Stop Chasing Health Trends and Start Here: The 10 Things That Actually Move the Needle

In this episode, we are digging into 10 foundational health pillars that here at Graced Heath, we believe are super helpful to be prioritized before diving into biohacking and trendy wellness advice. Using a house-building analogy, you'll hear me (hi, it's Amy!) emphasize getting the "foundation" right before focusing on the "decorative details" of health optimization. 

You'll hear in today's episode:

1. Why you actually don't have to do "all the health things" 

2. Why I recommend focusing on these foundational elements before pursuing biohacking trends 

3.  How these foundations are research-backed and more impactful than trendy supplements or restrictive eating 

4. My thoughts on ten super basic, but key, health promoting habits

Research for Today’s Episode

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/healthy-habits-can-lengthen-life

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/11/deep-faith-beneficial-health

My Book: Your Worthy Body

Episodes Discussed

Simple Ways to Increase Your Sleep Quality and Quantity with Sleep Coach Morgan Adams

Protein Series Began September 2024

Why Now is the Perfect Time to Integrate the Blue Zone Lifestyle

Recommended Graced Health Episodes on Managing Stress:

Exhausted, Overwhelmed, and Over 40? Here's Why Your Body's Stress Response Has Changed with Marcyline Bailey

Beyond Barbie-Style Self-Care: Transforming Your Nervous System's Response to Calling with Janice McWilliams

Meditation Myths Busted: A Guide to Everyday Mindfulness with Ann Swanson

Nourished Notes Bi-Weekly Newsletter

30+ Non-Gym Ways to Improve Your Health (free download)

Connect with Amy:
GracedHealth.com
Instagram: @GracedHealth
YouTube: @AmyConnell

Transcript

Stop Chasing Health Trends and Start Here: The 10 Things That Actually Move the Needle

Graced Health Podcast

Host: Amy Connell

There's a lot of health advice out there. How do you know what deserves your attention? Today I'm giving you 10 elements that I believe are the most important things to focus on before you start to do all of the other things that the wellness industry is telling you to do.

Stick around.

I am a part of a Facebook group, and I'm going to keep this pretty high level and anonymous because I don't want to pick on anybody. But in this particular group, a woman said, "Look, I am 60 years old. I'm on my feet all day. I'm arthritic, my knees hurt. What can I do?"

It's not hard to just take ourselves and put ourselves in that situation, or perhaps you are in that situation and you're tired and you've got a lot going on, and it's like, "What is the easiest thing that I can do to feel better?"

So within this group, there were lots of responses, and this is where I'm going to get super high level, but there were a lot of what I'm just going to call biohacking advice. These were pieces of advice that were surrounding something like supplements, types of eating, things to eat or not to eat, or different types of foods to eat or not to eat. Yes, I'm staying very vague here because I'm not interested in getting into an argument online either here on YouTube or anywhere else.

As I watched this advice come through, it just gave me pause because I thought, "I'm not sure this is the most appropriate first course of action." Absolutely, there are ways that we can tweak what we do, how we move, how we eat, all of that kind of stuff to fit our unique bodies, and I'm not negating that. However, I think right now the wellness industry and all of the messaging around it has caused us to just jump into like, "Oh, well this will fix your problem. If you eliminate one particular food item, then that will solve everything. If you add a supplement, then that will solve everything." And I just thought, "Ooh, this is a little too micro in what appears to be more of a macro problem."

It reminds me of about 11 years ago when my husband and I were building a house. So we were very lucky to custom build the house that we are in. When we decided we wanted to custom build, we of course sought out a builder and an architect and all of the people who had expertise beyond what we did, but then we started paying attention to, "Okay, what do we want the layout to be? Where do we want our rooms? Where do we want particular rooms in the house to go?"

One of my big concerns was, "Where can I be cluttery?" Because I am not a naturally neat person. He is. I have to work really hard to be neat, and I knew that I needed space that I could just throw my stuff in and I could be cluttery, and I do have that space, and it's not in the kitchen because we designed it that way.

