Ep 585: 5 Simple Things You Can Do Every Day to Improve Your Health | Dr. Helena Popovic Recap

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LISTEN TO THE EPISODE BELOW

Do you think you’re healthy… but still feel exhausted, foggy, or off? You’re not alone. In this episode, AJ Vaden opens up about her personal health journey and shares five powerful habits that have changed everything for her energy, focus, and long-term well-being. 

These habits aren’t complicated, expensive, or woo-y. In fact, they’re simple, free, and backed by science. If you’re ready to trade survival mode for real vitality (mentally, physically, and emotionally), this short episode is your blueprint. 

Tune in for honest insights, relatable stories, and a roadmap full of small daily shifts to improve your health starting today.  

KEY POINTS FROM THIS EPISODE

  • Why thinking you’re “healthy” might be the biggest lie you’re telling yourself. 
  • The shocking truth about hidden sugars, oils, and toxins in everyday foods and products. 
  • The underrated power of starting your day with gratitude or prayer. 
  • How AJ gamifies movement (and gets her steps in while drying her hair!). 
  • The real reason to cut alcohol and what to drink instead. 
  • Why sleep isn’t a luxury, it’s a daily non-negotiable for your brain and body. 
  • How “perimeter shopping” at the grocery store can transform your diet. 
  • A simple sleep routine to beat burnout, anxiety, and brain fog. 

QUOTABLE MOMENTS

“If you’re not choosing gratitude, by default you’re choosing ingratitude.” — AJ Vaden [0:05:00] 

“Don’t expect what you don’t inspect. Movement isn’t a chore, it’s a privilege.” — AJ Vaden [0:07:00] 

“If it doesn’t add to your life, why are you doing it?” — AJ Vaden on alcohol [0:07:45] 

“Perimeter shopping changed how we eat and how we feel.” — AJ Vaden [0:09:40] 

“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” — AJ Vaden quoting Mark Twain [0:10:50] 

