It’s always a good idea to passively improve health for a little extra self-care. Your diet plays a key role, but your physical and mental health also depends on some minor home and work changes.
Eat a Varied and Healthy Diet
Physical well-being depends on a healthy diet. This is because fresh foods help prevent degenerative noncommunicable diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. A healthy diet must include a variety of foods and be low in salt, sugar, saturated fats, and trans fats made in factories. But nutrition is a complex subject. There are many ways to learn about it, such as gaining nutrition certification for a course or online medical sites like WebMD.
Change the Way You Work
Most of us have to go to work for a living. Yet your workplace could affect your physical and mental health. Especially if you sit at a desk or hardly move all day. Office workers, for example, often suffer from RSI, increased weight gain and stress from things like deadlines. Don’t let work change your life for the worse. Manage your schedule correctly, and take breaks when necessary, as the law allows. Also, consider asking for a standing desk rather than sitting in a chair.
Passively Improve Health with Movement
You don’t need to exercise to stay healthy. Not that exercise isn’t important. But you can easily include more movement into your life, so you don’t weaken your heart or muscles. Try these:
- Take breaks at work and walk around the office for easy extra health.
- Play VR, sports or dancing video games that force you to be active.
- Walk or run for short journeys or get off the bus a couple of stops early.
Taking breaks at work is essential if you work at a desk or a computer since you can get RSI or circulation issues. But movements like playing games pass the time quickly in a more fun way.
Take Time Away from Work
Like many people all over the world, you probably work too hard. Working over 55 hours per week, as many people do, severely impacts your physical and mental health. Yet there is more to life than work; you need time away from it. So, if possible, stay at or below the standard 40-hour work week. And completely disconnect from work when you’re at home. Further, always use up your legally entitled vacation days for holidays and long weekends.
Find Ways to Relieve Stress
Work and home life can cause stress. Sometimes you want to escape from work, and others, you want to stay away from home. This is normal because we all need time to ourselves. The key is finding something you enjoy that relieves stress. Maybe you like to exercise. Or perhaps you love to spend an hour in the pub after work. Or maybe you have a hobby like playing video games. Just do what gets you through when you have spare time from commitments.
Summary
There are some ways you can passively improve health. Eating a healthy diet is a good start. But you can also move more at work or play and find something that relieves your stress.