Can all actions end up changing what your brain thinks? I don't think so. I eat very little every day, so why is it that even after two weeks, my brain hasn't changed, and I still want to eat fried chicken and two bowls of ramen? Because it's not enough to take action, we need to take action with persistence and the right mindset.

Dripping water wears through stone. This is a good way of saying that small actions, when accumulated over a long period, can generate immense power. Many people will focus on the duration, and know that persisting for a long time can have good results, but you may overlook another key point, the droplet itself - means that this small behavior, to your body this big stone, must be minimal enough, as subtle as a single water droplet, or even barely perceptible.

Why? For instance, if you want to lose weight, you only eat a little bit every day, and you experience dizziness from hunger. The impact of this behavior on your body is like striking the Earth with a meteorite, would cause catastrophic damage, so many neural pathways become dysregulated, naturally, it is not possible to get the change you want, it will only lead to eventual relapse, back to the habit of overeating.

Therefore, the key to Sustained incremental efforts is not only to require both time and sufficient subtlety, there is also a more important layer, that is, the quantitative change should be small enough. For example, if you gradually reduce portions while monitoring adaptation, then in a fortnight, eat a little less and see if your body can accept it. This principle applies doubly to exercise, for a person who has never been a sedentary individual, if you abruptly start daily 50-minute runs, and then doing a set of strength training, this exercise program will soon become unsustainable. You need to take it step by step.

Start with manageable 10-minute walks, so you first stick to 10 minutes of walking a day for a week, until your body achieves adaptation, and then slowly increase the amount. Slowly, a new habit will be formed. In turn, this habit will also change your thinking on this matter, through reinforcement, it will be stabilized into your healthy lifestyle.

Another principle of being healthy is called comprehensive understanding. It means that you have to try your best to fully understand each health-related behavior, instead of the old Chinese saying, the Chinese proverb about half-filled knowledge.

From washing your hands, brushing your teeth, and drinking water, to handling physical limits, if you only have a half-understanding of how to do it correctly, then your behavior will have deviations that compound. This deviation may only seem a little bit to you, but this little deviation multiplied by the time you spend doing this in your whole life can be an exponential accumulation.

If you have 100% knowledge of every aspect of your lifestyle, it will not only ensure your correct behavior but also allow you to maintain consistency, so that you won't be swayed by external influences.

Let's take the example of losing weight. I have a friend who, after listening to me talk about increasing protein intake, went home and tried it herself. She consumed excessive meat daily, subsequent bloodwork showed not only did not lose much weight but also elevated cholesterol levels. Assuming implementation errors, this time I heard that the next-door sister Xiaofei had weight loss success, relying on nightly energy bars, they also replicated the approach and finally spent money and time, without success.

This is the result of half-hearted knowledge on the matter of eating. If you want to lose weight, there is nothing wrong with eating less every day. But whether it is a plate of meat or energy bars, nutritionally unbalanced, if your diet structure is not reasonable, the body perceives nutrient deprivation, will trigger metabolic protection, and of course, can not lose weight successfully.

If you do eat less every day, but maintain balanced nutrition, for three months, properly will be able to see measurable results, and there will be no abnormal biomarkers.

So even small behaviors should be grounded in scientific understanding, and not be done with a little deviation.

Sticking to the right things and maintaining a correct perception of health will turn small behaviors into amplified health benefits. They can not only ensure that you live a healthy life but also reshape neural pathways, in the long run, a healthy lifestyle will become your automatic behaviors. One day you will wake up, and you will find that, as mentioned in the Tao Te Ching, 'effortless action' (Wu Wei), you do not have to deliberately think about anything, and you do not have to deliberately do anything, a series of healthy lifestyle patterns, have become part of your life.