How to Work from Home with Wellness
Often I am asked, “what exactly is a holistic nutritionist and why did you choose to start studying this route?” Holistic nutritionists consider the body as a whole and other factors including lifestyle that could be the root cause of an individual’s distress while using nutrition as a vehicle to address any further or future discomfort in the body. They consider the link between diet and disease and use this as a preventative rather than reactive measure.
This is why my main focus is on how we nourish our bodies both physically, emotionally and mentally to ensure we are constantly feeding our wellness while keeping the whole body in mind.
That being said, how do we define wellness? It can be summed up as continuous awareness and actions towards happiness and overall wellbeing. Now, this active awareness especially applies when we are required to adapt through life changes such as the need to work from home.
So let’s define the 3 pillars of Successfully Working from Home with Wellness.
1) Routines
2) Exercise & Movement
3) Nutrition & Batch Cooking
Let’s jump right in starting with our routine:
1) Routines
At first it can be easy to think, “wow I have the freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want!”. But this is an easy mistake to make early on leading to unproductive days and a drain on your wellbeing.
The key to ensuring continuous productivity is in maintaining your regular routine.
So for example, if you generally work from 9am-5pm and wake up at 7:30am then continue to do so and set those boundaries early on otherwise it’s easy to find yourself delaying work or working late into the night with the mindset that you can always complete it later since you are home.
A step beyond this (to really maximize your days) would be to implement a morning routine that allows you to start the day with alertness and a clear mindset. Our current environment can be a great time to start implementing a morning routine which can take many forms.
For me, it means getting out of bed no later than 10 minutes after my alarm, some light stretching, 5 minutes of listing out my top priorities for the day as well as a minimum of 5 things I am grateful for each day. This might sound like a lot but only takes me about 20 minutes. That’s 20 minutes extra but a whole day of productivity ahead!
For you, your morning routine could be as simple as making your favourite coffee or tea and taking 5 minutes to read the news headlines. Anything that you enjoy, puts your mind at ease and allows you to reflect before jumping full force into the day. This way you’ve prepared your mind and body for the day ahead and you can approach it with a sense of organization and purpose.
Two great tools that I use are The Morning Sidekick Journal and the Alarmy app. They are simple, easy to use and very realistic in their approach. Trust me on this as those who know me, know that I was never a morning person and a notorious snoozer! (Note: I am recommending these based on my honest opinion and use).
2) Exercise & Movement
Similar to the above, I often find that exercise is one of the first activities to be dropped when facing change or disruptions to life. In the case of working from home, it’s easy to reason with yourself that you’ll exercise later since you have all day and will be home, or that you’ll do it tomorrow. Then before you know it, the day is over and that cycle of reasoning begins again.
This is why it is so important to carve out set, non-negotiable time in your day to exercise.
What we want to do here is keep ourselves accountable so if you generally workout in the mornings, continue to do so and add this into your calendar every morning at a set time along with a calendar reminder (this should be a recurring calendar event).
If you’re not one to workout in the morning, take a look at your schedule and find a block of time that you can fit this in. Moving forward, treat this calendar event as an important meeting that cannot be moved. Use your discretion here, if your company calls an urgent team meeting then by all means adjust, but do your best to not skip the day of exercise and consider if you can shift the exercise event to a later time in the day.
This will help to keep you on track and build a habit where you start to feel that the day is incomplete if you skip your regular workout. It becomes a part of your day rather than an add-on or nice to have.
Remember, exercise does not have to take an entire hour or more. The goal here is to simply add movement to your day especially when we’re sitting sedentary for the majority of the day. That being said, when we do exercise we want to ensure we’re maximizing that time and doing what we enjoy.
Try an at-home HIIT workout, a 20 minute run or a walk around the block. Find something that works for you – if you don’t enjoy it, it’s safe to say that you won’t build a habit around it. When I’m not able to teach or train for spin class, this home workout by my friend and certified personal trainer, Nick Wourms, keeps me on my toes and in shape (try it HERE). It’s short, requires just my body weight, can be done in my condo living room and really gets the heart pumping!
3. Nutrition & Batch Cooking
I’ve saved the best for last – without proper nourishment, it can be tough to ensure that we’re sticking to any of the points above.
How we choose to fuel our bodies is key but beyond that, we need a method that allows us to fuel up properly with the same level of convenience we’ve grown accustomed to when at work or on the go. The trick here is batching cooking!
What is batch cooking? It’s simply cooking larger amounts of each meal than you need for that one sitting and reserving the remaining amount for meal time at a later date. This doesn’t have to be complicated – just cook as you normally would and if your recipe is for 1 try doubling or tripling the recipe. Remember that you’ll also need to scale accordingly depending on the number of people you’re cooking for in your household.
The great thing about batch cooking is its flexibility. If you have the time, you can include this in your Sunday meal prep time or just cook as you go throughout the week. You can then enjoy the meal that day and reserve the leftovers for later in the week or divide it up into freezer safe containers and freeze for when you’re really in a pinch! (Freezer tip 101: leave about 2 inches of space in your containers for expansion when freezing any liquids like soups or curries).
What makes this different is that it’s not just cooking and hoping for leftovers, it’s cooking with the intention of having leftovers. Eventually, you will have a freezer full of delicious, home cooked meals and you’ll always have something on hand! What I also like to do is pack my lunch into a container the night before as if I was going to the office so that I can easily grab my lunch from the fridge the next day all ready to go – just heat and eat!
If you’d like to give batch cooking a try, I’ve included below some of my go-to recipes. They all generally freeze well unless noted and use pantry staples and/or simple ingredients:
Black-eyed Peas & Kale Soup – this can be made in the instant pot as well and pressure cooked for 15 minutes
Nourish Bowl – these are best for weekday meals rather than freezer meals
Morroccan Quinoa Salad – feel free to serve with chicken to amp up the protein
Roasted Vegetable & Quinoa Harvest Bowls – quick and easy. Cook up some quinoa and throw everything else in the oven!
Eggy Broccy Muffins – these are great to have on hand as a snack or can make a light lunch with a side of veggies (these are best eaten fresh!)
Instant Pot Weeknight Chicken & Rice Burrito Bowls – I like to swap out the white rice for brown, just increase cooking time to 20 minutes
On the other hand, given that we are accustomed to a certain level of convenience it’s understandable that at times we might have to lean on convenience foods. When this is the case, we want to reach for those that are free of unnecessarily long ingredient lists comprised of ingredients that we can’t pronounce. Some really great clean ingredient products (aka free of funky, preservatives and fillers) that are Happy Health approved include:
Autumn’s Gold Grain-free Granola Bars – try pairing this with some nut butter or a hard boiled egg for a more complete snack
Lesser Evil Paleo Puffs – for my Cheetos fans out there, this is a great alternative
Simple Mills products – their products are free of cheap additives and inflammatory oils that are so commonly found in convenience foods
So there you go! I hope this was helpful and inspires you to maintain your wellbeing and peace of mind among all the change that’s happening in the world right now. At times like these, our wellness is often most important in order to keep us moving forward despite all the uncertainty. Remember, there is never going to be the “perfect day” to start a morning routine, exercise or eat well. Just one positive action is better than none.
Let me know your thoughts! How do you work from home? What are your biggest struggles? What have you mastered? Feel free to comment below or tag me on instagram at @happyhealthcc