Then once we got the floor plan down, the builder started taking the next steps into building the house, so we had to get the foundation right. I hope you start to see where I'm going with this. We had to get the soil good. We had to get a really nice foundation with plenty of concrete that elevated our house just a little bit because we live in an area that has a lot of rain. Sometimes we needed to make sure that we had a really solid HVAC system. We needed the framing to work. We needed to make sure that the electrician was on board and we had all of the wiring in right when the framing went up, so that way we weren't having to have problems later.

Later in the process, we had to make a lot of decisions and—I don't know if you know this about me, but I am not into decorating. I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but when we decorated our house, I more or less have all of the same decorations that I put in 10 years ago. This just isn't something that I am interested in doing. We also had to pick out things like the plates that go on the outlets, so like what color were they going to be? We had to choose the molding, we had to choose what color of fans, like ceiling fans, like all of this stuff that honestly, I didn't really care. I just wanted to know that I had a space for my clutter. I wanted to know that I had a family area that was going to be conducive to enjoying my family, having a kitchen that I would enjoy cooking in and all of the little small stuff to me just wasn't that interesting.

I think right now though, the biohacking that we are hearing is like picking out the face plates for the electrical outlets before we're even getting the foundation in. I know better than to come on here and say all of the biohacking advice is bad, and when I say biohacking, that can be a multitude of things. That could be, like I said, making sure that you are or are not eating particular types of food. Maybe that is the cold plunging or the red light therapy or the saunas. Maybe it's supplements. And you know me, I'm not opposed to supplements. I take supplements. I did an entire podcast episode on supplements. However, I think all of these things are getting so much attention that we are forgetting the basics and the foundation of our health.

Today I want to share with you 10 foundational pillars that I believe are the things that we need to make sure are set in place before we start doing all of the other stuff, before we take the supplements and do or don't eat particular foods, or before we do—I mean, there's so much. You know what I'm talking about.

And I have to admit that as I started writing this out, 10 seems like a lot, but I will tell you this: they're all research backed. All of these have studies and research that support their benefit to health. Some of these you already are doing, and some of them may need a little tweaking. But before we start biohacking and doing all of the small things, let's make sure that we have these foundational pillars in place.

I'm calling them foundational pillars here because that goes with my house analogy, but the other term I will often use is levers, or levers—whatever you want to call them. But basically, what can you pull to make the greatest impact? And I believe that these are the 10 things that we ought to be pulling first and that we ought to be planting in the foundation of our house, our body, our temple—maybe if you want to call it that—so that we have that really strong foundation.

Let's jump into them.

1. Sleep

The first one is sleep, and we don't need to talk a lot about that. We've talked a lot about it on this podcast. We have had a great conversation with Morgan Adams about it several years ago at this point. Nobody needs to be told that they need more sleep or that they need to have quality sleep. And the term that was thrown around forever of like, "Oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead"—nobody uses that anymore, so I won't spend a whole lot of time on here. But sleep is the very first lever that we can pull.

It is what we do the most in a day. Even if you're only sleeping six hours—I mean, hopefully you're getting more if that's what your body needs—but what else are you doing for six hours a day? Besides like walking around, I mean, I hope that you are sleeping more than you're scrolling or watching Netflix or something. You probably are because you're active and you're with it. But anyway, like I said, I won't spend too much time on here. Sleep. Let's make sure that we get our sleep.

2. Fuel Your Body

Number two: fuel your body with the right amount of what it needs, including having enough protein and fiber.

I did an entire four-part series on protein that you can go back and watch if you want that common sense, realistic way of approaching protein. But yeah, protein is important. I do operate from an intuitive eating perspective, and once we get to that point of just neutralizing food and not being so psychologically consumed by it, then we can add that gentle nutrition in, which includes ensuring that we're having enough protein and ensuring we're having enough fiber too.

We haven't talked a lot about fiber lately on this show, but guess what? Come back next week. I'm talking more about fiber and actually how it impacts you in perimenopause and menopause. So if you are in that stage of life, make sure that you are either following this podcast or subscribing to the show if you're watching on YouTube, so that way you can see this episode next week. You probably know that you need to have fiber, but I'm telling you exactly why the fiber is beneficial in this stage of life.

Number two is making sure that you are eating enough for your body and what it needs, and adding in that gentle nutrition of having specifically protein and fiber.

