How to get healthy? It’s a remarkable comment on our society that such a simple question can have so many people confused. I don’t know that we can even agree on what “healthy” means, much less how to get there.

I personally take a very practical approach to the question. Healthy to me means being able to do what I want to do physically, when I want to do it. That means having the energy to keep up with my three kids, being able to play some Ultimate Frisbee on occasion, and go on some long hikes through the woods near my house. The particulars might be a little different for you, but ultimately I think your definition of healthy would be pretty similar. It boils down to not being limited in your physical pursuits by what your body is able to handle.

If you play a game of pick-up basketball with the guys, and the next day you’re too sore to get out of bed, that’s unhealthy. If you pull a muscle playing a game of tennis, your body probably wasn’t ready to handle that amount of physical exertion. If you try to take a hike at the local state park and get too winded to continue halfway through, that’s unhealthy.

How To Increase Your Fitness

So if you are unhealthy, how can you increase your fitness? Let’s start with some simple tips to get healthier. There’s no need to go out and join an expensive gym, buy a big exercise machine, or get a personal trainer. You can radically change your fitness without ever doing any of those things.

1) Improve your diet – This is the easiest change that anyone who is out of shape can do. I personally recommend the Paleo Diet, but that might be too big of a step for everyone. At the very least, you should cut out sugar, processed foods, and refined carbs. Focus your diet on meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts and other whole foods. Organic food is vastly superior to regular food, particularly when it comes to meat.

2) Get off of your couch and move – We’ve been brainwashed by thousands of perky fitness models on TV and infomercials that tell us we have to do a particular exercise routine in order to lose weight or get in shape. The truth is that the human body is well designed to burn calories with any sort of physical activity. In fact, your body will choose to burn fat at lower levels of exertion. (This is ironically called “aerobic exercise”, which has no relation to the marketing term “aerobics”.

What this means to to is that any amount of physical exercise is a good thing. Instead of flipping on the TV when you get home from work, take your dog or your kids for a walk around the block. Start off small and easy. If you are really out of shape, one walk around the block may be all you can handle. That’s fine. Start with what you can do. When it comes to getting healthy (or making any positive change in your life) anything is better than nothing.

That should be your mantra as you get started: Anything is better than nothing. Park a block away from your office, and walk the rest of the way. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Rather than emailing a co-worker, get up and go see them. Chop some wood for your fireplace in the winter. Rake your lawn by hand in the fall. Get a push mower instead of a riding one. Anything is better than nothing.

3) Once you’re in the habit of moving more frequently, add in a short workout 2 or 3 times a week – You can do a 20-minute workout at home with no weights or machines. Do a set of push-ups, squats, pull-ups, and crunches. Do as many as you can at one time, and then move to the next exercise. Listen to your body and take breaks as needed, but keep things moving along. When you finish the last exercise, take a short break, and then do another set of all four. If you do this twice a week, you will start to notice significant improvement in your strength and muscle tone.

Getting healthy doesn’t have to be hard. If you implement these three simple tips and stick with it, you will see a drastic improvement in your health and looks.