like the trash collection we are fortunate to have in our cities. Sleep enhances our mood, decreases the risk for disease and decreases the risk for cognitive decline.
Ideas to get your started:
morning sun to sync your circadian rhythm: go outside within the first 60-90 minutes of waking up. The sun rays into your eyeballs will tell your body its morning, which will help your body know when it’s time for sleep later.
no caffeine after noon (or earlier)
make your room cool and dark at night
no screens 60-90 minutes before bed
deep breathing exercises to calm your nervous system
Health Pillar 4: Exercise
Time to move! The benefits of exercise are just insane. We need to do it, but I find this pillar to be the hardest to achieve. Maybe it’s because we working moms are busy! I also think it is because the brain naturally wants to conserve energy, so it feels very difficult to get motivated to go to a workout class.
Fortunately, there are many types of exercise and doing even a few minutes a day is better than none.
In his book How to Make Disease Disappear, Dr Chatterjee talks about the “get-fit” craze that happened in the 1980’s and 90’s. He says during this time people were led to believe that exercise is a “thing that happens separately from the rest of our lives…we do it in special clothes…we sometimes go to a particular place and then we leave, believing our “exercise” is now all finished until the next time and we can stop thinking about it.”
Reading this paragraph made me stop to think about how I’ve been conditioned to think about exercise as “working out” and there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. I thought that it only “counts” if I went to a gym to exercise.
But Dr Chatterjee’s point is that movement should be incorporated throughout the day and shouldn’t be done only to lose weight or to improve how we look. Movement will help us age with strength and be able to remain independent in our old age. Not to mention the amazing affects exercise has on the health of our brain.
Start with walking. Oh my the benefits of walking! I take a morning walk with my husband before the kids wake up, and then I do small movement-breaks throughout the day. I’m most interested in walking to decrease my risk for Alzheimer's disease, but walking has also been shown to decrease the risk for type 2 diabetes, cancer, and heart attacks and strokes. Walking has also been shown to improve mental well-being. Sounds good to me.
Ideas to get you started:
If your job requires you to sit for long hours at a time, try standing up and do some lunges
Every hour stand up and do 10 air-squats to offset the negative effects of sitting.
Do 2 pushups after you go to the bathroom (idea courtesy of BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits) or do some pushups on the counter after meals. This might be harder to do when you’re at work…but maybe try it in the bathroom on the sink counter.
All movement counts. Try to add small changes in your movement habits every day to gain all the benefits of exercise.
One of my favorite ways to include movement is family hikes. I enjoy this so much more than going to the gym!
My daughter Gemma has been taking this elephant stuffie on hikes for years.
There you have it. The 4 main pillars of health are must-have to age well with strength and without disease.
The pillars to health are simple, but I know that doesn’t mean easy. Choose one thing to work on first before you add another intervention into the mix.
You can add in the nice-to-haves as well, as long as they aren’t taking time, energy and money away from the must-haves.
Which pillar are you going to start with today?
Sign up here for the Selfish Giver newsletter to continue receiving health updates and tips for changing behavior to get to the lifestyle you want.
