Following on from my previous post about the little things that make the biggest difference towards achieving your health and fitness goals, I thought I’d share my top 10 daily habits that can help you get fitter, healthier and shake off some of the bad habits that may keep tripping you up:

1. Drink water – whether you have a bottle that sits on your desk and you keep taking regular sips from or take regular trips to the water machine or have a glass of water every couple of hours, it doesn’t matter. Either of these is good and so find what works for you and keep doing it. Add a slice of lemon to your water if you need some flavour and also some vitamin C.
   
2. Move more! More and more of us sit down at work either behind a desk or driving or both so it’s important to keep moving to reduce stiffness in the back and hips and loss of core strength. I do these exercises several times a day, everyday and recommend them to my clients to make them part of their daily routine. It only takes a couple of minutes to do!
3. Go for a walk – it doesn’t matter where you go or how long you walk for, just take the time to get out. The fresh air will help clear your head, reduce stress and you will feel better from doing it. Try first thing in the morning, at lunchtime or after dinner.
4. Get more fats in your diet – we often eat foods that give us inefficient energy that causes energy slumps in the afternoon and completely miss out a valuable food source. Healthy fats will boost your metabolism, eliminate cravings, boost your brain function and attention span and regulate your blood sugar levels. Good sources of healthy fats are avocados, salmon, eggs, almonds, seeds, olive oil and coconut oil.
5. Read a book or a blog post – reading a few pages of a book or a blog post on your favourite subject is a good way to clear the mind and inspire you. This can be good to do when you go to bed to help you relax the mind and sleep better.
6. Get yourself a FitBit or other similar device. Fitbits, pedometers, Garmin Vivoactive are fantastic devices that are affordable and will measure your daily steps. This is a brilliant way to see how much, or how little you actually move and can inspire you to move more everyday to reach your daily target. Aim for 7,000 – 10,000 steps a day.
7. Lift your head more! More and more of us are guilty of checking our phones as we move and this can give us a stiff neck. Set yourself times for checking emails/social media and when you’re out and about, lift your ahead and look around you as you walk.
8. Do shorter workouts – if you struggle for time to get to the gym or a class, try doing shorter workouts that can often be more effective like the mobility exercises in the video above or try a workout following the Tabata principles of 8 x 20secs work with 10 second recoveries and choose one or two exercises or choose an exercise and become better at it like press ups, squats or lunges.
9. Get up earlier – many people struggle to fit in time to exercise or prepare healthy meals so why not get up 10-15 minutes earlier than normal and do it then? That time spent exercising or preparing your lunch could make a massive positive impact to your day.
10. Last but by no means least, smile more! It’s easy for us to get caught up in the stress of our day and often let some things completely bypass us. Why not aim to smile more, say hello or acknowledge a complete stranger in the street or even buy a homeless person a coffee or a sandwich? We can never underestimate the power of positive communication and that smile or hello could well be the only contact that person makes that day. It may even make your day better also.

There you are, that’s my 10 top tips. Do you have any daily habits that you swear by? Share it with us below so we can try them ourselves.