Top 10 ways to feel good – w/o diets or punishing exercise

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Still working, fellow boomers? Whether you’re retired, working in your home office or employed at somebody else’s place of business, you might find something useful in this list of top ten ways to feel good every day. And not one of them is “run on a treadmill ’til your butt falls off” or “live on 1200 calories a day.” Not that there’s anything wrong with those things…

My first source for this Top 10 list is a practical and encouraging book called The Healthy Programmer. Since I worked with programmers for nearly a decade, I know how glued to computers such brain workers can get. They are passionate about writing the hundreds and thousands of lines of code needed to make your computer software do what you need it to do. They are masterful puzzle solvers. This book is written specifically for them – among the most sedentary of all office workers – and offers detailed practical advice for keeping healthy and fit despite the job requirements.

Second source is an article called “8 Ways to Work Happier” from the January 2014 edition of AARP magazine. I love the tips they give because I actually used several of them in my post-divorce years as a cubicle-or-not office worker. And they still work great today in my home office.

Herewith, my list of Top Ten Ways to Feel Good:

  1. Change positions about every 20 minutes. If you can’t actually work in a different position, do some in-place calisthenics. Swing your legs. Clench and unclench butt, thigh and calf muscles. Stretch arms.
  2. Get up and move at least 5 minutes out of every hour. Preferably out of every half hour. If necessary, set yourself a quiet timer for every 25 minutes. Do sit-ups or knee-lifts or whatever in the break room. If don’t have one of those, go outside or go in the bathroom and do knee lifts, (or if you’re ambitious, run in place). If people are allowed to go outside to smoke, there’s no reason you can’t go outside to move.
  3. Keep your desk clean – or at least leave it clean at the end of the day. Back when I was re-entering the workforce after my divorce, I coughed up some for-me serious dough to attend a training program that taught me how to keep track of my day and organize my desk and papers. I recently started re-using what I learned then, and I can’t tell you what a load it is off my mind not to have to constantly live with piles of paper everywhere.
  4. Use full-spectrum light bulbs – if you don’t sit near a window in your office. “Workers in offices with windows get an average of 46 more minutes of sleep each night than their windowless colleagues do. They also report higher quality of life and get more exercise during the day.”
    I used to hate those awful overhead fluorescent lights in offices. The only way I could combat it was to bring in my own lamp – living-room-size with incandescent bulb. It created a small pool of warm light – and improved my mood and productivity considerably.
    Nowadays, with the outlawing of incandescent bulbs on the rise, your best solution is to find energy efficient bulbs that contain the full spectrum of light waves – as much like natural light as possible (at least so far as we humans have been able to discern).
  5. Keep some plants around. Not only do they improve air quality – and look nice – but they also “decrease stress and enhance productivity by 12 percent.” Yikes.
  6. Have a glass of wine at lunch. Okay, you may guffaw at this one (and so might your employer, so check the rules), but a study of young males with a BAC (blood alcohol count) of .075 percent (that’s just short of the .08 legal limit) were consistently better at creative problem solving than their sober counterparts.
  7. Get out of the office for lunch. Eating at your desk is bad for your mood. Eating with coworkers can promote office harmony and creativity. But if you prefer peace, like me, go somewhere else (sit in your car if it’s close by) and read or just rest. Better yet, meditate. I can get a serious second wind from doing that.
  8. Listen to music you enjoy. You’ll be likely to work quicker and come up with better ideas than folks who don’t listen. It’s also known to reduce stress.
  9. Drink a glass of water every hour and eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. I don’t need to run this one into the ground when so many have done it so ably.
  10. Do something physical for 5-10 minutes about 30 minutes after dinner. Walk, do kneelifts, leg raises, whatever. Research shows being active after meals is a powerful tool for good health. Plus, it’s a way to fight the insidious onset of diabetes. A few months after I started doing this (as often as I could fit it in), my blood sugar level went down by 25 points!

P.S. Here’s a bonus for those of you have dogs.

  1. Bring your dog to work. How many companies are going to let you do this? But there’s hard evidence that pet dogs at work reduce stress, improve morale, boost collaboration and raise efficiency. And just think, your dog is a perfect excuse to take a break, go outside and walk (see tip #2) for a few minutes.

One day, more and more businesses are going to catch on to all this. They’ll realize that letting people get physical during the workday can be one of the greatest productivity tools known to humankind.

Oh, and P.S. When I do my kneelifts indoors at night, I don’t want to put on my heavy gym shoes. I found these unique non-slip socks to wear that protect my feet and give me a bit of cushioning. They’re called Shashi socks, and they’re super for doing yoga. You can brace yourself in your down-dog and not slide and yet not have to show off your how-long-since-the-last-pedicure? bare feet. I kinda like the mesh they have on the top – a little sexier looking than regular ankle-highs. exercise, exercise, exercise. exercise for improving health

 

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutube
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail