Whether you work in the office location or from home, life can get hectic and self-care can often get neglected. It’s crucial to maintain good health and wellness, making it important to prioritize staying healthy at work where you spend a significant amount of time. You can’t simply let healthy habits go out the window especially at a time like this when we are living in a pandemic. Your happiness, and productivity at work may depend on you being proactive about your health. How can you stay healthy at work in the office or working from home?
Your Health and Working During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Working from home or the office during the COVID-19 pandemic can take a toll on your health and increase stress levels if you’re not careful. The pandemic has forced businesses to change how they operate, disrupting the way coworkers normally interact and socialize, how everyday tasks are conducted and have added increased stress on workers as they try to live in a world and work environment that is forever changed. The need to constantly remember to keep your distance, sanitize, and avoid gathering in groups can take its toll. Working from home can also leave you with a feeling of isolation, creating a feeling of loneliness can cause added stress and anxiety. Your health can suffer if you are not mindful of the changes that are happening to you both physically and mentally.
Tips for Staying Healthy at Work
The onus is on you to do what is necessary to stay healthy while working no matter where work is located. Consider these health and wellness skills for workplaces:
Drinking Plenty of Fluids
It’s easy to lose track of your fluid intake because you may be too busy to notice that you’ve only had a tiny sip after 3 hours. Maybe you wait until you are extremely thirsty to hydrate or prefer to drink carbonated beverages that are often high in acidity and sugar instead. If this is the case, then you may not get the proper and adequate amount of fluids that your body needs daily. According to Harvard Health Publishing healthy people should generally follow the four-to-six cup rule for water consumption. Consuming plenty of water is the perfect way to stay hydrated and minimize calorie intake, as well as to support bodily function, from cushioning joints to aiding digestion.
Limit Snacks
Who doesn't love a good snack? However, there’re healthy snacks and then you have the sugar-filled, salt-filled, and saturated fat-filled snacks that you should avoid at all cost. Bad snacks are often packed with calories and unhealthy ingredients that your body doesn’t need. You don’t want work to be the origin of your unhealthy eating habit and weight gain. Take your choice of a healthy snack to work and avoid candy on your desk and partaking in snack sharing offered by your coworkers. If you work from home, go for the fruit bowl and not the snack section in the pantry. Fresh fruits and vegetables make for delicious, nutritious, and healthy snacks any day of the workweek.
Taking Breaks with Limited to No Screen Time
It’s beneficial to take a break whether working from home or in the office. You should never be too busy to take a break, even if you are trying to meet a deadline or complete a challenging task. Pressure, fatigue, and stress at work are good reasons to press the pause button.
Taking breaks may be the thing you need to perform your best and increase your creativity and productivity. However, you should ensure that during your breaks you limit or avoid screen time altogether. Don’t step away from your desk only to go in the breakroom where you are scrolling through your Instagram feed. If working from home, your break shouldn’t be to move from the computer screen to the TV screen. Instead, go for a walk or meditate on your break.
Reduce Burnout With Stress Management Skills
Burnout is real and can have serious consequences on your health and productivity at work. Prolonged job stress can leave you feeling physically and mentally exhausted. The source of burnout may be a work-life imbalance, absence of social support, unclear job expectations, or some other factor. Whatever it may be, stress, fatigue, chronic illness, and irritability are consequences of burnout.
The good thing is that burnout doesn't have to be your constant reality because you can cope by adopting stress management skills. Identifying the causes of your stress and documenting it in a stress diary can lend to reflection and remedy. Stress relieving and relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, and yoga are calming and help to keep stress at a minimum and avoid burnout.
If you’re going back to work, or recently traveled, then get a COVID-19 test as well to rule out a potential covid infection. Your health and wellness should be a priority and your local urgent care can help you maintain optimal health. Visit your urgent care today!
