Finding it hard to stick with your New Year's plan for a healthier future? Well, there's some good news.

Starting slow and small — just a few steps (literally and figuratively) at a time — can make a measurable difference in your healthy longevity.

Research in The Lancet's eClinicalMedicine compared the health outcomes for people who slept about 5.5 hours a night, exercised 7.3 minutes a day, and had a diet score of 36.9 on a 100-point scale to those who made small improvements in those areas.

It turns out that people with the least healthy routines could add about one year to their lives by getting 5 extra minutes of sleep each night, 1.9 more minutes of exercise a day, and eating a half-serving more vegetables or 1.5 servings more whole grains daily.

That's a good start. Use those small steps to build up to much better outcomes.

In this study, people who were able to regularly get seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, more than 42 minutes of daily physical activity, and had a dietary quality level of around 57 to 72 out of 100 lowered their biological age by almost 9.5 years.

You can check out your dietary quality level by using the Diet History Questionnaire at epi.grants.cancer.gov/dhq3.

As you work to improve your healthy future, you'll earn rewards day by day and month by month.