3. Exercise

Number three is exercise.

Exercise can come in so many ways. I know for me, when I think about exercise, I'm thinking about intentional movement. I'm thinking about doing something where I'm huffing and puffing because I'm one of these really strange people who enjoy that. I'm thinking about moving and lifting heavy objects, but that's not necessarily how exercise manifests for other people.

Exercise may be walking—and I do hope that you are getting moderately breathless if you are walking. If walking is the only thing that you are doing, that may be something like yoga, that may be Pilates. I mean, there's a ton of different ways that we can exercise, but the purpose of exercise is moving our bodies because an object in motion stays in motion. It is to help our cardiovascular—our heart—stay strong, and it is to help with at this age where we are, muscle retention and maybe even muscle growth. Because we do naturally lose muscle as we get older. And when we lose muscle, then we are more susceptible to other health issues. So yes, we want to exercise and I want you doing what you love doing.

And is there a way that you can add some strength training in or you can lift things or you can find a way to move your body and strength train your body using your body weight? Yes, that's absolutely a way that you can strength train is just using your own body weight.

I will say, just as a side note, and I've said this before, but it is very difficult to give our back the attention it needs and it deserves with only our body weight because there are very few body weight exercises that we can do that require that pulling motion beyond a pull-up. And a lot of us, me included, can't really do any pull-ups. I mean, I can do maybe, maybe one, maybe two. It's been a while since I've done it, but those are hard to do. So if we're just doing body weight exercises, you may be missing the pulling element, which is so important for women in perimenopause and menopause. That's when your resistance bands can be super helpful or pulling motion with your dumbbells.

Anyway, exercise in general is a foundational element of our health and our longevity.

4. Managing Stress and Mental Health

Number four, and I'm going to lump this in—this is a really big one, but we're just going to lump it into one category, and that is managing stress and managing your mental health.

There are countless books and podcasts talking about how to do this, so I cannot cover all of that in this top 10 list of foundations to focus on. However, it's worth investing our energy in trying to manage that. We've had several conversations about mental health and stress, and I will put those in the show notes if you are interested in managing that.

But just know that that is an important element of our health. I talked about this in one of my books—I think it was in Your Worthy Body—and I said, "Look, if you want to imagine someone with what you consider to be this amazing body, and she's nailing her food and she's nailing her exercise and she's doing all of the things except she's unhappy and stressed out because she doesn't feel like she's doing enough, then that is going to affect your mental health." And I would say that maybe that's not the picture of health that we need. Maybe the picture of health is taking whatever all of the things are and backing it off 10% to give us some breathing room. Or maybe that's 20% for you, whatever that is.

But we can't let the talks of like these today—these 10 foundational items—or all of the other biohacking, all of the "what color are the outlet plates" discussion to overtake our internal stress system and our internal mental health. Because boy, I tell you what, it is really easy to think that like I'm just not doing enough and get really stressed out about it.

There is no shortage of information out there and we don't have to do it all. I'm just going to repeat that. You do not have to do all the health things. You have to do the things that make the most sense for you. You've got to pull your own levers, and I think that these 10 foundations that we're talking about here are the first ones we want to pull. If all of the other stuff, the 1% of the biohacking is too much for you, don't do it. Don't do it. Let's get these 10 down first and go from there. And that all impacts your stress. That all impacts your mental health.

5. Strong Relationships and Connection

Number five: strong relationships and a connection or a sense of purpose.

One of the things that I love about the Blue Zones is it takes nine commonalities from areas across the world where they have high concentration of—I'm going to get this wrong—centenarians. Anyway, people who live to be over a hundred. I'm sorry, I pronounced that wrong. I know. Let's just move on. Anyway, they have the highest concentrations. It's five areas around the world, and they look to see what kind of commonalities that they have. And by the way, I did an episode on this as well if you want to go back and listen to that.

One of the nine commonalities was connection. God designed us to be in community with people. It is so easy to sit behind a screen and use my phone to communicate with someone else. And I am talking to myself here. Sometimes it's hard to schedule that coffee. Sometimes it's hard to schedule that brunch with your friends or a walk. My friends and my community here—you all know I love me a walk and talk. That's how I like to connect with my friends. So I am talking to myself before I talk to anyone else, but getting face-to-face and having strong connections absolutely impacts our health.

