How do you stay active in the workplace, in spite of a demanding work-life?
For a good percentage of us, our jobs require us to stay at the desk for several hours during the day. This can lead to alarming habits and is associated with several health risks such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer.
Introducing bits of physical activity into your day is a good way of combating these health risks and keeping yourself in top shape, all day long.
5 Ultimate Tips to Stay Active at Work
1. Walk to/from Work
This is one of the top tips for staying super active in the workplace.
Depending on the distance of your home from your work however, you can choose to either walk or cycle the distance (if it’s too far to walk).
This is because walking and cycling have been discovered amongst workers, to be associated with a lower risk of death from all causes as well as a lower risk of having cancer.
It also makes sense when we realize that those who actively commute to work, either by walking or cycling, have lower body mass indices than those who commute by car. What this means is you can lose some weight if you take this approach to getting to work (the only thing is, you have to wake up a bit earlier; but isn’t that a good price to pay for your heart and a smaller dress or suit size?)
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- Standing Desks are the real MVPs
It might sound pretty obvious, but taking a standing position is often very helpful with regards to keeping active at work. These days, we have standing desks which help individuals take breaks from work to stand and discuss with colleagues; and some people even spend their lunch breaks here.
If you take short breaks by the standing desk throughout the workday, you would end up reducing your cardiovascular risk without even doing much in the way of regular exercise (smart, right?). This way, when you get home to the best cooling mattress pads, according to SleepDelivered, you can have a good night’s worth of rest without any guilt.
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- Remind Yourself to Move Around
By whatever means possible, remind yourself to move around during work. This might seem pretty straightforward until you’re enmeshed in the throes of a busy work project, and the hours fly by without you raising your head up.
If you have to, set periodic alarms to remind yourself of how important moving around is to your overall health. Another smart tip is to take the stairs rather than the elevator to increase the amount of daily movement achieved at work.
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- Re-engineer Your Work Environment
Although this might be out-of-place if you aren’t your own boss, you can still make significant progress with this by letting your boss know what would be helpful for you and other employees at work.
For example, you could suggest the use of a bounce ball to sit on while at work, as this invariably promotes movement (because, who sits comfortably on a bounce ball for long periods?). If your office provides yoga breaks, why not take it? It certainly would be helpful to give you those needed movement breaks.
Re-engineering the environment can also occur when you organize walking meetings, introduce workplace games and add on desks with movement interventions like treadmills, to mention a few.
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- Take Active Work Breaks
You’re not doing your body any good by sitting in front of your computer with your cellphone in one hand, while you eat lunch. A fabulous idea would be to engage in something physically active e.g. taking a walk while listening to music; as you eat your lunch. This has the added advantage of increasing your level of concentration when you go back to work.
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Wrapping Up
With the above smart tips to help you stay both active and productive at the workplace, you would be doing your body a lot more good than ever before, and for this, we say Bravo!
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