Adjusting to life as a busy professional: managing your health

I’m not going to show you how to eat right. I’m going to show you how to think right.

We all have 24 hours, and how well we manage to accomplish important tasks in a day is the skillful art of leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  As a busy professional, you might typically find that you’re juggle many priorities within limited hours. You have a personal life beyond your work hours, and this may also include social and family responsibilities.

Are late work nights and frequent traveling causing health problems and making you feel fatigued quite often? Have you gained weight due to a sedentary lifestyle? Then it’s time that you focus on self-care.

Six tips that will help manage your health with your corporate routine:

Maintain a daily routine and stick to it

Start (and follow) a disciplined routine that includes exercise, preparing quick and easy meals in advance that you can reheat (or cook in less than 30 minutes), switching off your smartphone nightly, and keeping a track of your daily health habits (e.g. a Food & Exercise Diary). Many successful executives globally, have endorsed a daily routine for a happy, healthy, and productive life.

Mindful Eating

Become more aware of what you are eating by consciously paying attention to what you eat, and how your body feels when you’re eating. Try chewing your food slowly. According to a study conducted on 14 obese and 16 lean Chinese men, it has been found that chewing habits dictated the amount of food intake. Individuals who chewed their food for longer in this case 40 chews), had less desire to eat more, and ingested 11.9% less food than their counterparts who only chewed their food 15 times per bite. You can read more on the link between psychology of weight loss here.

Also, eating a well-balanced diet full of green leafy vegetables, fruits and wholegrains, provides the right nutrients to keep you energized and strong, and this includes maintaining a healthy weight, and strengthening your immune system.

By dividing half of your plate with non-starchy vegetables, you’re avoiding processed foods, fried items and sugar that otherwise ensure weight gain, obesity, diabetes and other heart-related diseases.

Exercise and Meditate

Take 20-30 minutes out daily from your busy schedule, to exercise; either low impact such as walking, or high intensity such as group fitness classes! Get up from your desk chair every 45 minutes and take a stroll either round the office or go outside. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk wherever you can. This will aid in maintaining your fitness and optimum weight, and may help to increase your energy levels.

Take 5 minutes a day to meditate. Meditation is another wonderful way to destress and clear your mind from the daily corporate chaos. You can choose your office lounge, conference room or your own desk and perform short meditation sessions at regular intervals to experience feeling refreshed, and inner peace.

Healthy snacks

Healthy snacking in moderate quantities that include sugar-free yogurt, unsalted raw nuts, boiled eggs, fruits, oats, and edamame, are a great way to keep your energy levels without increasing your body fat. It also means you won’t overeat when it comes to your main meals, particularly dinner.

Avoid Prolonged Stress

Research shows that life outside of work and inside work are moderately correlated—as an employee’s life at work improves, so does their life outside of work and vice versa. Interestingly, the most impact on your stress and wellbeing is how much (or how little) recognition you received at work.

Stress contributes to increased anxiety, which affects how and what we eat, interferes with our digestive system, and disrupts our sleep. We find it hard to re-energize when we feel stressed, and this then leads to the development of physical ailments such as sleep deprivation, chest pain, high blood pressure, headaches and disease. Pick your battles, and let some things go - we are not able to deal with our immediate issues effectively if we ourselves are also falling apart.

Whether you are an established professional or new to the corporate world, these tips can help create a better path to improved physical and mental health. Start planning your weekly health goals, and take charge of your busy life while you still can!

For more information on how to initiate work/life balance visit:  http://www.octanner.com/au/institute/research.html

With over 15 years local and regional experience in business development, and corporate health and wellness, Karen now helps employers create the best places to work. How? By building engaged workplace cultures globally through  everyday recognition best practice!