Working from home comes with a lot of challenges.

Not only the environment might not be suitable for working – loud neighbors, a spouse, you name it, it will happen – but faced with not having to commute, or pack lunch, or have a set lunch break, your routine also goes haywire.

I’ve switched to being a location-independent freelancer back in 2005 and I’ve always enjoyed being my own boss. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had moments when my lifestyle was anything but healthy.

That said, keeping a healthy & fit lifestyle when you suddenly switch to working from home is anything but easy. However, whether you’ve made the change for yourself or other circumstances forced you, it’s important to keep up with your self-care and wellness practices.

That’s why, in this article, I’m sharing easy tips & tricks to be healthy & stay fit while working from home.

Healthy & Fit at Home: The Basics

You really can’t have a healthy lifestyle if you don’t have a strong base.

First of all, make sure you get enough hours of restful sleep. It is essential at any age and there are little differences in the amount of sleep needed as an adult. From 18 to 64, it’s recommended to sleep for 7-9 hours, while if you are older you should still sleep 7-8 hours.

If you drink coffee, be careful that caffeine can keep you awake when you should be sleeping. For example, if I drink coffee after 3 p.m., I’m doomed to be watching hubby sleep while I look at the ceiling. I only drink coffee after 3 p.m. if I go to a tango party (milonga) and I know I’d be dancing most of the night.

If you wake up groggy, that’s a good sign you didn’t have a restful sleep or you didn’t sleep enough.

>>Need to improve your sleep? Here are a lot of suggestions from experts.

Next up is water consumption during the day. The 8 cups per day “rule” is a myth and you should treat it as such. You need to take into account other liquid intake (except coffee), as well as your activity level.

Make a point to drink a cup of water upon waking up. And before each meal and snack. If you exercise, you need to compensate with 1.5 cups of water for every ½ h of exercise. There is a formula that’s generally used to estimate water intake (but you need to add in the exercise): your weight in lbs x 67% (this , for me, means 2.7 l of water per day, without accounting for exercise).

Your best tool to make sure you are sipping water during the day is a water bottle that should always be on your desk / work station.

Keeping track of sleep and water can be daunting, though. Enter the helpful fitness tracker. Personally, I’ve been offered my first FitBit back in 2014 and I’ve kept getting newer versions. Currently (a.n. June 2023), I have a Xiaomi Mi Smarband 6. But it’s not exactly my favorite albeit it does it’s job and it’s cheap. However, you’ll be better off with a Garmin Vivoactive 4 or POLAR Ignite 3 – Fitness & Wellness GPS Smartwatch.

Aside from being able to track your heart rate, and sleep, the app also allows you to track the water intake (and food, if you wish).

If you aren’t a fan of Fitbit, Garmin & Polar also have excellent fitness trackers.

Healthy & Fit at Home: Nutrition (What You Eat)

Here’s something you need to know: you can’t out train a bad diet. No matter how many hours you plan to jog, or how much weight you lift, if what you eat is not healthy and nutritious, you won’t be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

I’m sure you already know what happens once you are home all the time. That fridge is so damn close. And how about trying to bake something – banana bread anyone?

Comfort food is called as such for a reason – it has a way to sooth our soul and make all bad things go away – but most (if not all) such food isn’t exactly the healthy choice. Yes, you can alter the recipes and swap ingredients to make the dishes healthier (and you should do that).

That said, don’t despair.

There are easy ways to ensure you are making good choices for your body:

Go by the 80-20 rule: 80% of your food intake should be healthy & nutritious. The other 20% can be treats. That said, assuming your daily intake is 1200 kcal, only at most 240 kcal should be treats. That’s roughly 40g of vegan chocolate, for example.

Have a shopping list handy: whether you order online or go in a brick & mortar store, always shop using a list. That list you can either fill in as things are consumed or right before you start your shopping session. Make sure to include healthy protein (legumes, tofu, seitan, etc), fiber (veggies & fruits), healthy and natural fats (nuts, seeds, avocado, nut butter, olive oil), and grains (oats, bulgur, brown rice, quinoa, etc), plant-based yogurt & milk, spices, etc. If you aren’t already plant-based, focus on switching most of your meals to be animal-free.

Get a basic understanding of nutrition: this is the hardest part. Unless you visit a nutritionist, your family doctor (GP) won’t be able to help you much. Because they aren’t trained to do that. So, you are left with searching the internet, joining Facebook groups, or following various suggestions from tracking apps. Which, yes, is extremely daunting. I’ve taken some free nutrition courses to be able to wrap my head around all of it. Generally speaking, you want all your meals to be balanced and include protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats. And some sites do a great job to offer balanced dishes (but not all, of course).

>>Are you a vegan woman and you are struggling to lose weight or want to keep a healthy lifestyle? My friend Nicki is a vegan wellness coach and can help you achieve your goals. Visit her site and free Facebook group.

Have a set of healthy recipes you rotate during the week: ideally you should look into planning most of your weekly meals over the weekend. It won’t always work (for example, you shouldn’t refrigerate rice for longer than 3 days). But you can do an audit of the items you have handy and decide what dishes you can cook. For example, I often rotate between vegan mushrooms stroganoff, mixed frozen vegetables with minced tofu, or with bulgur, a creamy spinach dish, Greek beans soup, and lentils soup for lunch. Also, I would grill some smoked tofu on days when I work out. And I break my fast with a colorful (mostly) raw salad with whatever I have in the fridge. By all means, add new recipes to your rotation. No one says you have to eat in a very boring way.

Don’t drink your calories: soda, fruit juices, specialized coffees, and alcohol will give you empty calories. And a lot of cravings after. Instead of soda, drink water with a slice of lemon. And have your coffee black (or with a splash of plant-based milk).

