3 ways to get healthy at the office

Chances are that if you work in an office environment you live a somewhat sedentary lifestyle since you are paid to sit for 8 hours a day. I find that some days I don’t even take a bathroom break because I get so busy. Today, talking to some of my co-workers, we realized how bad our lifestyle at work is, and we decided to do something about it.

This is not a resolution per say, we would just like to make some changes to our office life in order to improve our health. We came up with a few ideas:

Keep hydrated- forget not making it to the bathroom, some days I realized that I don’t even drink 8oz of water while at work! Water is key. There are different opinions about how much water you should be drinking daily based on sex, age, weight…I think that just making sure you are drinking water constantly at work is good. Buy yourself a re-usable bottle that way you also eliminate waste from bottled water.

Bring your lunch- all of the people that I work with and I have something very strong in common, we all LOVE food. I mean, somedays while we are eating breakfast we are talking about what we will eat for lunch. This love of food is not a bad thing at all, however, to be kinder to our bodies (and pockets) we are limiting our take out to once a week. Bringing our lunches allows us to be creative with food and it also saves us tons of money. Most importantly, bringing our lunches also lets us control how much processed food we allow in our diet.

Walk around- Make it a point to get up and move around. I remember getting home last year and going straight to the couch to binge watch Netflix, when I realized I only walked to and from my car. I remembered working in a kitchen and being on my feet all day, and I missed it! I think it is very important that we take 15 minutes every few hours to just walk around. This is especially important in our office, which is basically a windowless repurposed closet. So every 2 hours take 15 minutes to walk around the building, it is also a good time to refill your water.

However, the most important thing is to be caring about one another and create a healthy working environment. Living a healthy lifestyle is very difficult even in ideal circumstances, and it takes a lot of discipline to not succumb to the conveniences of the modern day working environment. It is important for co-workers to have a strong support network so that you are not alone in trying to, or maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So stick together and as a group have fun!