The article below is an excerpt from my newsletter: Well Enough with Harry Bullmore. To get my latest thoughts on fitness and wellbeing pop your email address into the box above to get the newsletter direct to your inbox.
I spent some time away from my desk last month and returned to a four-figure avalanche of unread emails. After spending two days wrangling my inbox into submission, I found myself feeling uncharacteristically frustrated.
There were plenty of great messages in there, but they were drowned out by subject lines covering “Pilates arms” as a status symbol, the hottest fitness trends of 2026, recovery protocols, and how to hack your body for better health.
My problem with these emails is that fitness is quite possibly the least trendy thing on earth, or at least it should be. It’s not built by constantly following the latest fad, but rather by consistently doing healthy things as often as you can.
A workout doesn’t become any more or less effective just because everyone is talking about it. There’s nothing wrong with trying something new to keep things fresh, but the stuff that works has always worked, and it will continue to do so.
The human body is something of a black box – there’s a lot we don’t know about it. But there are certain behaviours we can label as beneficial with a decent degree of confidence: moving regularly, eating fruits and vegetables and sleeping well are, arguably, the big three.
Recent research from the University of Sydney studied almost 60,000 people with a median age of 64 to find out how much they needed to change their diet, exercise and sleep routines to have a meaningful impact on their health.
The results were surprisingly achievable, particularly for those currently performing poorly in these three areas. For this group, an increase of just 15 minutes of sleep, 1.6 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise and half a serving of vegetables each day was associated with a 10 per cent lower risk of death.
Are these changes trendy? No. But are they effective? Apparently so, if done consistently and in conjunction with one another.
“We understand that making major behavioural changes on a large scale is very complex, and if you set the bar too high – such as telling people to make drastic changes to their diet, sleep for an extra hour every night or go to the gym five times per week – they may be less likely to succeed,” lead author Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis tells me.
“Our work is not about guilt-triggered behavioural change, it’s about supporting people to make whatever degree of change they can in the long term.”
Another interview I enjoyed this week also appears to support my (admittedly, fairly mild-mannered) tirade against health trends. Pain scientist and Tell Me Where It Hurts author Dr Rachel Zoffness told me that chronic pain is widely misunderstood and mistreated, and presented an intuitive alternative.
She says people usually focus on the area that hurts and the physical symptoms, but these are only part of the puzzle.
“The brain receives data from the injured body part, of course, but also from our emotions, social health and environment,” Dr Zoffness tells me, “we all know our bodies hurt more when we’re stressed, anxious or depressed.”
Everyone has things that make their pain feel worse, such as stressful days, poor sleep and even bad weather – a cocktail she describes as a “high pain recipe”. By default, then, everyone must also have a “low pain recipe”, or things that ease their pain.
What are the ingredients of a low pain recipe? You guessed it. For the most part, they are consistent, health-promoting behaviours such as managing your stress levels, spending time outdoors and socialising, alongside the obvious sleep, diet and exercise factors.
And finally this week, I wanted to hone in on the exercise element and share a recent chat I had with Marchon Victoria head coach Paddy James about the most efficient way to build full-body muscle.
Many people assume that, to achieve this, you need to sacrifice an hour each day. But in Paddy’s considerable experience, two weekly full-body strength training sessions, each lasting no more than 45 minutes, are enough for most people to see impressive results. This approach is also far easier to stay consistent with – and consistency is the key to a lasting uptick in your health and fitness.
That brings us to our weekly conclusion: what thread connects this trio of pieces? It’s certainly not trendiness or flashy, buzzworthy advice. Instead, they all champion basic healthy behaviours, done consistently. Better yet, they suggest that a couple of small positive changes can go a long way in improving your health.
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