Have A Healthy New Year – Working On Your Fitness

But as more and more of us are realizing, holistic well-being goes beyond physical health and includes aspects like financial health and mental health as well. In our three-part series on New Year’s Health, we are going to offer recommendations in all of these areas to help you start 2018 in the most well-rounded, healthy way.

Let’s kick it off with some ideas for practicing more conscious ways to be physically healthy in 2018.

Round Up the Troops

You’ve probably heard it before, but sticking to health goals is easier as a team. This new year, have some fun with your employees and make a challenge together. Some ideas include:

• Seeing who can get the most steps each week
• Challenging everyone to try one new workout or class a week for a month
• Trying the ultimate plank challenge in the office every day for 30 days

Tip: To further fuel motivation, you might consider setting a cash prize or putting everyone who participates into a raffle for a ClassPass or month of healthy meal subscriptions.

You also know, whether you like it or not, that in order to be truly healthy, you need to look at your diet as well. Perhaps once a week you might have a healthy in-office potluck and everybody brings in a new healthy dish and recipe to share. These little competitions will make any goal easier to reach since you’re all working together, and offer a great way to learn some new workouts or recipes along the way.

Flying Solo?

What if you’re sitting there thinking “but I work alone all day?” You can still take steps to be healthier in this new year. When you’re flying solo, it can be challenging to push yourself to reach your goals because there’s no cheering section on the sidelines to make sure you’re moving. One thing that helps is to schedule any workout you want to do as you would any other meeting. This makes you take a break and actually stick to moving.

What if you work from home all day? If you have stairs in your home, or a climate that makes taking breaks outside appealing, make an effort to walk up and down your several times throughout the day, or perhaps consider walking meetings or conference calls. Any extra movement in your day can lead to big impacts.

You might also think about your home office set-up. Sitting for extended periods of time every day is not the best choice for your health, and more and more workers are opting for alternative desks, like the standing desk, the kneeling desk, even the treadmill desk.

Become Friends with Mother Nature

Daylight saving time has ended and the nights come earlier and earlier. Not everybody is lucky enough to have nearly year-round access to sunlight, so how do you keep going when the nights turn dark fast and can be bitter cold? Instead of shying away from this, embrace it. If you live near mountains, perhaps take up skiing or snowboarding. Do you have access to good trails for snow-shoeing? Maybe that’s something new you can try. Even sledding with your family can be a major workout – think about those hills and pulling tired children up them, you can feel the burn for days!

If you are in a climate where you have access to warmer temps and sunlight year-round, embrace that, too. While these areas rarely get as cold as snowier ones, there are still some chillier days that are perfect for running or an afternoon stroll.

Bottom Line

However, you choose to incorporate new healthy habits into your life keep one thing in mind: have some fun with it. You don’t have to hop on every new trend just because it’s the hot new thing. The secret is finding what works for you and inspires you to fully adopt these changes. If kale makes you cringe but tofu makes you say yum, go that route. However, you choose to live healthy this year, make it a fun process you’ll want to stick to. 

Do you have healthy New Year’s resolutions or suggestions for making them stick? Tweet us @SurePayroll and share your tips.