Today, more and more people than ever before are working exclusively indoors, whether in a conventional office setting, or — increasingly — from home.
In addition to a huge proportion of all work now taking place indoors, there’s also the fact that more and more of the average person’s leisure time is spent indoors too, whether surfing the web, watching TV, or playing video games.
The result of all of this is that sedentary living is very common — and according to leading health experts, it’s very detrimental in a range of different ways.
Here are a few tips for getting more physically active as an office worker, on a daily basis.
Look Into the Possibility of Using a Standing Desk
Standing desks have been around in one form or another for quite some time. In fact, there are photographs from the late 1800’s of people using them.
Recently, though, standing desks have enjoyed a boost in popularity, following some research which got a lot of press — and which suggested that sitting down for too long each day carried major potential health consequences over time.
Standing desks — especially the easily adjustable type — allow you to work standing up for at least part of the day, and to more easily pace around, move your weight from one foot to the other, and just generally to be more physically active.
Use a Step Tracker App and Look for Opportunities to Regularly Get Up and Pace Around
Step tracker apps and fitness wearables are very popular at the moment, and you can even find a good workplace step challenge app that allows you to get your whole team involved.
Whether you use a particular standalone app that turns your smartphone into a pedometer, or whether you use a Fitbit or Apple Watch, having a daily step tracker to nudge you into movement at regular intervals — and to give you daily step targets to work towards — can help to significantly change your everyday physical activity levels.
Even just getting up for a few minutes every hour or so to pace around your office can have a significant impact on how you feel throughout the day.
Fit in Some More Physically Active Pastimes When You’re at Home, Instead of Just Watching TV
While there’s nothing wrong with spending some time in the evening watching an engaging TV series, for example, there might be something wrong with it if it means that you spend all of your personal time — as well as all of your work time — sitting down.
Fitting in some more physically active pastimes when you’re off the clock can help to create a much better overall degree of balance, and there are so many different options to choose from.
You could sign up for a local martial arts class, or a dance class, or you could even just start doing yoga at home.
Whatever the case, you should pick up some pastimes that involve moving your body.
