10 Health and Lifestyle Habits That Changed My Life
Over the last year, I tore down every single health and lifestyle habit I had and replaced them all with better, more holistic habits. For new friends reading this blog, you might remember last January I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, which sounds like an Old Person’s Disease but in reality is an autoimmune disease caused by inflammation that millennials are getting in high numbers. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 23.5 million Americans have autoimmune diseases, and over 80% of that group are women.
Since my diagnosis, I’ve been a Celery Juice Queen and weathered the ups and downs of carb withdrawals, new supplements, and reached out to experts to help me get to the root of my problems.
Even if you’re healthy, improving your health and lifestyle habits can have this crazy domino effect where everything becomes better after you heal what’s hurting.
So, here are the 10 health and lifestyle habits and improvements I’ve made over the past year that have changed my life as a human, creative, and freelancer.
Change #1: Reimagining My Home Office Setup
When we were traveling last year, we worked anywhere there were tables and chairs. I felt super lucky to get back home to my comfortable desk — but when I started reading all the research about how bad sitting is for you (it’s similar to smoking in its detrimental effects) I bought a standing desk converter and under-desk treadmill.
Overkill? Nope. (Just read this article from Yale Medicine.)
If you’re like me and are required to be at a desk for your world to operate and your goals to move forward (not an exaggeration, obviously) then you need to think about how you spend most of your day.
When I’m doing a long work session that requires me to read and review things, I walk on my walking desk. When I’m needing to type more, I roll my little walking treadmill away and either use my standing desk converter or just sit on an ergonomic chair. (If you haven’t tried a kneeling desk chair, I highly recommend it!) You can check out some of my favorite office finds here.
Working from home gives you total control over your set-up, so make the most of it. Give your body the variety it needs to maintain muscle while WFH.
Change #2: Getting 12,000 Steps Per Day
When I was working remotely in Europe, I was easily getting 16k-20k steps in per day, but these days it’s more like 8k-12k.
Walking is a great way to clear your mind, contemplate life, and get moving. I shoot for 12,000 steps per day because it’s a gentle, low-impact way for me to get movement in throughout my day. If you’re feeling like your energy is consistently dipping throughout the day, I highly recommend committing to a step goal.
I’ve used a Fitbit in the past, but now I recommend the Apple Watch because of how it integrates into so many different health apps, and I feel like it’s heart rate monitor is one of the best. You can also just use your iphone to track your steps (go under the “health” app to see your daily steps!)
Change #3: No Alcohol
Sometimes, you have no idea how amazing you have the potential to feel until you completely change your habits.
I used to drink quite a bit: it was the way I celebrated, the thing that kept me on the dance floor ‘till 2am at my favorite indie dance spot, the way I eased my stress at the end of a long day.
When I got diagnosed, I had to quit drinking entirely because of the medication I’m on. But even when I get off this medication, I don’t think I’ll return to alcohol. I thought I wanted to, but I realized it doesn’t have a place in my life, and here’s why.
First, alcohol is habit-forming. It creates a downswing in your mood, which increases your consumption of it. Only when I was sober for a year did I realize how stable my mood was, how nice it was to never wake up with a hangover, and I saw in plain sight the other things I had to deal with to get my mood right.
If you’re a woman, you might want to question the role birth control plays in your life. It’s a drug that can cause huge amounts of anxiety in women, and it wasn’t until I stopped drinking entirely that I realized I was living with a ton of daily anxiety that I was numbing with drinking, so I stopped my birth control shortly after I got sober and found a kind of peace that seemed unattainable before.
Regardless of your situation, being sobercurious or cutting down your drinking has a ton of benefits. Increased liver function means your body will be more effective at clearing out toxins, and be better at keeping you healthy. You’ll have higher energy levels, and you’ll be more aware of what your body is lacking. You can also still have fun and go dancing without alcohol: and waking up without a hangover is just better, trust me.
There was one last holdout to my daily, stressed-out state, and that led me to…
Change #4: Limiting Caffeine
If you knew me in the past (or even read my blog) you’ll know that coffee was my drug of choice for so long. I would drink a French press per day, along with additional caffeine or coffee in the evening.
