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“Working from home” quickly becomes an attractive alternative to many people's 9-5 grind. The benefits include saving time, avoiding rush hour traffic, maintaining a better work/life balance, being free from office politics, saving money on living expenses, and the list goes on.
The increased number of home-based jobs available today in accountancy, leasing, engineering, sales, and technology transfers help you come up with your reasons to switch career paths. However, despite these tangible benefits, working from home poses some severe disadvantages that you should be aware of before taking the plunge.
While you are free to choose your schedule and work in your PJs whenever you want, you still need to keep yourself fit. Any type of employment requires physical and mental energy to sustain long periods of productivity. With this in mind, here are three ways to keep yourself fit while working from home.
Like having a pet can help prevent loneliness, regularly exercising helps reduce stress and keeps one's body and mind healthy and active.
The fact is, working from home without a set schedule for waking up and getting dressed every day could easily lead to an unproductive day. Without making exercise a priority, you could quickly find yourself lounging around the house in sweats all day long, which will only increase your level of stress and fatigue.
Choose one or more exercises you like the most (yoga, weight training, jogging, etc.) and do everything possible to ensure they become part of your daily routine.
In addition, having a personal trainer come over once per week might be just what you need to keep this commitment lasting longer than three days. You can also install some equipment to help you work out at home, like treadmills, and stationary exercise bikes, among other workout equipment that doesn't need much space.
2. Have a Healthy Diet
Just as exercise is essential for helping maintain a healthy body, eating right helps keep your mind sharp and alert. It might be tempting to order one of those hair-raising “super-food” smoothies that taste great but are packed with unhealthy calories or to dig into those veggies covered in heavy cream and sauces.
Food with healthy fats, carbohydrates, vegetables, and fiber will help you feel more energized throughout the day instead of making yourself susceptible to cravings and food binging at odd times. Save those junk-food snacks for your “cheat days.”
To ensure that you can meet your nutritional needs while working from home, here are two tips to help you make your kitchen an oasis of healthy foods.
First, ignore the phrase “fresh food spoils quickly” (notice how it says fresh and not organic). Instead of worrying about spoilage, make it a point to cook or prepare more significant portions at one time so that you have food leftovers for lunch or dinner.
The second tip is to decide what you want in your daily menu. If you plan on having two eggs, half a grapefruit, and coffee every morning for breakfast, then have it ready by the time you wake up. Have some instant oatmeal or granola in your pantry that only needs hot water poured into them to enjoy your first meal.
If you need to prepare your lunch ahead of time, then go online and buy yourself some healthy food containers that will help keep your salads fresh until it's time for you to eat.
3. Set Limits for When You Work from Home
If you work around the clock, your body and mind will eventually give in and make it almost impossible for you to keep yourself fit while working from home. You must set limits on when exactly (and how long) you will spend each day at work.
It might be a good idea to set a time limit of 8 hours every day — but no more than that — with an additional hour or two taken off during your weekends to allow enough time for exercise and relaxation. While it may not be possible for everyone (everyone has their unique circumstances), you shouldn't let yourself become too comfortable with working from home 24/7.
We hope you found this blog post helpful. Remember, it is essential to take care of yourself and maintain your health no matter where you work. Luckily for us, there are many ways to stay active while working from home (or at the office).
Keep these tips in mind as you go about your day-to-day tasks on the computer or sitting around watching Netflix all day. Please share with us how some of these have helped keep you fit today by commenting below.
Can you share any health tips for sitting at a desk all day?
Krystle Cook – the creator of Home Jobs by MOM – put her psychology degree on a shelf and dived into a pile of diapers and dishes instead. She is a wife and mother to two rambunctious boys, sweating it out in her Texas hometown. She loves cooking, DIY home projects, and family fun activities.
All wonderful tips! I work in office for one of the Top 4 Accounting firms and they have a treadmill in the office with a desktop workspace to help us keep in shape or rather just maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle. They also do water challenges where you log the amount of water you drink each day kind of as a competition with a prize for the top ranked personnel.
This is great advice! It can definitely be hard to stay fit while spending so many hours at a desk. Eating a healthy diet really helps, and I love these new sit and exercise machine that are out now. A standing desk sounds really cool, too.
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This is some very good tips….. I am in front of the computer a lot and not doing the things I should. So going to start using these tips
I hope these tips help you stay fit while you’re at the computer!
All wonderful tips! I work in office for one of the Top 4 Accounting firms and they have a treadmill in the office with a desktop workspace to help us keep in shape or rather just maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle. They also do water challenges where you log the amount of water you drink each day kind of as a competition with a prize for the top ranked personnel.
Sound like great office perks to stay fit at a desk job! What do you win if you win the water challenge?
This is great advice! It can definitely be hard to stay fit while spending so many hours at a desk. Eating a healthy diet really helps, and I love these new sit and exercise machine that are out now. A standing desk sounds really cool, too.
It is very hard to stay fit while working a desk job at home. My husband likes to have the option between standing and sitting because of his knees.