Six daily habits that will transform your health for free

With some of us already abandoning our New Year’s resolutions, we asked the experts for the achievable changes that have a big impactWe’d all like to start the year by retreating. You don’t need an expert to tell you that a week-long reset at a lakeside sanctuary will leave you feeling relaxed and healthier.

Researchers at the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences in Australia have found that week-long wellness retreats can lead to substantial improvements in multiple dimensions of health and well-being that last for six weeks afterwards.It’s a no-brainer. But I also know I’m not the only one who can’t afford it.

A one-week ‘longevity programme’ at a famous Swiss medi-spa now costs upwards of £27,000, and even a week of wellness at a four-star UK spa chain will set you back almost £1,000.So what can we do to give our bodies and brains a New Year boost that leaves us feeling good without the price tag? In the spirit of small, achievable changes, we’ve found six habits we should all adopt today to help us feel better tomorrow.

Start with small bursts of activityResearchers at King’s College London, working with Asics, found that study participants who took a 15-minute movement break every day reported a 21 per cent greater improvement in their mental state than they had after a wellness holiday.It’s easy to fit in a workout on a retreat.

While a bit of activity becomes very appealing when there’s a gym on your doorstep and your whole day is devoted to downtime, it is less so when the pressures of real life return. But if you can master the art of exercise “snacking” – short bursts of daily physical activity – you can start to replicate the benefits of a wellness retreat at home.

“Finding time for [exercise] can be challenging. The good news is that there are still health benefits even if we don’t meet the recommended 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week,” says the University of British Columbia’s Dr Alexis Marcotte-Chénard, who has been researching the effect of exercise snacks on cardiovascular health.

“In fact, large-scale epidemiological studies, such as those using data from the UK Biobank, have shown that brief bouts of activity are linked with a 26 to 30 per cent lower risk of all-cause and cancer mortality, and a 32 to 34 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality, even in as little as four minutes per day,” he says.

Daily, short bursts of physical activity can have significant health benefitsCredit: GettyBefore we get too comfy, there’s a caveat: your exercise burst needs to be of “vigorous intensity” – ie. the kind of exercise that leaves you out of breath. Marcotte-Chénard suggests skipping the lift and taking the stairs, doing star jumps during TV ad breaks, or parking the car further away to power-walk to your destination.

“These small actions add up,” he says. “Everyone has different abilities, limitations, and starting points: choose a physical activity that works for you and that you genuinely enjoy.” Kitchen disco, anyone?Get ready for bed an hour aheadWhat is it that makes us sleep so deeply on a wellness holiday?

The pillow menu? Industrial-strength blackout curtains? Or simply the knowledge that someone else is sorting out the bins?According to sleep coach and educator James Wilson, AKA The Sleep Geek, rejigging our existing routine is the secret to quality kip. “I work with thousands of poor sleepers every year,” he says, “and the biggest mistake we make is doing things that relax us before bed, like watching TV, and then doing stuff that tells our brain to wake up again.

”The trick, Wilson explains, is to bring your bedtime admin forward an hour, so that you can avoid anything disrupting your brain once it has settled into sleep mode.“Have a bath or shower, put on your PJs, put the pets out for a wee, check the gas is off, lock all the doors, brush your teeth, then wind down,” he advises.

“It means that when you feel sleepy, you can actually go to bed. This one tweak makes a massive difference.”Choose a point in your day to stand on one legMost of us are seeking better balance in our lives. But even if it feels good on a retreat, pushing yourself through a gruelling timetable of fancy fitness classes probably won’t be sustainable or affordable back in the real world.

According to running app Strava, around 80 per cent of people have quit their New Year’s fitness resolutions by the second Tuesday in January.Instead, work on how long you can stand on one leg. Better balance also means more core strength, and less chance of falling and injuring yourself, and research shows it’s also a powerful indicator of health.

One 2012 study found that people who could only balance for two seconds or less were three times more likely to die from cancer or a heart attack in the next 13 years than those who managed ten seconds or more.You don’t need sunrise yoga to nail that tree pose. Just choose a point in the day, such as when brushing your teeth or doing the washing up, see how long you can last on one leg, and build up each day.

