How to Stay Healthy at Work This Winter

Posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2017

It’s chilly outside, the holidays are approaching, and life is super busy—that’s right, it’s winter again! For those of us who work in offices, winter comes with its own set of unique challenges and difficulties. When you spend winter working in an office, it can sometimes start to feel like everyone around you is sick, and you haven’t seen the sun in a month. In that kind of environment, it’s really easy to forget to take special steps to stay healthy during the coldest part of the year.

Luckily, there are some very easy steps you can take during the winter to make sure you stay healthy, strong, and motivated through the whole season.

Eat Healthy Snacks

It is so easy—especially during the holidays—to give into the temptation to eat all kinds of sugary, starchy foods. And while these are delicious and wonderful, it’s important to also be careful that you balance out your diet with some healthy snacks.

Green and colourful veggies, fruits, and healthy grains will all provide your body with an array of vitamins and nutrients that your immune system needs. By packing these in your lunch and avoiding that midafternoon pastry, you’ll be well prepared to survive the next plague that rips through the office.

And don’t forget to drink 8 to 10 glasses of water a day.

Get Lots of Sleep

At any time of year, getting enough sleep is a game changer. In the winter, when your body is battling an onslaught of germs and cold, sleeping can be the difference between productivity and passing out at your desk.

Get yourself onto a regular sleep schedule, and stick to it. Doing so will mean that your body stays strong, and you’ll start to avoid that afternoon slump.

Stay Active During the Day

Working in an office makes it very easy to stay still, seated at your desk, for eight hours. But staying active is a key ingredient to staying healthy through the winter, and that means making an effort to get up from the desk.

Spend your lunch hour walking outside, if you can. If it’s 40 below and that seems unreasonable, take a walking tour of your building. Choose the stairs over the elevator whenever possible, and give your eyes a break by looking at something other than a screen.

Keeping active and getting outside whenever possible will make the long winter months much more bearable. Just remember to wear layers!

Wash Your Hands

The ultimate way of avoiding the office plague is to wash your hands. Wash them all the time. Wash them before you eat, after you touch common surface areas (think: kitchen, bathroom, doorknobs), wash them when you’re sick, wash them whenever you feel like it. When germs abound, it’s really the best way to get rid of them (and much more effective than hand sanitizer).

When you wash your hands, you should always use soap. Rub them with the soap for at least 20 seconds. If you wear rings, remember to get under them. Rinse well, and then dry them completely—germs thrive in damp environments, so if you have wet hands and then touch the door to get out of the bathroom, you’ve just undone all your good work.

Socialize

Finally, one of the best ways of staying healthy and happy through the winter is to socialize. When it gets dark early and you’re at the office all day, it can be pretty tempting to just go home and curl up with Netflix.

But by making an effort to socialize sometimes—even if that just means watching Netflix with friends—you’ll feel much better about the winter. It’ll make it easier to get through the cold months, and you might even have some fun.

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