Now, I no longer need a cup of coffee to wake me up in the morning. Seriously. Sometimes I’ll have a latte in the afternoons, but most days, I skip coffee entirely. Instead, I drink a daily matcha oat milk latte sweetened with a little bit of maple syrup that I make for myself at home. Matcha is ground-up green tea, and green tea has a ton of benefits. Matcha is high in antioxidants, revs up your metabolism, boosts brain function, and has anti-cancer properties. I drink this after my daily morning cup of lemon and mint water that helps digestion.
When I do drink coffee, it’s a treat. Matcha has much less caffeine than coffee, and it feels smoother and less anxiety-provoking than my daily French press did.
So if you’re feeling anxious or stressed or can’t sleep, you might need to limit or completely cut out coffee. Last year, I went entirely coffee-free for four months, and I felt so exhausted beyond the point of “normal tired.” What I found out — with the help of my awesome nutritionist Katie! — was that I had an undiagnosed iron deficiency that was presenting differently on my blood tests (as a Ferritin deficiency.)
I would have never discovered that had I not completely gone off coffee and become more aware of my body and mood.
By not having caffeine after 4pm, I also have regulated my sleep cycle and don’t have any problems falling asleep.
Basically? Question the drugs that keep you running every day. You never know what you might be covering up.
Change #5: Drinking Celery Juice + Green Smoothies Every Day
My partner Kyle makes us green juices every day, and I’m in charge of the kale smoothies. We also always have lemon-mint water (with homegrown mint!) chilling in the fridge, and make sure we drink a lot of water each day.
Getting the liquids in your diet right makes all the difference. Your body metabolizes green juice and green smoothies differently, and they’re both great ways to get nutrients. On top of that we also eat salads, so prioritizing greens is a big deal.
Why all of this? Because my body feels better and I’ve had more energy than I’ve ever had before. Green smoothies are also a no-chop way to get half a container of kale into my daily diet.
Even if you’re not out here curing an illness like I am, you’re probably not eating enough vegetables. Try adding a frozen mango and kale smoothie to your daily diet — you might be surprised how good you feel just by getting more greens in.
Change #6: Enforcing a “Mindfulness Hour”
Each day, I journal, meditate, and do yoga. I like to call this my “mindfulness hour.” The first thing I do when I wake up is go outside on my roof, get some SoCal sun, and start journaling. I reflect on the day that’s past, I write down what I want in the future, and I break down anything that’s bothering me. Then, I read an entry of The Daily Stoic, and return inside to plan my day and my to-do list items. Then, my partner Kyle and I do 20-30 minutes of yoga, and a 10-15 minute meditation.
All of that adds up to roughly an hour, and it’s a part of my day that’s become more and more important. It’s a tough routine to stick to: I’ve been off-and-on on this for the last year, but I feel the loss of this in my day when I don’t stick to it. I’ve been using the Habit Stacking method from the awesome book Atomic Habits, and that’s helped me completely reprioritize the habits I wanted to build and remove the bad habits I no longer wanted to enforce.
Having a mindfulness practice has helped me heal my overactive nervous system and anxiety. Now, I’m pretty much anxiety-free, and living life happily one day at a time.
Change #7: Doing the Inner Work to Heal
Anxiety, depression, and stress aren’t normal — especially at high levels. We’re meant to be at a calm, peaceful stasis. If something is disturbing your peace, it’s up to you to decide whether that disturbance is coming from an environment, path, or person that no longer aligns with you — or, if that disturbance is from past unresolved trauma. We all carry around some sort of trauma, and that’s a part of life. But you don’t have to carry it: you can heal and get better.
I work with a therapist to help me handle life’s ups and downs. In the past, I’ve been in therapy to deal with hard life events, but now I use therapy more as a place to problem-solve external stressors. I’ve worked hard to clean out the basement of my mind: those dark corners or lurking patterns that cause destructive behaviors. I’m not perfect, but I feel more even-keeled than ever.
So, if you’re feeling a deep sense of dread or anxiety in your life, there might be some meaningful interior work that can help you clear those cobwebs. We experience a lot of tough stuff in life, and today is a great day to start to prioritize some healing.
Change #8: Hiring Experts to Help You
I work with a therapist, nutritionist, and personal trainer. I also have an accountant/business manager and lawyer in my business life. All of these wonderful people help me learn new skills and run my day-to-day business.
