When it comes to health and fitness, too often we look for that "one big thing," that single change in our lifestyle, diet, or workouts that will create a pivotal improvement let's put it at 10 percent.

If you ever find such a positive effect from a single change, please pass it along. I've been working with my diet and workouts for over 30 years and have yet to find one quite so profound.But for you or me, finding that "one big thing" doesn't really matter.What matters and what we need to find are dozens of "little things," changes that create half percent improvements. Find enough of these for yourself some can be quite personal and before you know it, you've made major progress.Granted, there is that "one big thing" in pro sports: using performance-enhancing drugs.And while many PEDs are not illegal for you to use if you're not competing in a sanctioned event or league, and some will eventually, I believe, become accepted treatments to battle aging such as growth hormone injections they are currently ultra-expensive.Sky, generally regarded as the most successful professional cycling team for the last three years, have adopted a philosophy similar to what I suggest.Theirs is sometimes called the One-Percent Solution.In essence, Sky strives to make seemingly infinitesimal improvements in their cyclists' training, recovery from it, diet, rest, bike fit, wheel choice, helmet choice, clothing choice and all sorts of other cycling minutiae to stay just slightly ahead of the competition.After all, many bicycling races are won by less than a bike length.So how can this approach work for you? About all you have to do is engage in ongoing experimentation and always keep an open mind.I was convinced, for example, that I had found the best way to burn body fat during the worst of times: the deep freeze we call winter.I'd eat a spartan breakfast of about 280 calories three hours ahead of a long-distance, weekend bike ride that required between 2000 and 2500 calories to fuel and limit myself to ingesting about 125 calories during the effort.About two hours into such a ride, my body taps out of glycogen, the preferred fuel for your muscle.I can usually tell because the same sort of an attack up a hill produces more of a sting in my muscles after I reach this point.From then on, my muscles keep stinging, but my body secretes glucagon, which allows the fatty acids in my blood and eventually my fat stores to be used for energy, albeit lower-performing energy.It's the equivalent to using standard gas station gas in a high-performance car. It works, but less than optimally.So I feel bad, my performance suffers which doesn't really matter in the off-season but a significant amount of body fat gets converted to energy.I still do this, I still believe in this, but one small change has made the overall outcome more effective.The three-hours-before breakfast has been bumped up to 405 calories.Now that doesn't stop my legs from stinging during hard efforts after the halfway point, but it lessens it; moreover, it does two other important things. It keeps me from feeling so ravenous after the ride that I overeat especially after supper and it allows me to recover better and ride more productively on Sundays.And even Mondays.With all this winter's bad weather, schools were often delayed or closed on Mondays.In years' past, I'd be so trashed from the weekend that even with the extra time all I could do on a Monday was 60 minutes of weightlifting. But this year, every time we had a delay or closure, I did a hard, 90-to-120 minute indoor bicycle ride and a few times I even did a 30-to-60 minute weightlifting workout after that.So what little things might you be able to do to make marginal, yet important improvements?If you're looking to eat less, try drinking more green tea, especially on an empty stomach and definitely before meal times.Green tea does so many good things for you that next month's columns could be devoted just to that, but the specific reason you're using it is to keep from feeling hungry and to boost the rate at which you burn calories.Years ago, drinking green tea throughout the day as a way to boost metabolism was estimated at about 4 percent.Granted, that's not solely enough to shed 10 pounds of unwanted fat, but that's the point of this column.A 4 percent improvement here, a 2 percent improvement there, and before you know it, you're noticing your pants don't feel so tight around the waist as they did this winter, and suddenly everyone at the office is offering up compliments.Increasing the amount of fiber and protein you eat (without increasing your total caloric intake), increasing your amount of sleep (just about everybody in today's society is sleep-deprived to some extent), and incorporating occasional hard intervals into your typical steady-state aerobic training (your body burns up to seven times the calories during an intense effort) are just three of the others dozens of ways to make minor improvements in your health and fitness.