Do you feel like you never leave the house anymore because you work from home? Do you feel like you never get any movement in anymore? Here’s how to keep healthy when working from home.
Todays blog post is going to be about how to physically AND mentally keep healthy when working from home. It is easy to only think about prioritising our physical health, that we sometimes forget about prioritising our mental health.
Here’s a balance of both!
Have a morning routine to yourself
Making sure you have time to yourself in the morning is super important.
You need to prioritise yourself, and give yourself time to be ready to start working!
I have a whole post on the morning routine that helps you feel your best and most productive here: http://bigsisterera.com/a-morning-routine-that-will-help-you-feel-your-best/
Giving yourself time for working out, skincare, getting ready, making breakfast, is super important and will make you feel more ready to start working!
Make a good, filling breakfast
You want a breakfast that is going to keep you full throughout the morning when you are working, so you aren’t constantly thinking about food until lunch!
Workout in the morning
Getting up that little (or big) bit earlier to workout will make all of the difference to your day.
Whether thats stretching, yoga, or going to the gym, getting some movement in before your work day will make you feel more awake and ready to get started on your work.
Prioritising yourself, before you start work is very important.
Working from home, it is so easy to wake up at 8:45am, brush your teeth and start working by 9am. However, when you fill your own cup up first, you are able to then give more energy into other things.
Exercise gives you endorphins, so starting your work day filled with endorphins is the best way to go!
It doesn’t have to be a super long workout!
30 minutes is plenty!
I love following along to 30 minute strength training workouts on YouTube! Here are some of my favourites:
- 30 minute full body workout https://youtu.be/dhCwHlL32Jw
- 30 minute leg workout (this one left me sore for DAYS) https://youtu.be/6rRC4Bvvs5U
- 30 minute upper body workout https://youtu.be/-UBOObWrb_o
- 30 minute yoga Pilates workout https://youtu.be/ljtJM15YxXs
Get a standing desk
Do you feel like you are sat all day hunched over your desk?
Standing desks could solve that problem for you!
But what if you don’t want to stand all day? There are sit / standing desks that move up and down!!
They may be more expensive than a standard desk, but if you permanently work from home, then it could be an amazing investment for you to have a better work environment!
Benefits of a standing desk:
- Improves focus. Sometimes, after sitting for so long, you feel like you just need to get up and move about, but you can’t because you’re still at work. But with a standing desk, you are able to stretch your legs whilst continuing to work!
- Improves posture. I don’t know about you, but the more I’m sat at my desk, the worse my posture gets. By the end of the day I’m hunched over my desk, possibly even moved to my bed! Standing allows you to keep your back and neck straight!
- However, make sure you are still sitting too! Going from sitting all day to standing all day could be an intense change on your back and legs!
Get a desk treadmill
If you are wanting to take your fitness level and step count to the next level… a desk treadmill is the way to go!
It is so hard to get some movement in throughout the day, especially if you work a 9-5 from home.
A desk treadmill doesn’t take up much space, and allows you to walk whenever you want.
Whether that’s when you’re working, or after work when you’re watching your favourite tv show!
Go outside on your lunch breaks
It’s easy to forget to leave the house when you’re working from home.
So on your lunch break, eat your food outside. (This obviously depends on the weather where you live, sometimes we’re not always fortunate with good weather)!
This is the perfect way to get some fresh air, whilst enjoying your break!
Benefits of fresh air:
- Cleans your lungs (you release more airborne toxins as your lungs dilate more from the increase in oxygen).
- Boosts your mood. Fresh air actually increases the oxygen levels in your brain, which then increases serotonin levels!
- Increases your energy (perfect when you’re about to hit the mid afternoon slump)
Have a designated place when working from home
Do you ever wonder why when you work from home, you are SO much more tired than when you go into an office?
That’s because home is your sanctuary, it’s the place where you wind down and feel cosy.
So when you work there, your brains not fully in it.
That’s why having a designated place at home, where it’s only for working, will signal your brain to know that this is where you work.
We’ve all done it before, whether it was when you were in school doing homework, or working from home at your full time job… we’ve moved over to the bed or the sofa.
And what happens after that… we either fall asleep, get lazy, or just become 10x more UNPRODUCTIVE than before.
So try and keep your wind down spaces solely for winding down, and your work spaces solely for working and being productive.
Call a friend or family member on your break
Working from home can get isolated, especially when you are by yourself.
You may go hours without actually speaking!
That’s why getting some interaction throughout the day, can be super beneficial to our mental health.
whether it’s after work, or on your lunch break, calling someone is a good way to get some social interaction throughout the day!
Their are MANY blessings with working from home, however many people don’t talk about how hard it can be when you don’t have any social interaction whatsoever.
Try it out, and I promise it will make you feel better, as well as making the person on the other end of the call feel better!
Meal prep lunch
Meal prepping your lunch will not only save you time, it will make you avoid mindlessly snacking!
If you know you have a lunch meal prepped, then you won’t want to snack and ruin feeling hungry for your lunch.
If you don’t have lunch prepped, you may be thinking ‘I can’t be bothered to cook lunch, I’love just snack throughout the day’.
That may be your preference, which is 100% fine! But I know that when I have proper meals throughout the day, I feel less sluggish and more energetic!
I also think snacking when working can make you focus more on the snack than the actual work lol.
Tidy up straight after work
Straight away when you clock out of work for the day, tidy your home.
If you put it off, you will be sitting having dinner or chilling out, in a pile of work mess.
Whether that’s tidying your office, or the desk in the corner of your living room, wherever you work, tidy it straight away.
Tips to help make it easier:
- Put a 20 minute timer on and tidy everything you can in that time
- Listen to a podcast or music and tidy at the same time
- Put your favourite show on in the background and tidy at the same time
- Know that when you start work again tomorrow, you are coming into a fresh, clean space, ready to start anew
Go out for dinner or invite people round to have dinner at your house
Again with the minimal social interactions that come with working from home, you want to make sure that you are making time to actually talk to people in your day.
If you have a partner coming home to you, perfect, if not, invite your friends or your family round for dinner!
This can motivate you to make a home cooked meal, or you may choose to go out!
Your mental health is just as important as your physical health, and so going out for dinner, and actually seeing people throughout your week, will make you feel a lot less alone and isolated.
(Maybe you talk to people all day working from home and you want a break from people – I totally get that too lol)
You don’t have to save going out with family and friends until the weekend. You can make a wholesome dinner, go on a walk, go to the cinema, etc.
Drink water
Working from home, it can be so easy to make yourself numerous amounts of coffees and teas, or walk to the fridge and get fizzy pop / soda, so make sure you’re also drinking plenty of water!
There are SO many benefits of drinking water throughout the day, to name a few:
- Less headaches. Going from drinking no water, to drinking minimum 2 litres of water a day, I realised why I was getting so many headaches, and that was because I ‘wasn’t drinking water!
- More focused. If you’re drinking water, you won’t be constantly parched, and you will have less of a headache, therefore less distractions when trying to get work done!
- Flushes out toxins and reduces constipation. There’s nothing worse than feeling uncomfortable all day, water will keep you feeling fresh!
Thank you for reading <3
I hope this post was useful in helping you keep healthy whilst working from home!
Let me know in the comments if these helped, and what job you do working from home!
P.s some of the links I use are amazon affiliate links, meaning if you purchase through my links, I could earn a small commission at no extra charge to you!
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