Again, you can lift all the weight that you want. You can have all the salads that you want, but if you're missing that connection with that God-designed need that we all have, not only with others but also with Him, then we are missing out on a critical part of our health.

6. Don't Smoke

Number six: don't smoke.

If you're my age, you know this—we grew up where they were pulling down the billboards of Joe Camel or whatever it is. I'm not going to talk about this anymore, but don't smoke cigarettes. Not good for you. We know this.

Moving on.

7. Limit Your Alcohol

Number seven: limit your alcohol.

There are evolving recommendations surrounding alcohol. The World Health Organization actually recommends that no amount of alcohol is safe. The US dietary guidelines recommend that women have one or less drinks a day. And know that doesn't mean that you can lump them all together and have seven drinks on a Saturday night.

I am not here to point my finger or to shame anyone who enjoys a glass or two of wine every night, but the science and the research is pointing to less alcohol is better. I have a lesson in one of the modules in my Strong and Vibrant at Home program that talks about alcohol and how we can enjoy it differently than we used to when we were, say, 20. Because I don't know about you, but when I—okay, we're going to go with 21 because that's legal drinking age. I don't want anyone coming after me. So we'll just say when I was 21. Anyway. I enjoy alcohol much, much differently than I did when I was that age, and I wasn't crazy. My friends will attest to this. I was the old soul of the group, and yet there is no way that I could drink like I did then.

So if you are a woman in perimenopause and menopause, try to keep your alcohol intake to one or less drinks per day. And the World Health Organization would like that to be even less.

8. Drink Your Water

Number eight: drink your water.

Again, you don't need me to tell you this.

I was walking with a friend of mine a couple weeks ago and she was saying how she went to the doctor. She was getting her blood work done, and a lot of things were kind of coming up weird and wonky. For example, her creatinine levels were really high and there were some other symptoms—and I honestly, I don't really remember what it was—but there were some other things that were kind of wonky and not really sitting right. And she said, "You know, looking back, not one of my healthcare providers said, 'Are you drinking enough water?'"

She said I wasn't. She said I hardly had any water at all throughout the day. And so no wonder everything else was off base. We need water to survive, so drink your water and hydrate your body and get some fluids in you.

9. Have a Healthy Weight

Number nine—before I say what this is, I am really tiptoeing into this particular number because one of the studies that I have pulled provided five what they called healthy habits that can lengthen your life. And this was a pretty big study. This was from data from more than 78,000 women and 44,000 men. It was two nationwide studies with a Nurses' Health Study and then also a Health Professional Follow-up Study.

This number was included in those five elements, and I don't think it's responsible for me to pick and choose what I like out of there. I'm including this number so that I include all five elements. And I feel like I'm going to say what this is and then stick with me because I want to qualify what I believe that means based off additional information that I have learned.

So the number nine is have a healthy weight.

Now as we know, there are a lot of factors that go into your health, and I believe—I truly believe—that if you are doing these other foundations, if you are getting your sleep, if you are feeding your body what it needs and the right amount of what it needs, if you are moving, your body is going to shake out to be the shape and the size that God designed it to be.

We were not all designed to be stick thin. And if you don't believe me, then go look at some of the most prominent Olympic athletes that we saw in this last Olympics. We had pint-sized Simone Biles. We had rugby star Ilona Maher, who is taller, who is more sturdy, who received so much criticism despite her stunning athleticism. We have Katie Ledecky, who's tall, who has really broad shoulders, and guess what? That enables her to swim and be what some people call the GOAT of swimming.

And these are just examples of Olympic athletes. Okay, so I just want to be really, really careful with the healthy weight because I do believe we can be healthy at every size. We can do the things that we've been talking about in this foundation, and our body will be healthy, whatever the size that comes in.

That to me is what healthy at any size is—is we are checking the foundational boxes of everything else, and then wherever our body shakes out, then that is more than likely the shape that God designed you to be.

I could talk a lot more about that and I know that is a hot topic. This is such a nuanced conversation. So I ask you to hold number nine loosely and to not let it overshadow the other foundational pillars. And if you need to put that one last, then you can put it last.

