2026 May 5 Movement and Sun!

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about caring for your body. If you like what you hear, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, and send me a message.

This week we're talking about caring for your body as part of our overall health plan. Our poor bodies are kind of like Cinderella in the story — always working behind the scenes but rarely noticed unless we're disappointed with them or upset in some way. Tonight I have a few quick tips that are small but can make a real difference in how you feel.

I know some of these may be a challenge in certain situations, but often with a little creativity, you can make them work — even if you're in a big office building or stuck at home.

Our bodies need and crave motion. This is especially important if you work from home or are fully retired. That obviously includes exercise, but just moving around, not sitting, changing elevation, moving all your limbs, looking around — every possible motion matters for your body, especially for blood flow and digestion.

Many people recommend taking a short walk — five or ten minutes — after eating. It helps reduce the insulin spike from a meal, burns off some of the excess calories floating around in the bloodstream, and keeps everything moving, both in your GI tract and in your circulatory system. As a matter of fact, if you look at certain antibiotics, you'll see they caution you not to take them and then lie down and be sedentary.

But what if you can't get outside for a walk? Being outside is the best option, but it's not always practical. Weather, limited mobility — getting outside might be difficult. Still, try to be in fresh air or in a space with natural sunshine, or at least in an area with good air quality and a relaxing view. All those things help your brain feel calm, and that helps your body release hormones and other chemicals that promote healing and cellular health.

Get some natural sunshine. Yes, the sun has been absolutely villainized for the past few decades, but there's considerable evidence that exposure to sunshine has many critical health benefits. We're not talking about baking on the beach at noon — but especially early morning and late evening sun, along with a limited amount during the day (ideally not during the highest UV periods), has a lot of positive benefits. You may have a medical history or other conditions that require you to limit your sun exposure, and you should always follow the advice of your medical providers. But way beyond just making vitamin D, exposure to the sun provides benefits to all parts of your body.

I'll be the first to admit — while I used to get up well before the sun, these days I'm sleeping a little later. Still, I try to get out as early as I can, and it's absolutely invigorating when you're able to be outside on a nice sunny day. Today was like that — a breezy day, probably in the mid-seventies, with big fluffy clouds going by. It's really hard to be in a bad mood in that sort of environment.

Have distinct meals and avoid grazing throughout the day. This one is gaining in popularity, and honestly, I find it very difficult to stick to. For me, most of it is stress eating or boredom eating. I'll be thinking through a problem, and while I'm working on it, I just grab something to eat — not because I'm particularly hungry. And especially if it's a cookie or a chip, I find myself associating the energy burst from the sugar or carbs as a kind of reward for applying myself to the task at hand.

But I also know it's one of the reasons I was getting a little bit of a potbelly. I was never giving my body time to settle between meals, always snacking, always causing insulin spikes — and that's actually quite bad. So now I have a collection — I counted six bags of chips sitting in another room that I haven't touched in weeks. I stopped buying cookies, and what do you know, the little belly is starting to shrink. No crazy exercises, no fad diets, just not eating junk food all day long. Amazing. Not easy, but not that hard either.

One trick I read about — and at first didn't quite believe — is that often when you think you're hungry, you're actually thirsty. So before I open the fridge, I'll drink six to ten ounces of water and then reevaluate whether I really want something to eat. More than half the time, I realize I wasn't hungry at all. My mouth was just bored and wanted something to do.

Set a timer to move. I have a timer that goes off every hour — some people set it to every half hour — with a recording of myself saying, "Stop what you're doing. Get up and exercise." It's gone off in conferences and everything else, but so be it. I'll skip it occasionally if I'm in the middle of a real streak of focused work, but it makes a huge difference in just remembering not to sit in one spot for the entire day.

And importantly, I don't track or measure what I do. I'm not trying to exercise per se, just to move and try to activate as many muscles as possible. I used to use kettlebells religiously — and those are awesome because they activate so many muscles at once, everything from your back and shoulders to your quads and feet. There's essentially no part of your body that doesn't do something when you're tossing kettlebells.

Now I use barbells. I did a little damage to one of my shoulders at some point — unrelated to kettlebells — and barbells allow me to be more controlled and stay away from the painful parts of the motion. I also bounce, stretch, or hang off a chinning bar. Pretty much anything that causes me to really move my limbs to their extremes, not strenuously, but enough to exercise and help increase — or at least maintain — my range of motion.

I keep things like chinning bars around the house. That may not be considered high-end interior design, but having equipment right in front of you makes all the difference. I actually have a set of parallel bars on the other side of the camera, a couple sets of weights, and chinning bars in two doorways — one of them has rings on it. It's a lot easier to do a quick chin-up if a doorway has a bar in it, rather than telling yourself you should go down to the basement to exercise for a minute. I know I'm going to walk through that door. I also know I'm not going to take the time to walk to the basement for one minute of movement. And if you need a rationalization for the bars, they're also a great place to hang laundry while you're ironing or folding.

Like so many things — if you make it easy to do, you're much more likely to do it. That's really the bottom line in all of this. None of these are spectacular life-changing events, but they will help keep you motivated, feeling better, and your brain feeling better too. And when your brain feels better, you're happier. And when you're happier, you're healthier in every way. It all plays together.

They're little tips, and they won't change your life completely overnight. You won't do them for a couple of weeks and say, "I feel like a new person." But when you do these things consistently, you actually do end up feeling like a new person — because they stop being chores and just become part of your way of life. They become habits. And once things become habits, they're very easy to maintain.

A little perspective: my mom did chair exercises for her entire older life, literally right up until she was 99. She wasn't going to win any bodybuilding championships, and that wasn't her goal. But she remained able to help transfer herself in and out of cars, to lift a gallon of milk and hand it to someone, and to do all those little things that made life a little easier for her and for everyone around her. That made her a little more confident, and a little happier. And being happy helped her overall attitude, which was one of the things that helped keep her sharp.

She didn't go around annoyed at everything — "I can't even bend over, I can't even do this." I'm not saying she was totally happy every second. But by staying active, staying involved in her life, and keeping her body in as good condition as she could for her age, she was able to be a little happier. And that happiness helped keep her mind in better condition.

Your body and your brain are meant to work together. And when you let them, great things happen.

That's it for this evening. No homework this week — we're still doing basics. Stay active, and there are more exciting things to come.

Remember, as always, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. We have UKR7.com, which has links to organizations that support the people of Ukraine, and WCK.org — World Central Kitchen — which works in disaster areas around the world. Two great international organizations. But remember, there are also lots of local charities always looking for help. And if you don't have the time or the money or aren't in a position to give right now, even something as simple as a smile can change someone else's day in ways you can't even imagine.

Thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along, subscribe, and hit that like button. Drop me a comment with what you'd like to hear next. Have a great week, and remember — live the life that you dreamed of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.