Five ways to make your job healthier
We spend a large percentage of our lives doing our jobs so our workplace practices contribute to a significant portion of our overall wellness.
If, for example, we’re drinking six cups of coffee throughout our working day and snacking on muffins, biscuits and chocolate in an attempt to sustain our energy levels, we’re setting ourselves up to experience less than optimal health.
When we’re flat out and simply trying to get through our pile of work or relentless emails, we can convince ourselves that it’s more practical to skip our lunch break – or that we don’t have time to do anything but grab a sandwich to eat on the run.
But we need to remind ourselves that without our health we have nothing and take steps to prioritise it during our working day.
Here are a few tips for creating more healthy practices in your workplace.
When we prepare and cook our own meals we can control exactly what we put into them. This means that we can pack them full of nutrients as well as avoid less nourishing processed products, sugars or poor quality salts.
An easy way to have preprepared meals for work lunches is to make extra food for dinner and take leftovers. Another solution is to prepare your week’s lunches over the weekend and freeze them ready for the week ahead. Things like soups and stews cook easily overnight in a slow cooker and offer fantastic nourishment for the colder months. Speaking of a lunch break, make sure you actually take one! It’s important for both our brain and our body that we give it adequate rest throughout our day and eating at your desk while you smash out an extra hour of work may seem productive but it will actually diminish your concentration – not to mention your body’s ability to digest your food.
Begin with enforcing a full hour’s break at lunch on yourself and then once you’ve got that under your belt, go the next step and make your lunch break a technology free zone. If you can, take yourself outside for some fresh air.
A great way to ensure you get your five serves of vegetables a day is to include a green smoothie in your daily routine. This option won’t suit everyone as some people don’t feel that cold, raw foods are as nourishing for them, or may feel cold after consuming them. But if they work well for your body, green smoothies can offer additional nutritional support, especially if you add a scoop of ground up vegetable powder for even more nutrient density. There’s a lot of research about how too much sitting isn’t good for health or energy. Even if you’re in the small proportion of people who do the recommended amount of at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week, you still need to move more regularly throughout your day.
In other words, it is the sitting itself – not necessarily the lack of exercise – that adds to the undesirable impact on energy and specific health parameters. Research has also shown that regular movement breaks across the day reduce back, neck and shoulder pain, plus boost mood.
So, try getting up from your desk and moving around for about three to five minutes every hour. If you have a choice, you might like to invest in a standing desk or create one from objects around your home or office and make the suggestion to have a standing meeting next time the team gets together.
The way we breathe has the power to completely change our biochemistry. Our body links short, shallow breaths to stress, and long, diaphragmatic breathing to relaxation.
When we’re focused on our tasks or feeling the pressure of ‘‘too much to do’’, we can get caught in a cycle of shallow chest breathing and as we’re changing our breathing patterns, it can be difficult to notice when we’re doing it. So, set yourself a reminder to check your breathing and/or to take a few minutes breathing break every few hours. ❚ Dr Libby is a nutritional biochemist, best-selling author and speaker. The advice contained in this column is not intended to be a substitute for direct, personalised advice from a health professional. See drlibby.com