10. Faith

The final pillar that impacts our health, both our mental health and our physical health, is probably one of the most important ones, and it's certainly most important in my life. And that, believe it or not, is faith.

Research has shown that people of faith report feeling better and healthier. There was a study of social behaviors and social health that showed that religious involvement with God is better for your body in terms of immune functions and in reducing loneliness. And loneliness, as we know, is also an epidemic and a problem, and also ties back in of course to number five, with strong relationships.

Having faith can impact your health in a positive way.

Conclusion

I believe these are the 10 things that we want to focus on before we start biohacking. All of the biohacking are all of the things that so many podcast episodes are made of. I have participated in them here. I'm not negating them, but I am saying, let's put them in the proper place and let's get the basics down first.

My son played basketball in high school and his team would often focus on what they called skills and drills. Skills and drills. Just going in, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, passing, passing, passing, passing. Because those are the foundations. These are the foundations. These are the 10 foundations that we want to have in place and are regularly doing without stressing us out before we start to do everything else.

I'm not saying not to do any of that stuff. I mean, some I think is a little crazy, but that's for you and your body to decide what you want to do. But what I am saying is, let's get our priorities right. And before we start to go down these rabbit holes of the things that we can do—I'm really trying hard not to pick on particular things—then let's just make sure that we're drinking our water, for example, that we are sleeping, that we are already regularly exercising. None of these 1% biohacks can replace the 10 foundations that we have here.

Now, if you're listening or you're watching and you're like, "Okay, I want to do that, I definitely have some gaps and I don't know how to do that," then I invite you to join my program, Strong and Vibrant at Home. So what this is, is it's a strength training and wellness program. It's designed specifically for Christian women in perimenopause and beyond. And what we do is we have seven weeks of strength training with five workouts per week. Of those five, between two and three are strength training. The other ones have balance and core and strengthening some other smaller muscles. And then we also have wellness modules. That's where I talk about the alcohol and how to integrate that maybe in a more beneficial way if you choose to have alcohol.

I have a module on sleep. I have a module on stress. I don't have a module on not smoking because—what? Like, who even smokes anymore? Sorry. I mean, I know people do, but I just, I hardly even see it anymore. So no, I don't have a module on smoking, but if you need help, I'm sure I can find someone to help you quit smoking. But all of these elements that we've talked about are discussed in that module.

And what is cool to me is I developed all of those lessons well before this idea of a podcast came to be. I just was seeing the challenge and seeing the pain points of people, and I wanted to give them some information that could potentially help. Do I have the answers about everything? No. I know I act like I do sometimes, but I don't have all the answers, but I do have some. And I do have some things that may be able to help you and they're worth trying and will help you get those foundations down before we start doing all of the other things.

So if you are wanting to fill in some gaps, then I invite you to get Strong and Vibrant at Home. If you are listening on the day that this hits live on September 9th, it is still available, but doors close September 11th. Once the doors close, then it won't be available again for several months because I take the participants and we all go through those seven weeks together and we have office hours and we have accountability partners if you want to have that. And so we just all do it as a group.

If that is a resource that you are interested in, you can go to gracedhealth.com/strong-and-vibrant. Check it out. If you would like $50 off—and who wouldn't—use the code "podcast" to get $50 off and do it before the end of the day on September 11th, 2025, so that way you can join in this next round. If you miss it, that's okay. Just go to gracedhealth.com/waitlist and that will put you on the waitlist so that way I can notify you next time it does go live.

And I have a favor. If you are also in groups where these kinds of discussions are coming up of like, "Oh, I don't feel good, what should I do?" And someone is telling you to have a particular supplement or to stop having a particular food, would you be so bold to share this episode and just to say like, "Hey, before we get into the weeds of all of this, would you consider doing these 10 foundational items? See what happens." Or if you want to be less bold—because I'm not a very bold person either—if you want to be less bold, just send it to a friend. That is more helpful than you can imagine in sharing the message of this show, which is moving forward with grace and strength. And if you don't have anyone to send it to, then providing a rating and review is also helpful as well.

Okay. That is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day.