There are no magic pills in fitness. There are no secret techniques you can use to avoid the need for diet and exercise.

However, there are a few things you can do that produce disproportionate results. Each of the following habits is easy to follow, and will significantly improve your health, body composition, and/or energy levels. Theyre not magic pills, but they do give you a major return on your effort.

Stay hydrated

Dehydration can cause overeating, mood swings, lethargy, and brain fog- andmost people are mildly dehydrated most of the day. To avoid this, Drink a glass of water upon first waking up, every 2 hours throughout the day, andbefore each meal.

Get moving after meals

When you eat, your blood sugar rises. And in response to that rise in blood sugar, your body produces insulin, which lowers your blood sugar by pushing it into your body tissues. Unfortunately, some of that sugar goes into your fatty tissue, and the insulin also has a depressant effect, lowering your energy levels.

Luckily, you can reduce the post-meal insulin spike substantially just by moving around a bit after meals, which causes your muscle tissue to absorb some of that sugar before the insulin response fully kicks in. After each meal, either take a ten-minute walk, or spend two minutes doing alternating sets of air squats and pushups.

Keep your kitchen clean

One of the most important habits you can develop for staying trim and healthy is the habit of cooking meals at home. Psychologically though, thats sometimes easier said than done, so it helps to eliminate all barriers that prevent you from cooking at home. Having a dirty kitchen is one of the biggest barriers that keeps people from cooking, as it really gets hard to motivate yourself to cook when the kitchen is filthy or cluttered.

Make cleaning the kitchen part of your evening routine- every night after dinner, do the dishes if any are lying around, tidy up any clutter in your kitchen, and give anything thats obviously dirty a quick scrub. Once a week, give the whole kitchen a more thorough scrubbing-down.

Meditate for two minutes a day

Meditation has a wide variety of physical and mental benefits - from stress reduction, to better sleep, to improvements in immune and cardiovascular health. Where people go wrong though, is in pushing themselves too hard, to the point where it becomes frustrating. Unlike physical exercise, meditation stops being helpful once it becomes unpleasant.

Instead of forcing yourself to meditate for twenty minutes at a time, focusing on meditating consistently- every day, for only two minutes. If you want to go longer, great, but you dont have to. As for how to meditate: sit down somewhere quiet and comfortable, close your eyes, and mentally repeat a short mantra- a word or phrase that has a calming effect on you. Even two minute a day can have a substantial stress-reduction effect.

Take a quick photo of everything you eat