Your biggest health battle is at work. The temptations of sitting in a chair and staring at a screen all day, the temptations of your co-workers Snickers bar, the temptation of fast food for lunch, and the temptation of stress induced anxiety from your boss. It’s a world of temptation. 

The office is killing you. Okay, the office isn’t killing you but the decisions you make about your health in your office is killing you. 

Being fat, tired and out of shape isn’t hereditary, so get any lazy excuse out of your head. 

It’s time to make a change, so let’s start with creating a healthy office environment. 

Simple strategies that reap large rewards

Creating a healthy bubble in your office is easy. You can have the corner office, a cubicle or storage closet, they all have the same effects. 

The first critical decision to your health is to stand more. Sitting down slouched in front of a computer all day is a huge  contributor to your physiological problems. Being overweight has similar effects, but poor posture is detrimental. 

There are so many cheap and easy ways to stand up more throughout the day. My version cost me around $150 and I use this stand-up desk.

Another strategy is to get up and walk around every 45 minutes. Managers, calm down! This has been proven to increase productivity. Being in a bad posture and sitting for prolonged periods of time zaps motivation and creativity. You can easily implement this when you take phone calls. Every time you take a call stand-up to talk. This not only supports good posture but it also increases confidence and you’ll have more oxygen flowing to your brain. Now that’s a no brainer (see what I did there?).

Personally, I’m a huge fan of incorporating exercise into my daily work flow. Set yourself a goal like every time you leave your office do 10 pushups or every time you reply to 10 emails do 50 squats. Check out my office workout here. 

Bring your nutritional arsenal to work

Nutrition is absolutely foundational. 

It’s non-negotiable and 80% of all your results come from your mouth. If your in sales it’s 95% but I digress.  

Nutrition is what encourages fast loss, energy and mental performance. I’m a huge advocate on focusing on mental performance to support physical results. With brain health you get physical health and this is achieved with nutrition.         

The problem is you make it so damn complicated. It doesn’t have to be this big ordeal of overly complicated and tasteless recipes. You just need to chill out and focus. 

If you claim you dislike vegetables, well I’m sorry, there’s no hope for you. You simply must eat tons of vegetables varying in taste and texture. Put your vegetable big boy pants on and start chowing down. You can make soups, broths, stir fry’s, juices, and the list goes on and on. 

You don’t have to just eat them raw.

Here are a couple other things you can do to help you avoid junk at your office: 

• Make extra during dinner so you can bring it to work for lunch
• Pre-pack a satiating snack
• Drink more water and flavor it with berries

Brighten your mood

Stress is not your friend. 

The chronic stress you feel at work and at home is simply killing you and everything around you. 

Believe it or not there’s research saying that viewing stress as positive is good for you. For most of us, how we look at stress impacts everything we do and it's not positive.  

Chronic stress makes you eat more, lose creativity and lose the natural zest for life. 

The majority of your stress comes from work so you most control it at work.

There are several things you can do at your desk if you feel your heart racing and stress overwhelming your thoughts. 

• Change your view on stress. Watch this TED talk.
• Take deep breaths. Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 8, exhale for 16. Repeat as many times as you need to to bring your blood pressure down. 
• Smile. Hold a smile for 2 minutes. It may sound silly but it has physiological benefits. 
• Ask yourself what your grateful for. You can come up with something and think hard about why you’re grateful for this. This puts life into perspective. 
• Take a walk outside to get some sun and fresh air. 

Being fat, tired and out of shape is your choice. You control your fitness, nutrition and stress levels. You control the good and the bad.

P.S. We all know of someone who can benefit from this. Send it to them so they can take the right steps as well. I appreciate the shared love.