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

AJ Vaden on Instagram 

AJ Vaden on LinkedIn 

Brand Builders Group 

Free Strategy Call with Brand Builders Group 

Influential Personal Brand Podcast on Apple 

Email Your Review 

[00:00:00] You think you’re healthy? But the truth is you’re probably [00:00:05] not. You see, I just came off of this amazing interview on the [00:00:10] influential personal brand podcast with Dr. Helena Papa Vic, and she is a [00:00:15] leading doctor in brain health from Australia. But it wasn’t just this interview that makes me [00:00:20] say that. [00:00:20] I have been on my own health journey for the last 18 months [00:00:25] and a very intentional. Research driven, data-driven approach to [00:00:30] understanding why I was feeling the way that I was and why I was saying [00:00:35] I’m healthy and realizing I’m actually not, you see [00:00:40] what happened is I thought because I didn’t eat sugar that.[00:00:45] [00:00:45] I wasn’t eating sugar. And what I mean by that is I’m not a big dessert person. I don’t have [00:00:50] cookies. I’m not a heavy like, you know, sugary drink person. I [00:00:55] don’t drink alcohol, so I don’t drink soda. I, I, I did the healthy [00:01:00] thing, don’t eat a lot of processed foods. And on a, a very important [00:01:05] conversation that I had with a health coach at the time he challenged me and he said, [00:01:10] I don’t believe that you don’t eat sugar. [00:01:12] And I think that you’re fooling yourself [00:01:15] just because you don’t eat dessert. Soda and alcohol doesn’t mean that you don’t eat [00:01:20] sugar. And I was confused and I said, what are you talking about? And so I did an [00:01:25] audit of my pantry, of his request and I learned, oh my gosh, I eat [00:01:30] so much sugar. And I didn’t know it. [00:01:32] And it wasn’t just that if you would’ve asked me a [00:01:35] year ago, Hey, aj, do you, do you put a lot of oils into your food? I would’ve been like, no. [00:01:40] Occasionally I cook with olive oil, but that’s it. That was also a lie. Oils were in [00:01:45] almost every single condiment we had. They were almost in every single box food that we had.[00:01:50] [00:01:50] They were in every skin product, face, product, lotion, conditioner, [00:01:55] shampoo sunscreen. If I owned it, it had oils in [00:02:00] it. And again, I’m not saying any of these things are necessarily [00:02:05] bad. But in the amount that we are taking them in as an American [00:02:10] society, our bodies were not meant to sustain them at the levels that we’re [00:02:15] consuming them. [00:02:15] So what I wanna share with you today, I’m no health practitioner. [00:02:20] I am not a doctor, but these are five simple things that I believe that [00:02:25] you can do every single day to get and stay healthy. [00:02:30] Now if you like some of these ’cause they are free, simple and in my opinion, [00:02:35] pretty easy. Then I would encourage you to go listen to the entire conversation that I had with [00:02:40] Dr. [00:02:40] Helena Popovic because this is not just about being healthy physically. [00:02:45] This is about internal health. This is about gut health, cardiovascular help. This is about [00:02:50] brain health. This is about doing the things today that will prolong your life, [00:02:55] not just so that you’re older, but that you live a happier, healthier life as you age. [00:02:59] [00:03:00] So here’s the first thing. Start every day in [00:03:05] prayer or gratitude. There are scientific research studies that [00:03:10] prove that when you start your day in a gratitude [00:03:15] state, that you have lowered your cholesterol, lowered your [00:03:20] cortisol, that you have, you know, decreased the stress hormones, IE cortisol, [00:03:25] but you are actually starting your day in a way that you are positioning your mind, [00:03:30] your heart, and your body to receive what comes at you throughout [00:03:35] the day. [00:03:35] Right. And not only that, it’s like if you start every day with the attitude [00:03:40] of Thank you Lord, for this day, thank you for breath in my lungs. Thank you for [00:03:45] eyes to see. Thank you for ears to hear. Thank you for legs to walk with. If you just remember the [00:03:50] most fundamental things that we forget in the busy hecticness, hecticness of [00:03:55] life, it puts things in perspective that already. [00:03:59] That you [00:04:00] have been given the gift of another day that already that you have breath in [00:04:05] your lungs and you have feet to walk on, and you have eyes to see [00:04:10] and, and ears to hear the little, you know, whispers of your children outside your door. [00:04:15] And to see the sunrise that comes up. And on the days where I’m like a little grumpy that [00:04:20] I’m up when the sunrise happens, I remember that. [00:04:22] I have eyes to see the sunrise today. [00:04:25] And when I’m a little frustrated that my kids are interrupting my morning routine, I remember [00:04:30] that I get the pleasure of ha happy, healthy children in my house. And when [00:04:35] I’m a little grumpy that I have to get in my car and drive through traffic, I, [00:04:40] I remember that I have the privilege of a car that works, that’s [00:04:45] reliable and that I have a place to go to see people that I enjoy getting to work with.[00:04:50] [00:04:50] That’s a perspective shift. That’s a heart stance of [00:04:55] gratitude versus ingratitude. And if we’re not proactively choosing [00:05:00] gratitude by default, we are unintentionally choosing ingratitude. [00:05:05] But that’s the first thing is just start your day in prayer and thankfulness and gratitude [00:05:10] that you are alive today there. [00:05:12] And there’s a reason behind that in that if you [00:05:15] are alive today, there’s breath in your lungs, there’s a reason. And that doesn’t mean it’s [00:05:20] gonna be an easy day, but there is purpose in the day. So that’s number one. Number two, [00:05:25] this is a little bit more tactical and I have it on right now. So if you’re watching my video, I’m gonna stick my [00:05:30] shoe up in the air and I’m gonna show you this little thing, right? [00:05:33] This is a pedometer. [00:05:35] Yes, I know that you can have an app on your phone, but I’m trying to stay tech free. So I bought myself this little [00:05:40] pedometer and I track my steps and that is my own little competition [00:05:45] to make sure that I am moving every single day. See, I set a goal at the beginning of this year. [00:05:49] We’re in [00:05:50] 2025 when we’re filming this to, to walk 10,000 steps a day. [00:05:55] And when I