Spending time in the gym or following a strict diet are great, but they still take place within the confines of our daily life. Improving our health is not difficult, or for that matter even challenging, but it does require making small adjustments to our daily lives.

All the little things we do throughout the day may seem insignificant, but they add up to big changes. Here are 10 ways that you can start improving your health today and create a healthier, more pain-free you for tomorrow.

1. Walk frequently. If your job has you sitting down all day, get up and walk around as often as you can without being fired. If you spend most of your day at a desk or driving in your car, form a morning, evening, or lunchtime routine of walking for at least twenty minutes.
2. Take the stairs. Do you work on the second floor of a building? What about the eighth floor? Take the stairs, every single day. When I started my last job, taking the stairs to the eighth floor the first time had me gasping for air. Fast-forward one year and I was running those stairs and beating my elevator-riding co-workers to the office! Stairs are an excellent way to seamlessly add exercise to your day without even going near a gym.
3. Drink water. You've heard it before, but this doesn't get old. Water is magical. To stay healthy you need to drink plenty of water throughout the day. Try replacing unhealthy drinks with a glass of water when you're feeling thirsty. Carry a bottle of water with you wherever you go so you never have an excuse to skip it!
4. Eat breakfast. Yes, breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. Even if you're not hungry, you should be trying to eat something. Don't have any healthy food in the house? Eat anything! Breakfast is the one meal of the day where it's better to eat unhealthy than not at all. However, a nice bowl of oatmeal with blueberries, raisins, and bananas would be ideal. Grab an apple or orange on the way to work for a mid-morning snack.
5. Get some sun. The sun has all kinds of healing properties. Yes, it can cause skin cancer, but I'm not telling you to go outside naked and bake in the sun for eight hours. Just go outside and grab a few extra rays during your lunch break. Spend the weekend in the yard or hiking a forest trail.
6. Stretch every day. Your muscles are like elastic bands. The less they're stretched, the tighter and more ridged they become. Stretching causing your blood to flow and carry nutrients to various areas of your body. Think of the positions your body is normally in and stretch in the opposite direction. If you sit down a lot, stand up and stretch your hands overhead. When you get out of bed, spend at least two minutes stretching before you head to the shower. You don't need a yoga routine. Just do whatever stretch feels good.
7. Eat whole foods. This seems to go without saying, but it's absolutely vital to our health. Whole foods are healthy. When we eat them, they make our body healthy. It's really that simple. Whole foods are basically anything that hasn't been processed or manufactured by a machine: Fruits, nuts, vegetables, grains. Try forming a habit of eating one apple every day. Keep a bag of nuts in the car and snack on those during the drive home.
8. Be conscious of your posture. Everyone has a different posture, but there is a such thing as "proper posture". Take a moment to evaluate your posture. Are you slouching over? Are you walking with your head down? Imagine someone tying a string to the top of your head and then pulling on it (no, you're not being hanged). Do that with your posture: pull your shoulders back, push your chest out, stretch your neck up, and breathe. Try to be aware of your posture throughout the day and correct it once you recognize that it's out of balance.
9. Modify your eating habits. We all need to eat. By the time you're an adult, eating has become a habit - it's second nature. However, small adjustments to our daily eating habits can have huge long-term affects on our health. Do you normally eat a poptart for breakfast? Try cereal with fresh blueberries and bananas instead. Do you normally have coffee with two creams and four sugars? Try coffee with one cream and two sugars. Slowly move your eating habits in a direction that is healthier and before you know it, you'll be eating and feeling a lot more healthy.
10. Meditate. This doesn't mean you need to become a monk and dedicate the rest of your life to a spiritual calling. Collect your thoughts. Spend a few minutes quieting your mind and bringing it back home. Take deep breaths and relax your entire body. You can try it in the morning (before stretching) or just before bed. Even during your lunch break is a good time. At my last job, there was a small quiet area with a patch of grass underneath a tree. I would spend a good ten to fifteen minutes there after lunch collecting my thoughts and meditating.

Canadian researchers report that dieters with the most organochlorines (pollutants from pesticides, which are stored in fat cells) experience a greater than normal dip in metabolism as they lose weight, perhaps because the toxins interfere with the energy-burning process. Other research hints that pesticides can trigger weight gain. Always choose organic when buying peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, imported grapes, and pears; non-organic versions tend to have the highest levels of pesticides.