Work-Life Balance Tips: Part 2

Kimberly Lewis Apr 26, 2012 · 3 min read

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Work-Life Balance Tips

We’re back! Now those first five tips weren’t so bad were they? If you missed them, click here.

Who’s ready for the next five?

Work-Life Balance Tips #5: You’re going to happy hour several nights a week to relax. At the end of a long work day, it’s easy to say we deserve a beer or a glass of wine. But when our lives get really hectic, that could easily become a daily occurrence and the empty calories are going to add up. Instead, try relaxing by doing yoga, reading, puzzles, or physical activities like bike riding. After all, even moderate “social” drinking can interrupt your sleep patterns, lead to weight gain, and cause depression and anxiety — and none of those things will help your career.

Work-Life Balance Tips #4: Your lack of culinary creativity means you’re relying on meat and cheese. Let’s face it, the quickest meals are often the least healthy: mac and cheese, pizza, burgers, sandwiches. What do they have in common? Two factors: meat and cheese — two things we should limit when being in good health really matters. Groundbreaking research documented in “The China Study” provides clear, large-scale evidence of the link between eating animal products and failures in human immune systems. Want to ensure you’re at peak performance? Eat more fruits and veggies and try plant-based proteins.

Work-Life Balance Tips #3: You think fresh produce isn’t going to stay fresh long enough to eat. This might sound redundant, but you’re probably not eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables. The irony is, they are the quickest and easiest thing to take with you when you’re on the go. Throw a banana and an apple in your bag for breakfast, chop fresh bell peppers, cucumbers and carrots for a morning snack. Maybe on the weekend you can prepare a large batch of vegetable lasagna or soup that can easily be heated for lunch at the office. For an afternoon snack try a peach, pear or handful of grapes. Vegetables and fruits provide the best, low-calorie and pure source of natural energy that will keep you at peak performance all day long.

Work-Life Balance Tips #2: You look for comfort in coffee and happiness in energy shots. When long hours are the norm, the only thing getting a real workout might be the office coffee pot. And those 5-Hour Energy drinks are becoming increasingly common in the cubes. But these solutions have drawbacks. Caffeine, while naturally occurring, is addictive (probably not a newsflash to coffee drinkers, but still worth noting). It can cause anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, tremors and headaches (especially when you don’t get your fix!). And those energy drinks? The main ingredient in 5-Hour Energy is caffeine, although it also contains several thousand times your daily recommended doses of B-vitamins, which can cause other health problems if abused.

Note: For a healthier alternative, choose Organo Gold coffee. Less caffeine without all of the jitters.

Work-Life Balance Tips #1: You equate quick meals with frozen meals. Lean Cuisine, anyone? If you’re packing your freezer with prepared meals that you can zap in the microwave, stop now before you give yourself a heart attack. The sodium quantities in packaged food can far exceed your recommended doses — that’s how they disguise the taste of the cardboard that they are packaged in. And large doses of sodium can lead to high blood pressure even in young adults.

So what are you waiting for? Stop adding to your stresses by being unhealthy. If your career is central to your life and you can’t afford to be sick, get your diet on track and follow some simple rules: Eat a plant-based diet, drink plenty of water, cut out the drinking and go to the gym or get some exercise daily. You boss will thank you, even if you do turn off your cell phone for that hour on the treadmill, because you’ll be happier, more creative, and more dependable.

Work-Life Balance Tips: Part 2

Who’s ready for the next five?

Note: For a healthier alternative, choose Organo Gold coffee. Less caffeine without all of the jitters.

Easy enough, right? Here’s to your success on practicing some, if not all, of these work-life balance tips.