set that goal, I didn’t realize how much walking that was, to be honest, because I [00:06:00] work a lot and I’m at my desk a lot and I didn’t realize that, you know, 10,000 steps [00:06:05] could be 90 minutes to two hours of walking every single day. [00:06:09] And [00:06:10] so I’ve had to get really creative. And I will tell you what will happen on an average [00:06:15] day if I am at my computer, like a day at today, where I’ve done tons of video [00:06:20] recordings. Here’s what starts to happen. I’m gonna stand up, so you may only see half of me, but. I do [00:06:25] this. Yes, like a crazy person in line at the grocery store. [00:06:28] I’m marching in line [00:06:30] like a crazy person. While I’m cooking. I’m marching in line while I am drying my hair. I am [00:06:35] marching in place while I’m curling my hair. I am marching in place. I’m March in place all the [00:06:40] time. My kids just now, oh, mom’s marching again. Mom’s marching again, y’all [00:06:45] listen. Movement matters. [00:06:47] And it doesn’t have to be 10,000 steps a day. You [00:06:50] don’t have to get a pedometer. It could be your movement of choice. But the point is, it’s like, [00:06:55] do not expect what you do not inspect. And it’s not a chore. [00:07:00] It’s a privilege that you get the opportunity to go and do these things, right? And [00:07:05] so challenge yourself to move, make it a competition, gamify [00:07:10] it. [00:07:10] Do whatever you have to do to get yourself in the mindset to go, oh, [00:07:15] shoot. Right, because I’m right now. I’m only at a thousand steps and it’s almost [00:07:20] 2:00 PM I got a lot of moving to do between now and the end of the day. I [00:07:25] would not know that if I was not tracking it. So give yourself [00:07:30] some tools to do the things that are necessary for you to be and stay healthy. [00:07:34] And moving [00:07:35] every day is one of those things. Number three, cut alcohol. And I, [00:07:40] I say that not because I think alcohol is necessarily evil or bad. I say it [00:07:45] because if it does not add something to your life, then why are you doing it? And to say [00:07:50] that, oh, it tastes good, or anything else is like, well, there’s plenty of other things that taste good too.[00:07:55] [00:07:55] Don’t rationalize, rationalize yourself into something that isn’t necessarily [00:08:00] good for your long-term health. Do you have to cut it completely? Do you have to cut it [00:08:05] forever? Maybe not. But cut it for the day, right? [00:08:10] Give yourself the opportunity to detoxify your body so that you can rest without it. [00:08:14] You [00:08:15] can think without it. You can relax without it. You can have fun without it. And so my [00:08:20] third tip would be to cut alcohol. Challenge yourself for a day, a week, a month, a [00:08:25] year. But see what life looks like without it and see what you can replace it with. [00:08:30] Water. What if for every single time that you went for that glass of wine, instead [00:08:35] you went for that glass of water, what would that do for the actual internal health [00:08:40] of your body? [00:08:41] Number four, cut sugar. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t [00:08:45] enjoy sugar ever, but it should be a treat. It should be something that you look [00:08:50] forward to enjoy, not an expectation that you have every night after dinner, and most [00:08:55] certainly not a hidden ingredient in every single thing that you eat and drink throughout the day.[00:09:00] [00:09:00] And you can only cut sugar if you know all the things that you’re eating that has [00:09:05] sugar in it, which means you have to become obsessive about reading labels. Or even [00:09:10] better yet, don’t read labels. If it has a label, just don’t buy it. [00:09:15] Right. That’s a, that’s a call back to food from the Earth, right? Did it [00:09:20] grow in a tree? [00:09:20] Did it grow in a vine? Did it come from the earth? Right? Is it a whole food? Right? What if you [00:09:25] never had to look at a label to see how many grams of sugar it had in it because there was no label? [00:09:30] ’cause it was a whole food, right? We call it our family perimeter Shopping. Right. That [00:09:35] means that you never go down the aisles, right? [00:09:37] ’cause there’s not fresh food down the aisle. So we’re perimeter [00:09:40] shoppers. And we really challenge ourselves to never go down the aisles. And it’s, that means [00:09:45] it’s in the produce sec section, it’s in the meat section, it’s in the dairy section but it’s [00:09:50] all, all around the perimeter of the grocery store. [00:09:52] So what would it look like for you to become a perimeter [00:09:55] shopper at your local grocery store? And last, but certainly not least. This is the [00:10:00] fifth quick, easy thing that you can do on a daily basis to get and stay healthy, is [00:10:05] to go to bed earlier, get more sleep. Okay. [00:10:10] Give your body time to rest. Give your brain the chance to rejuvenate [00:10:15] and detoxify. [00:10:16] Let your body rest. That is a, a, an [00:10:20] easy thing. Said, not always an easy thing done. And I have two little boys at home [00:10:25] and a husband who travels and a business that is growing and a, a growing [00:10:30] team. And there’s lots of demands on my schedule, which means it’s even more [00:10:35] important that I prioritize my bedtime. [00:10:39] Because [00:10:40] a well-rested AJ is a happy aj and everybody [00:10:45] wants you to be happy, right? And I love this quote, I think Mark Twain said it [00:10:50] that you know, fatigue makes cowards of us all. And that’s because we [00:10:55] don’t think as clearly and we’re not as healthy or [00:11:00] happy, and we’re stressed and our internal hormone levels are in disarray when we [00:11:05] don’t have enough rest. [00:11:06] Right. A sleep deprivation is a real thing and you, [00:11:10] you may not even know that you’re sleep deprived, but if you have brain fog, if you are [00:11:15] suffering from depression or anxiety, and I’m not saying it’s only because of sleep, but a [00:11:20] lack of sleep only increases all of those things. So get to bed [00:11:25] earlier, right? [00:11:26] Create a sleep routine that helps you go to sleep and stay asleep . [00:11:30] That is a simple thing that you can do that allows your body to rest to prepare for the day [00:11:35] ahead. So those are five simple things. Again, start every day in prayer, get [00:11:40] moving. Right? In my case, get a pedometer, cut, sugar, cut alcohol, and go to bed [00:11:45] earlier.

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