After choosing to live a healthy lifestyle, you can’t leave good habits at home when you leave for work. Despite after work happy hours and unhealthy office treats, you’ll want to figure out ways to stay healthy at the office as well. It’s easy to eat a healthy breakfast and dinner or be more active on the weekends, but you spend a good portion of your time at the office and the choices you make there are just as important, if not more.
When you are at work, you must take care of yourself and be more attentive to your lifestyle than when you are at home. Many of us don’t realize how much time we spend at work and how easy it is to deviate from our healthy lifestyle habits. The high demands and stress brought on by supervisors and co-workers can affect your mental and emotional health, something many employees (particularly women) ignore.
If you seek to change your habits at work, we offer these suggestions to stay healthy at the office each day.
Move
No, don’t change jobs, but get up periodically and move! Sitting all day is unhealthy causing pain in the neck, hips, shoulders, and back. Get up and take a few short walks every so often. Getting up and being active will help prevent joint pains and studies indicate your creative juices flow more freely when you are walking. If you are seeking a new initiative or brainstorming for new ideas at work, don’t sit and ponder, get up and walk!
Pack a Lunch
Restaurants often don’t offer the healthy choices you like and depending on office snacks when you’re hungry can be a disaster to a proper diet. When you pack your lunch, you take control of the food you eat. You can choose foods you like, and which are healthy. Make it fun with a healthy treat or a fashionable lunch bag. You can even find cozy place outdoors like a park to enjoy yourself outside the office.
Snack Healthy at Your Desk
Bring veggies or fruit to leave at your desk for a healthy treat. Fresh fruit, veggies and cucumber dip, or nuts can keep your diet healthy while still allowing you to snack at work. Plus, it keeps you away from the inevitable box of donuts or cupcakes which are present in every break room.
Hydrate with Water
Tone down the coffee and increase your water intake to hydrate and control appetite. Keep a large container of water at your workstation and sip on it throughout the day. Keeping yourself hydrated can improve problem-solving, energy, and moodiness. To figure on how much water to drink, divide your weight by two and drink that many ounces each day.
Take a Break
Taking time away from your desk will have profound effects on your productivity. It will help with joint discomfort as mentioned earlier and ease eye strain from staring at your computer monitor for long hours. It will also refresh you mentally and physically, and some say it improves their exercise regimen after work.
Sugar-Free
Make your desk a sugar-free zone and be strict about it. Too often those after lunch sinking spells can make you reach for sugary snacks for a quick energy boost, but these snacks are not your best choices. Ease off the carbs at lunch as well, and you probably will say goodbye to this afternoon lull.
Collaborate
Sticking to healthy habits is easier when it’s a group effort. Instead of taking on this challenge alone, encourage your co-workers to get involved. This collaboration will help you and them attain and maintain healthy habits. Start a walking group for lunch or bring healthy snacks to the office. You’ll be helping your co-workers and yourself.
Approach Management
When your office culture is healthy, it is easier for you to maintain good health habits at work. Many offices, especially small businesses which offer healthcare benefits, want their employees healthy for increased production and lower healthcare costs.
Talk to your employer, manager, or human resources about forming a committee to set office rules for better health habits. Encourage office-wide wellness programs, challenges, nutrition education, and healthy foods in the office. When your work environment is in line with your healthy lifestyle, your battle to maintain healthy habits at the office is pretty much won.
If you are looking to improve your daily habits and have a healthier lifestyle, we can help. Contact Total Body of Atlanta today.
Call College Park: 770.750.2955
