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Too Busy to Take Care of Your Health? Three Easy Wins For People Who Work Too Hard


Implementing and adhering to a healthy lifestyle is crucial to reducing your risk of chronic diseases, promoting longevity and enjoying life to the full. But even with the best intentions, it can be overwhelming to try and fit healthy habits into your busy life.

These days, a rewarding career often means that you have too few hours in the day. It’s not easy to prioritize your own health. Work demands often come first because you know you have someone else depending on you to perform at your peak, but when it comes to your own health and wellness, you have only yourself to answer to.

If you’re managing to smash your career but your health standards have started to slip, these tips will help you restore your balance and take care of yourself before you burn out.

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Stay Hydrated

The key to cramming healthy habits into your already crammed schedule is scoring easy wins whenever possible. Drinking sufficient water is the ultimate way to improve your health profile overall without spending any more resources, time or energy. The science is conclusive on this one: drinking plenty of water has countless benefits, from aiding weight loss to helping your body function at the optimal level. Your body is made up primarily of water, so it’s critical that you remember to top up on your hydration throughout the day.

But how much water should you be drinking? It’s easy to get hung up on the exact right amount of water per day. Trying to nail down the ‘optimum’ water intake is not especially helpful because every body is different, and it depends on the amount of physical activity you do, what medications you take, and a variety of other factors. Ultimately, if you are listening to your body, you will end up drinking enough water. (The first sign of dehydration is thirst, after all.) 

That’s all well and good, but many of us are so frantic and distracted that we hardly notice the signals our bodies send us. Or we misread those signals and misinterpret thirst as hunger. For this reason, it helps to establish a schedule of hydration that is independent of thirst, and keep this up until your habit has become so ingrained that you naturally notice the signs of thirst, and can respond accordingly. Begin with a big glass of water as soon as you wake up. Then fill up a large bottle of water and set yourself the goal of emptying it several times during your workday. Many people find that having a glass of water at set times of the day is especially helpful. Keep a glass in the bathroom and drink some after brushing your teeth, or down a couple of glasses while you write emails. These small but regular habits will have a significant impact on your overall health.

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Get Your Healthcare Online

When you’re already struggling to meet your responsibilities adequately, it can be challenging to prioritize those health errands that require that extra bit of time out of your day. Whether you have to visit the physio or pop in at the pharmacy for your prescription, these essential stops can very easily fall down your to-do-list for the week and even be neglected altogether. Take advantage of any online shopping options that suit you for health products like supplements, and make use of mail-order pharmacy if it’s available in your location.

Many medical professionals, like physiotherapists, offer consolation through online channels like Skype. Online GP assessments are also available. Once you discover the online options for health visits and product orders, you start to realize time off work is not a prerequisite to getting the care you need, and you don’t need to spend your evenings shopping for health essentials. 

Sometimes you have to take care of yourself. This is hard for people who are always busy. You can do it however with these simple tips.

Redefine “Working Out” as Moving Your Body

The nine-to-five desk job is not kind to your body. If you spend eight hours every day hunched over your laptop, you could begin to suffer from poor posture, lower back pain, and a range of other chronic muscular-skeletal conditions further down the line. A sedentary lifestyle can also cause life-long health issues like heart disease and obesity.

This isn’t exactly news to many of us. We all know that an active lifestyle would be beneficial to our health, but let’s be real: it’s hard to fit a regular workout session into your busy day. Especially if you work night shifts, long hours, or have a family to care for, you may not find it so easy to set aside a regular time slot for your ideal workout routine. One of the disadvantages of a rotating shift at work is that you are stuck with the inconvenient hours you are assigned long term, so it’s helpful if you can find an employer who favors a more sophisticated shift schedule. Of course, sometimes you have to work the shifts you’re given, so you shouldn’t be hard on yourself or beat yourself up if you can’t work out as often as you have to. (The last thing you need is extra pressure and guilt, right?) 

One way around this problem is to rebrand your’ work out’ as ‘moving your body’. Just because you can’t get to the gym doesn’t mean that you don’t have enough time to move your body on a daily basis. Research shows that 20 minutes of exercise per day is all you need to achieve optimal health. If you can move your body for 20 minutes every day, you will reap many of the benefits of exercise, with or without the gym. If you currently lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle because of demands on your schedule, that doesn’t mean that you have to.

As soon as you start to look for creative ways to improve your fitness levels, you’ll be stunned by how many new opportunities seem to crop up in your normal day. Try ten minutes of yoga or stretching in your pjs before your morning shower or before you go to bed at night. Why not take the stairs at work rather than using the lift? You could also try getting off the bus a stop or two before your usual stop and walk the rest of the way. 

Whether you work in a high-powered role, or you’re investing a lot of your time and energy into caring for your children (or both) these tips will help you prevent your hectic life from taking its toll on your health.





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