Before I worked with experts, I was a DIY-er. I could do my own bookkeeping and teach myself how to lift weights at the gym. But my form was bad and I didn’t know anything about business tax deductions.
Working with experts has helped me free up brain space and get more out of working with someone who has trained for their specialty. I’m an expert in certain areas like storytelling, writing, and the perfect matcha-to-oat-milk-ratio for my matcha latte. I’m pretty decent at fitness but weight lifting has a lot of nuance, and instead of struggling with the heavyweights and hurting myself, I have the great luck of being able to work with an expert who can help teach me.
It is a privilege to have a team of experts to help you, so even if you’re not at a place to get a team in place, find the area you need help with the most and level up from there.
For me, I started with 1-800 Accountants (awful, do not recommend) and Legalzoom (also awful, do not recommend), and a personal training app called Future. You might just hire an accountant to do your taxes, and learn how to use Quickbooks to do your own bookkeeping if you manage your own business or freelancing career. But as you grow your resources and freelancing — or whatever your path in life is! — then set aside the funds to invest in experts.
Change #9: Enforcing a Daily — and Weekly! — Routine
Traveling most of last year was super fun, but it also made me realize how key a routine was in my life.
The problem of working remotely is that you really do need to travel slow if you’re trying to stick to a routine. In Europe, our two-weeks-or-less-in-each-city rule was lovely but disruptive to our schedules. I need at least a month in a place to establish and keep a routine, especially if we’re jumping from timezone to timezone or if there’s a lot of work things going on.
Now, I’m more rooted in Los Angeles for the time being, with the occasional five or six day trip to another city to hang out and work remotely there.
My current weekly routine looks like this:
Sundays: rest day. Usually a clean-the-house and organize day. I’ll occasionally get to emails or some work, but mostly a work-free zone.
Mondays: catch up on admin work, emails, anything that’s accrued over the weekend. Go bouldering!
Tuesdays: therapy, strength workout, and small tasks I need to clear off my plate to keep things running.
Wednesdays: deep work. No meetings, no admin work, no emails. Just whatever key task I’m trying to accomplish that week, with maybe a workout break.
Thursdays: more deep work, and a half-day for meetings. Another strength workout. Usually a lighter work day as the week winds down.
Fridays: half-day of work from 10am-2pm to wrap up the week. I go bouldering and then get this incredible sourdough called Hasi bread from our local bread dealer.
Saturdays: day off. Usually I go exploring or do something fun with my partner!
My daily routine changes, but generally looks like this:
Mornings: mindfulness hour, check emails, put out fires, and begin on my most important priorities.
Afternoons: work break to eat lunch, work out, clean the house. Then, back to work for the second stretch of the day.
Evenings: clock out by 5 or 6pm, eat dinner, watch TV and end the day with reading or stretching.
When designing routines, it’s important to think about what habits you want to cultivate. I highly recommend reading the aforementioned Atomic Habits by James Clear — one of the most formative books I’ve read when I was building my routines and auditing my habits.
Change #10: Working Less, Charging More
As of this blog post, I charge $350/hour for my work as a freelance writer. It’s taken me a long time (and a lot of experience!) to get to this point in my life, but over the past five years in my freelance career I’ve learned how to value my skills and price them accordingly.
By charging more, I’m able to scale way back and work less. This is a lot different from a few years ago, when I was having to work nonstop to pay the bills as a lower-paid freelancer.
There’s so much demand for freelance talent — but don’t undervalue your skills! Charge what you’re worth, and give yourself a cushion so that you can have days off. If you’re wanting to learn how to be a freelancer, check out my freelance 101 guide here on the blog!
You Are What You Do Everyday
You are your habits, plain and simple.
If you have bad habits, they’ll compound and you’ll be left with an undesirable life.
If you have great habits, they’ll compound and you’ll be left with a great life.
This simple but life-changing concept helped me understand that picking a salad over pizza and a green smoothie over a sugary coffee drink adds up in a big way when I make healthy choices every single day. Same with freelancing: setting goals and knowing how I wanted to get there completely changed the way I worked, and now I live a life more in alignment with where I want to be. I have the freedom I’ve always craved, and I can invest in my creative work without the traditional 9-to-5 day job.
Life is better when you’re intentional: so start thinking about how you want to spend your days. You only get one shot at life, so use it well!
