People who work from home can often start feeling lethargic. However there are ways you can battle that feeling when you work from home – this blog post will provide some tips for battling lethargy when working from home.
- Lift weights – It’s important to get up and move every so often, but it’also important to strength train. Building muscle by lifting weights or doing some other type of resistance workout helps increase your strength, which in turn gives you more energy. It also makes it easier for you to do things you may have had a hard time doing in the past because you weren’t strong enough, such as lifting boxes or moving furniture.
- Eat quality food – This one can be difficult, especially when you have a lot of work to do. But eating quality food is important, because it will give you more energy than food that has a lot of sugar or caffeine – those types of foods might give you a small energy boost, but eventually it wears off and you feel tired again. Some of the things you want to take out of your diet are processed, refined and sugary foods (some people also say grains, but I don’t really agree with this one – grains can be good as long as they’re whole grains). You want to shoot for eating whole foods most of the time, as well as healthy fats like cod liver oil, nut butters and avocados. Also, take a look at how often you’re eating, rather than how many calories you’re consuming – you may need to eat smaller meals more often.
- Get enough sleep – Sleep is important for the body because it helps the body rest so it’s ready to tackle the next day’s challenges. If you find you can’t get enough sleep at night, try taking a nap during the day if you can (this may be difficult if you work from home as an employee though).
- Drink plenty of water – Drinking water is one of the hardest things for people to do because it’s plain and boring. However, drinking water is also one of the best ways to increase your energy because it helps just about every body system and keeps it running smoothly. If you have a hard time drinking plain water, try flavored waters or sparkling water every so often – just make sure you don’t drink too many of your calories. If you need a way to motivate yourself to drink water, I suggest getting a MyHydrate Water Bottle – I recently got one of these, and it’s a great tool to use to keep track of how much water you drink every day. I’ll be writing a more thorough review of it on my blog The Erica Upgrade Project soon, but just to give you a brief overview of how it works, it has a small disc that goes in the top of it, that can sense when you’ve drank 8 ounces of water. A light lights up for each 8 ounces of water you drink, and when you reach at least 64 ounces (8 8 ounce glasses) it makes a little fanfare noise.
- Get plenty of aerobic exercise – Aerobic exercise is just as important for helping battle lethargy as weight training is. And it’s especially important for people who work from home, because we spend WAY too much time sitting. Even if you just take a walk a lunch time, try to get at least some exercise every day. If you need a way to motivate yourself to move, get yourself a fitness band like the Garmin Vivosmart. These bands remind you to move if you haven’t been active for a certain amount of time. They also count your steps and set step goals for you based on how you did the previous day. If you use certain fitness websites, like MyFitnessPal or SparkPeople, they also will connect wirelessly with those websites and sync your step information with them.
I hope this list of ideas for how to battle lethargy have been helpful – of course these also apply to people who work outside the home, but I thought I’d provide them on this blog because they’re very helpful, and things that we often forget to do, especially if we work from home, because it’s much easier to work more when you work from home. If you have any tips that have worked well for you for battling lethargy when working from home, I’d love to hear them – feel free to comment below.
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