The late Dr Michael Mosley was an advocate of intermittent fasting and low-carbohydrate diets, inspiring everyone to live a healthier, fuller life, with daily routines outlined in Just One Thing: How simple changes can transform your life. Photo: Supplied.
An advocate of intermittent fasting and low-carbohydrate diets, the late Dr Michael Mosley explored health and fitness issues of interest with benefits for a global audience.
Titled Just One Thing: How simple changes can transform your life, his book brings to life Dr Mosley’s mission to find things you can introduce into your daily routine that will have a big impact on your mental and physical health.
The rationale behind Just One Thing is that you don’t have to do a major overhaul of your life, because you can easily build small modifications into your everyday health and wellbeing routine. Minor changes can yield big benefits in terms of a better mood, a sharper brain, reduced disease risk and improved sleep.
Just One Thing is all about quick and simple, scientifically proven ways to improve healthiness and happiness in a sustainable way. No-one is expecting you to do all of the demonstrated methods, so pick and choose what works best for you.
“The advantage of aiming for bite-sized goals is that they will get you thinking, ‘OK, I could manage that’, and then, hopefully, you might find you are enjoying the activity and end up tagging it on to your life,” Dr Mosley writes.
“Timing is important for some of the things. A walk has added benefits when you get outside in the early-morning light; coffee is best drunk a couple of hours after you’ve woken up; and a hot bath works best as part of a snooze-inducing, wind-down routine in the evening, not the morning.
“Even mix things up a bit. In fact, a few things – such as drinking water, singing, standing up, taking a break and deep breathing – can be happily peppered at intervals throughout your day.”
So, what if you were told that a hot shower before bed can help lower your blood pressure, eating chocolate is good for your heart and standing on one leg can have huge health benefits?
Just One Thing shows how changing one little thing in your daily routine can significantly benefit your health. Dr Mosley explains all of this and presents many more surprising, methodically established facts. He’s talked to experts and road-tested all his tips to help you find that one little thing that could make a real difference to how you feel every day and, importantly, long into the future.
A versatile communicator, Dr Mosley originally trained as a doctor, but spent most of his more than 30-year career as a science journalist and television presenter. He had focused on exploring the science behind the many and varied health claims that he had come across. That meant trying things out on himself.
“I’ve done some pretty crazy things in my time, including infecting myself with parasites, getting leeched, injecting my face with some of my own blood and swallowing a tiny camera so I could watch the workings of my gut. But in 2012, when I discovered that I had type 2 diabetes, I got really serious about wanting to understand the drivers of mental and physical health.”
He became a household name for diet books promoting calorie reduction and fasting, including The Fast Diet, written with journalist Mimi Spencer in 2013. The plan, later known as the 5:2 diet, involved drastically reducing calories for two days a week while eating healthily on the five other days. He later wrote another weight-loss book, The Fast 800.
The first thing on the daily to-do list for the British television journalist, producer, presenter and writer was always doing intelligent exercises (squats and press-ups). He believed breakfast was the most important meal of the day.
We also learn some attention-grabbing facts. Less than 5 per cent of people regularly do exercises that are specifically targeted at building muscle (and you need that muscle, you really do).
“Emerging evidence suggests that unless you are doing 40 minutes of moderately vigorous exercise every single day, you cannot undo the damage that sitting causes.”
The benefits of eating beetroot are surprising and it was handy to learn about the temperature decrease that happens after a warm bath mimics the body’s natural drop in core temperature before sleep.
Most of us recognise the importance of keeping a healthy weight, eating well, doing regular exercise, reducing stress and getting a good night’s sleep. We just need to create an environment where a “new habit will stick”.
If change is what you genuinely seek, then check out the 10 rules, based on science, that Dr Mosley found useful.
Just One Thing: How simple changes can transform your life, by Dr Michael Mosley, Hachette Australia, $24.99
