Balance out your Work & Life

Ask any working professional — whether male or female — about his plans for the week and the general reply that one would get is that he/she is juggling time between professional work and his personal life.

Without having any gender bias in this regard, a typical day in a week begins around 7-730 AM in the morning and comes to a close around 1030-11pm at night. That roughly gives an individual 16 to 17 hours in a day, depending on whether one likes to sleep seven or eight hours at night.
So how do you juggle the different tasks over the course of a day to create the ideal ‘work-life’ balance and manage a healthy lifestyle? A recent survey has shown that the 5 most common lifestyle diseases in India are: Obesity, Type-II Diabetes, Heart diseases, High Blood Pressure and finally Cancer.

Each and every one of these five diseases can be attributed to the sole reason of sedentary lifestyle or daily life-routine without any exercise. A recent study by World Health Organisation (WHO) noted, “The number of overweight and obese people in India doubled between 2005 and 2015, while 26 per cent of all deaths happens due to cardiovascular diseases.”

The burden from 333 diseases and injuries and 84 risk factors were computed for each state as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The study startlingly revealed that the fastest-growing causes of ill health over the past 26 years were diabetes (increased by 174 per cent) and ischaemic heart disease (up 104 per cent).

That raises the question, what is the best way to tackle these diseases and improve the general quality of life. The first step would be to follow the age-old saying of ‘early to bed, early to rise’. One should try and wake up as early as possible, schedule a session of work-out in the early morning around 630-7 for at least an hour before getting down to other daily chores.

Why we say early in the morning? That’s because working out in the morning will help to boost metabolism, allowing one to burn more calories for the rest of the day. This phenomenon is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC.

For the fitness enthusiast, a workout probably consists of five to six upper or lower body exercises, with three to five sets of eight to 12 repetitions for each exercise. Apart from this one can opt for other ideas like yoga, power yoga, Zumba lessons, TRX, aerobics or CrossFit training.
There are others who opt for Aerial Yoga, which tests your core and mobility. This workout uses silky, hammock-like material and to turn you upside-down. To make it more fun, some try obstacle courses – many women were surprised to realise that their smaller size makes them faster and more agile than men.

Maintaining a diary also helps to plan your forthcoming day in advance. Small chores like what to pack for lunch or what meal to have for lunch. This also helps in formulating a good nutrition plan for the day and one avoids skipping meals.

Always set goals for yourself, whether at the gym or at work or at home. Give deadlines to yourself and adhere to these deadlines as much as possible. Pick something you really want to do and rather than focusing only on the long-term goal, try to tick off the smaller tasks you need to accomplish along the way.

Another crucial aspect is good sleep through the day. During sleep, the body works to support healthy brain function and maintain physical health. While you're sleeping, your brain is preparing for the next day. It's forming new pathways to help you learn and remember information and also helps in the repair of heart and blood vessels.

These are not arduous tasks by any means. Small steps can lead to many large gains over the period of time and increase the longevity and quality of your life.