Body Gears: May Issue

Body Gears: May Issue

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NEWSLETTER The Newsletter About Your Health And Caring For Your Body

Achieving Your Ideal Lifestyle It's Global Employee Health & Fitness Month! With the bulk of our days spent at work, creatively weaving in physical activity throughout the day is a major component to leading a healthy and productive lifestyle.

INSIDE: • Achieving Your Ideal Lifestyle

• How to Creatively Increase Your Daily Physical Activity Levels at Work • Staff Spotlight - Exercise of The Month - Patient Success Spotlight

www.bodygears.com

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NEWSLETTER The Newsletter About Your Health And Caring For Your Body

®

Achieving Your Ideal Lifestyle

First, what is your ideal lifestyle? Some people give this a lot of thought while others don't bother giving it a second thought. To keep this simple, just identify your top 3 priorities and top 3 goals in life. Hopefully health and wellness make it in your top 3 priorities! Even better would be to have a fitness-related goal such as participating or competing in an event, learning a new sport or skill, or weight lifting goals. Even if maintaining peak physical fitness isn't a 'Top 3' priority for you, we'll bet that good health is a necessity for achieving whatever your top three priorities and goals are.

Below is a simple 3 step process of simple questions to answer to get you started (the hardest part) on creating the lifestyle you’ve been picturing for yourself. Be sure to write down your answers to convert them from intangible thoughts to concrete plans. Step 1: What components of your daily life do you want to improve on and what would you like to incorporate? Step 2: What’s stopping you from making those changes right now? Make a list! Step 3: Create very simple action items for each thing on your list. A list of 50 easily-

completed action items is better than a list of 3 big daunting items that feel like too much work to get done right now (eg. Instead of "1. Exercise more" write "1. Schedule workout times on my weekly calendar"). The more basic and easy you can make the first action item, the easier it will be to get the rest done. Be sure to take a nice long walk after to mentally psych yourself up for the amazing new lifestyle choices you’re going to be making (and get your steps in)!

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How to Creatively Increase Your Daily Physical Activity Levels at Work

Probably THE biggest barrier to being more physically active is time. The biggest thing to remember is that “getting your steps in” isn’t just a fad. Not only can you burn around 500 calories (depending on your weight) by getting 10,000 steps in, but you’re also reducing the amount of sedentary time you log each day. Researchers are concluding that being sedentary for even an additional 3 hours per day significantly increases all-cause mortality 1 . Let’s get creative instead. 1. Scenic Parking: If you use public transport, then you’re already getting more steps in to get to your stop, so good job! If you’re driving, parking at the far end of the lot or even a couple blocks away will not only let you decompress from your road rage before you start your workday, but gets you those extra steps that add up to a more active lifestyle. 2.SneakyFootwork: A rocking footrest,abalance disc, or even a mini skateboard under your desk can serve as a continuous source of low level foot or lower leg movement that keeps the blood circulating, takes you out of the completely sedentary category, and can even serve as your fidget device to keep you mentally focused.

3. Lunching Actively: Unless you have a physically strenuous job and can’t wait to sit down at lunch, lunch isn’t the time to do more sitting! You can probably finish eating your lunch in about 10 minutes, leaving the rest of the time to go for a walk. If the weather is bad you can always walk the stairwells of your building or at the very least, spend your time surfing the web onyourphonestandingup. Ifyou’reworriedabout the social awkwardness of it all, get one of your closest colleagues to set the same priorities as you and join you or again, head to the stairwell. 4. Bathroom Squatting: We don’t mean loitering in thebathroom,wemean literallydoingsquats. If you feel self-conscious doing lunges through the breakroom then do some squats in the privacy of your bathroom cubicle. A quick set of ten before you drop your pants (or after if nature was really calling you) and no one has to know.* 5. Getting Up: Whether it’s setting alarms for micro breaks, getting a standing desk, or making frequent trips to the water cooler for gossip or water,findaway to introducemorevariety toyour day that breaks up the consecutive hours you wouldotherwisespendsitting in frontofascreen.

® 1.Ekelund,U.,Steene-Johannessen,J.,Brown,W.,Fagerland,M.,Owen, N., Powell, K., Bauman, A. and Lee, I. (2016). Does physical activity attenuate,oreveneliminate, thedetrimentalassociationofsitting time withmortality?Aharmonisedmeta-analysisof>Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6

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