5 Tips to Help You Stay Active While Working from Home
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If you’re a freelance proofreader, you might be becoming all too familiar with the less glamorous side of working from home, and you’ll know how hard it can feel to stay active. But home working needn’t be a sedentary lifestyle. In this post, we’ve got five great tips to help you stay active while working from home:
- Work standing up or using a standing desk to burn calories and maintain good posture while you work.
- Do regular stretches and exercises at your desk to help keep you mobile.
- Get outside during your breaks to fit exercise into your existing free time.
- Set reminders to get up from your desk throughout the day and stretch your legs.
- Schedule workouts into your weekly routine to help motivate yourself to stay active.
Following these tips will be sure to keep you active throughout the working week. Let’s take a look.
1. Work Standing Up
With medical professor Dr. James Levine claiming that sitting is the new smoking, working standing up seems an essential step to help you stay active and healthy while working from home. Medical research links sitting for long periods with:
- Increased blood pressure
- Back pain and poor posture
- High blood sugar
- Abnormal cholesterol levels
You burn almost twice as many calories standing than sitting. Breaking up your day with periods of standing, then, will help you stay active while you work, as well as helping you maintain good posture.
You can buy adjustable sit/stand desks online. Alternatively, you can stack a few books (or anything else you can find!) under your laptop and keyboard to give them a boost. This will help you break up a day of sitting and keep you a little more active while working from home.
2. Keep Moving at Your Desk
When the time comes to sit down, you don’t need to become completely inactive. Keeping mobile with a few stretches and exercises can improve your long-term health, especially when it comes to maintaining posture and mobility.
You can easily make some simple stretches part of your routine as you work, which will help you avoid becoming completely sedentary even when sitting.
If you’d like to take it one step further, sitting at a variety of positions throughout the day can prevent bad posture. Investing in a quality adjustable ergonomic chair for your home workspace is a great way to keep mobile at your desk (not to mention comfortable!).
3. Get Moving in Your Breaks
Now we’ve covered how to stay active while you work, what about when you’re not working? Breaking up your day with a short run, walk, bike ride, or any other exercise in any breaks you take is a convenient way to fit physical activity, which comes with many benefits, into your routine.
Working from home means you don’t have to commute. But if you want to stay active, you could factor a “commute” of sorts (i.e., a walk, jog, or cycle) into the start and/or end of your working day.
And if you need that extra bit of motivation, some headphones and your favorite playlist or podcast can help get you out of the door.
Finally, remember that it’s fine to go at your own pace. A short walk is a lot better than nothing at all, and you can build up your activity level over time.
4. Get Up and Move Regularly
As well as exercising during your lunch hour, you can also keep moving during micro-breaks throughout the day.
For example, when you get up for a drink or to go to the bathroom, do a lap of the house or go up and down the stairs twice. It may sound a little odd, but it’s a small change that can help keep you mobile while working from home.
And if you need a reminder or a little encouragement, you can always set a timer. Getting up every hour, for example, is a small yet effective change that you can add to your routine to help you stay active.
5. Schedule Workouts into Your Routine
It can be easy to slip into a rut when it comes to exercising while working from home. As a freelancer, you make or break your routine; you don’t have to get up and go first thing in the morning (or even get dressed!); and you don’t get an opportunity for exercise on your commute.
But working from home doesn’t mean you can’t follow an exercise regime. Scheduling workouts into your week can help keep you motivated.
For instance, on some days you could get up at the same time as any commuters in your home and do a quick workout, or fit some exercise in after work. Planning your days can help you find time (no matter how little) to get your heart pumping.
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With freelancing as with fitness, you’re in charge of your schedule. Sign up to our Becoming A Proofreader and Becoming An Editor courses today for a shot at guaranteed work. Alternatively, you can check out our free trial to get a taster of what you’ll find in the full courses.
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