Don’t be afraid of wobbling; it recalibrates your brain and strengthens the connections between your ears, eyes, joints and muscles.Give your diet the spa-menu treatmentWellness might have become synonymous with swamp-hued smoothies, but replacing meals with juice is not the healthy kickstart we’ve been led to believe.

In fact, the “detox” menus popular at many luxury spas are promising something that food simply can’t deliver: as any doctor will tell you, we have organs to do that for us.“I hate the concept of detox diets – it’s basically a glorified crash diet,” says nutritionist Kristen Stavridis, author of upcoming book The Fibre Fix.

“On a lot of wellness retreats, the meals and juice cleanses will be really low in calories, low in energy, and that will actually make our metabolism lag – so potentially your body ends up detoxing more slowly than it would by eating normally.”Boost your fibre intake by adding seeds and beans to your usual meals Credit: Moment RFInstead, the best change we can make to our diets this year is not restricting, but adding: specifically, fibre.

Some 96 per cent of adults in the UK don’t eat enough fibre, which can increase our risk of serious health problems. “Most people know that fibre is good for reducing constipation and improving your gut health,” says Stavridis, “but people who eat more fibre can also reduce their risk of colon cancer, breast cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s and type-2 diabetes.

”But ‘fibremaxxing’ doesn’t have to mean staring down a bowl of bran every morning. Stavridis’ favourite tip is sneaking seeds and beans into your regular meals. “Add a tablespoon of chia seeds to your porridge or cereal, add a scoop of poppy seeds to a salad, or add some baked beans to your breakfast alongside your scrambled eggs on toast,” she says.

Chia, flax, sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds are among the highest in fibre, so why not mix up a blend to keep on the counter for sprinkling? You might need dental floss to hand – but hey, that’s another good habit.Switch your shower to cold for 30 secondsCold plunges, cryotherapy chambers and even wild swimming lakes have become hot fixtures at every spa and retreat worth its salt, with a boom in sales of at-home ice baths meaning they could soon rival the personal sauna as the wellness status symbol of choice.

But you don’t have to go the full Wim Hof to reap a few benefits for your skin, body and mind.“One easy, overlooked trick is to finish your shower with 30 seconds of cold water,” says cosmetic dermatologist Dr Nora Jaafar. “The sudden temperature change constricts blood vessels and boosts microcirculation, giving your skin that instant post-facial flush and luminosity.

It also stimulates the vagus nerve, which helps calm the nervous system. It’s like a mini spa session every morning.”And while an actual spa session might be nice, day-to-day care can have a greater impact on our skin than pricey treatments. “Skin renewal operates on roughly a 28-day cycle, so it’s your cumulative habits that dictate long-term radiance, not one-off perfection,” says Jaafar.

A burst of cold water at the end of a shower boosts microcirculation and helps calm the nervous systemCredit: iStockphotoFocus on your breathThere’s a reason that spas are always so headily fragranced: pleasant aromas trigger our olfactomotor response (the brain’s reaction to smells), causing our breathing to deepen and, in turn, our heart rate to slow.

But you can save money by skipping the aromatherapy and focusing on the breathing instead.“Breathwork is perhaps the most accessible wellness practice available today. There’s no need to roll out a yoga mat, light a candle or log into an app,” says Aimee Hartley, author of Breathe Well and founder of The Breathing Room and School Breathe.

“Once learned, it’s free to use on the go, anywhere, anytime.”And we don’t need a week off to master the ins and outs. “A 2023 Stanford study found that daily five-minute breathwork practices significantly improved mood and reduced anxiety, with breathwork showing greater improvements than mindfulness meditation,” she explains.

To help you find that mellow holiday mood at home, Hartley recommends ‘cyclic sighing’. “Place your hands on your lower belly, beneath the belly button, to help encourage a belly breath. Take a slow breath in through your nose. Take a second smaller ‘sip’ of air through the nose to fully fill your lungs.

Exhale slowly and completely through your mouth with a long sigh. Repeat for five minutes.”Breathe deep enough, and we might even smell the mountains.