Early mornings, late nights, long working hours and high levels of stress. All of these take its toll
on the body and also cause your priorities to change, especially when it comes to your health and well-being.
If that sounds like this might be you, then listen up. We have some simple and easy tips to combat this city lifestyle, improving your health and well-being without making massive changes.
High Stress
Living in the city often comes with a very stressful job . Over the long-term this can lead to some chronic stress that is constant low-level stress that just nags away at your mental health. Chuck in a few other work stressors like new projects or delayed trains, then this can all add up to leave you feeling awful, run down and result in things like nutrition and training habits falling by the wayside.
Eliminating this stress is almost an impossible task without quitting your job, which I am pretty sure you won’t want to be doing. So we need ways to be able to at least try and reduce our stress.
We can start to do this with getting some proper sleep (6-8 hours), getting some regular exercise like just walking or biking to work or from the train station. These little things will start to help tackle that stress just a little bit and help ease your feelings of being so run down.
Sleep
As I am sure you know, those with a busy city lifestyle and job have to work very long hours and so often means getting home late at night. That is without taking in to account meetings that may run over or trains that are delayed.
So me telling you to just get more sleep may be a waste of time. Instead I want you to focus on quality of sleep.
So here are some tips to help you get the best night sleep you can:
- No work stuff in the last hour before bed. This will help you unwind and relax before you go to sleep.
- Avoid answering e-mails on your phone before bed. The light from the phone will mess with your brain and make it think that it is actually light and not dark, meaning your body will try and stay awake.
- Make your bedroom DARK.
- Limit caffeine in the afternoon and evening, as having caffeine at this time may actually mess with your sleep because it will still be in your system when you go to bed.
Immune Health
High stress levels can wreak havoc with your immune system, and therefore no wonder that so many workers with high stress jobs get so ill. But here are a few tips that you can use to try and keep your immune system healthy.
- Eat your greens – getting your 5 portions of fruit and vegetables each day will make sure you are getting all of the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants you need to keep your gut and immune system functioning well. If you struggle to get your 5 portions in, then take a greens powder as this will help you get all you need in one fell scoop.
- Stay hydrated – the body is made up of mostly water, and so if we are dehydrated, then we are not going to be functioning at our best. Aim for 2 litres per day.
Exercise
Getting some regular exercise can be a massive help when it comes to keeping the body and mind healthy. Exercise is an awesome stress reliever and will help you feel like you can tackle the day ahead, due to the massive rush of endorphins you get once you have finished a good workout.
There is no set rule for how much or how long you need to workout for, but if you can aim for 3 sessions per week, then that is a good place to start.
But the most important thing is that you need to make sure the exercise is something you enjoy. If it is not something you enjoy, then it is very rare that you are going to stick to it and get the real stress relieving benefits from it. If you find yourself dragging your tired body to the gym each week, then you are just going to be miserable and end up worse off than you did when you first walked in.
So I hope you can use these tips to combat your city lifestyle and keep a hold of good health in body and mind.