When it comes to smoothies, if you use protein powder, then you can create a balanced smoothie. Otherwise, it’s not doing you too many favors.

Learn to make healthy substitutions: remember the comfort foods I was talking about? Love mac & cheese? You can use chickpea or lentils pasta, plant-based milk, and nooch (nutritional yeast) for a much healthier version. How about the French fries? Make baked sweet potato fries! Craving ice-cream? Have come nice cream (that’s a frozen banana blended with another fruit).

In the grand scheme of things, even small substitutions will add up. When it comes to healthier options, ditch the simple carbs in favor of complex ones: replace white rice with brown rice, bulgur or quinoa, simple pasta with buckwheat / chickpea / lentils pasta, potatoes with sweet potatoes, etc.

Recognize your triggers: why do you hit the snacks? Are you tired, bored, cranky, anything else? If you think you are hungry, drink a cup of water. Wait for 15 min. If you are really hungry, get a healthy snack! If you are bored, then you should find something to do. Anything.

Have healthy snack handy: it’s inevitable to need snacks at times. But know what’s going to help your body. 7-8 almonds, 2-3 walnuts, an apple and 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. These are all great options.

Healthy & Fit at Home: Fitness

Here comes the part that can feel extremely daunting. It’s much easier to hit the gym before or after work than to know you have to do something while working from home.

So, what can you do? Quite a lot.

Have an active hobby: we’ve taken up Argentine Tango back in 2017. And we’ve fallen in love with it. This means that even during the troublesome 2020, we could dance with each other (at home, in the studio, and in organized shows). We love it so much that we’ve been going to festivals and classes quite a bit in other cities / countries. During the pandemic we’ve attended a bunch of online classes and even festivals.
Since then, we started teaching after getting certified as instructors. And yes, we still dance everywhere and every chance we get – including at home.

Go for a walk / hike: our other form of exercise – when the weather is nice – is going out for long walks or hikes. This is a super easy way to stay active without needing anything special (just some good walking shoes and that water bottled I mentioned).

Set reminders to stand up: my fitness tracker also reminds me every hour to take 250 steps. You can set a reminder on the phone if you don’t have a fitness tracker. Just get up and walk a bit in the house.

Try new workouts: a friend of us takes online Zumba classes; others do yoga at home. I used to do Tae Bo years ago. The internet is a real gem when it comes to finding ways to staying active at home.

>>Did you know you can now attend an online yoga retreat? Get all the benefits of in-person retreats from the comfort of your home!

Cleverly invest in fitness equipment: for years I’ve been using a stair stepper at home. They are cheap and super compact. Then I got a treadmill. The latter is currently folded and tucked away because we need space to dance. A set of resistance bands and a yoga mat are quite useful, too.

Get an accountability buddy: it’s lovely to have a friend who stands by you. It’s even lovelier to if you can go for a walk or jog together. But if you can’t, use the technology to your advantage. To this day, I have an accountability buddy that I email almost daily (and she’s across the ocean).

Have a routine: if you have something added to your calendar, you are going to stick to it. So, add in that dance class, or that walk. And block the hours for work.

Keep it simple: don’t attempt to do everything from the first week. Maybe you crave being active, so start with adding more active time to your routine. Then start small with making healthier food choices. Try a new recipe, join a Facebook group for your goals, and so on.

Find a form of exercise that you like: maybe you tried Pilates and found it boring? No problem, try something else. You can’t dance tango or salsa because they are too complicated? Zumba could be the alternative. You want to do yoga but can’t focus? Go for a walk.

Healthy & Fit at Home: Overall Wellness

There’s more to your well being than just getting nutritious foods, being active, sleeping enough, and drinking water.

Here are some more tips & tricks for self-care:

Set clear boundaries: it’s not hard at all to let your work slip into your home life. Or you take too many breaks and get distracted from work too often. Don’t be afraid to let your family members know you should not be distracted at certain times. And when work is done, it’s done!

>>Struggling with time management and productivity? Here are some tested, simple time management & productivity tips & tricks from my experience

Keep a healthy weight: it’s all too easy to slip into patterns that can make us gain weight. And if you aren’t at the weight you want to be, now is a better time than ever to work on that. Set small goals.

Learn to relax: maybe meditation works for you (there are a lot of free apps out there), maybe you relax when you dance (like us) or when you listen to music (I listen to tango almost all the time when I’m not in calls with clients). Whatever you choose, it has to work for you. Find something that helps you immediately relax and disconnect from the environment you are in.

Read a book: if you aren’t into the habit of reading a book a before bed, you may want to try it out. I’m going through phases when I devour a book during a week (and I read in the evening only when I’m not dancing) and months when I default to various articles rather than a book.

Watch your favorite tv show / movie: there’s nothing wrong with watching your favorite tv show. Except you shouldn’t binge on it. Staying until 3 a.m. to watch the last episode in the series won’t do you any good the next day.

Keep a gratitude journal: I must admit I’ve slacked on this lately but for 2 straight years I’ve kept a gratitude journal. Each day, would write one thing that made me happy – no matter how crappy the rest of the day was.
You can fill in a gorgeous printed gratitude journal if you don’t fancy using an app.

Keep up with your grooming routine: some vanity didn’t hurt anyone. Yes, I color my roots and trim my eyes at the salon every two months. It makes me feel human, cute, and boosts my self-confidence.

Use cute (indoor) clothes when you work: no one says you need to dress as if you were going into the office, but some cute indoor clothes will make you feel better. I rotate between various t-shirts I like (some with messages – but only when I’m not a video call).

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