Setbacks and steps forward

Earlier this week, I received a press release from the University of Leicester. Researchers have found that sitting for long periods means you deposit more fat around your middle and vital organs. This isn’t news to me as I’ve been researching into active working and sit-stand balance for a few months. Plus I know from personal experience that sitting down too much makes you pile on the weight. But it does reinforce to me that my lifestyle needs to change in the long-term as I have genuine worries about my health if my current lifestyle continues.

This should have been the week when I began making substantial changes to my lifestyle. But sadly there’s nothing to report (thanks to Aussie flu), though my eating habits haven’t been too bad (thanks to little appetite) and I can tell from clothes I’ve lost weight – no bad thing. What I haven’t managed to do is move around much. I wish there was an ‘illness’ setting on my FitBit Blaze – so it wouldn’t keep reminding me to do 250 steps in an hour when taking just a few steps leaves me exhausted and dizzy. But I know it has its ‘heart’ in the right place.

It should also have been the beginning of a week-long trial of a sit-stand desk. The company involved saw my tweets and very kindly extended my trial to two weeks. I was (and still am) SO grateful for that!! Sadly the desk did arrive and while it’s very well-made it’s not going to work in my limited office space on my dining table. It’s much heavier than I expected (though lighter than others on the market) and much bulkier too. I couldn’t lift it on my own.

So if anyone reading this can recommend a relatively lightweight and not-too-expensive sit-stand desk (available in the UK), please let me know. It needs to sit on my dining table in the week and then be light enough to remove and store away on a weekend. It is for a laptop, but I use a separate keyboard and mouse.

Spending the last 10 days in bed, or mainly in bed, has certainly got me thinking about my usual daily activity habits. I’ve spent most of my working life sitting at a desk. I barely get up during the day. And when I do, it’s often to head to the fridge or food cupboard.

On the days I do get out for a walk, I love being outside, feeling the fresh air (even if it’s cold) against my skin. I love the freedom of walking – whether it’s in the park or on the road. And now with audiobooks to listen to, the incentive to keep going for ‘a little while longer’ is there. I’m really frustrated that I haven’t been able to get out and about over the last week or so. Looking forward to get back to it next week.

Well that’s all from me for now. Look out for my tweets!

On my way

Officially I’m not starting my journey to ‘Healthy Freelancing’ until Thursday. But until then, I’m planning my approach and taking some initial steps, mainly to get myself into the right mindset.

I haven’t called this blog post ‘New Year, New Me’ as it sounds far too corny.

My life won’t change drastically just because I get healthier and fitter. I won’t be a different person. Yes, I hope to be thinner, have more energy and fewer aches and pains, wear clothes in my wardrobe that haven’t fit for years and feel more confident in public. But I’ll still be me inside. The same slightly anxious, not-always-confident person, just with a more comfortable exterior (and hopefully healthier interior) – back to the person I was several years ago.

It’s hard to get into a routine after two weeks away from one, with no work, kids off school, husband off work… That’s one reason why I decided to make Thursday my official day for lifestyle changes as by then my daily routine will be easier to manage.

BUT I have already made a conscious decision to improve my eating habits and go for a daily walk from today. I took my initial step by setting up this blog and the associated Twitter account a few weeks ago – writing this blog post as 2018 begins proves to me that I haven’t forgotten my task and I still intend to stick with it.

So that’s my first hurdle (or two) overcome. 

Today I received an email from the MyFitnessPal app, with the image below:

I’m hoping that some of these little steps will help to change my lifestyle for the better, even if I don’t incorporate all of them into my regular routine. Even as I’m typing this my FitBit is telling me I have to do another 150 steps this hour to reach the minimum 250. So I’m now going to stand up and have a walk around the room. I’m particularly looking forward to my week-long sit-stand desk trial that’s starting soon.

I won’t be blogging daily, but hope to blog at least once a week. Plus I’ll be on Twitter when I have the time. Follow my journey… and keep in touch!

 

New beginnings

It has been a little while since I wrote a blog post on here. Real life got in the way – work… family… basic survival needs… the usual.

But I haven’t been idle.

From January 2018, I’ll be making some changes to my lifestyle. I’ll be exploring and trying different ways to become a healthier and fitter full-time freelancer working from home.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing some research and making plans.

So what progress have I made?

1. I’ve created a list of healthy snacks and healthy lunches.
2. I’ve started going for walk listening to an audiobook – one I can’t put down (Sweetpea by SJ Skuse, in case you wondered). This isn’t daily yet, but that’s mainly because of the weather. My FitBit reminds me when I need to take more steps, which is helping me move around more.
3. I’ve arranged to trial a sit-stand desk in January – so I’ll blog more about that in the new year – but I have been trying a sit-stand working routine anyway and I like it so far.
4. I’m finding better ways to deal with stress, other than grabbing the nearest item of unhealthy food – watching some TV, reading, mindfulness, general fun and going for a walk.
5. I’m organising the household – getting on top of washing, ironing and other chores, which helps to create a more relaxing work environment.
6. I’m taking better control of existing health problems, whether this is through self-help measures or suitable medicines.
7. I’m working on better sleep though I still have a long way to go on that.
8. I’m organising my day into achievable chunks with ‘to do’ lists, reminders in my diary to eat, drink, move, unwind, stretch… I think this can be hard when you work from home and don’t have the routine of an office and other people around you.
9. I’m taking on new challenges and looking forward to the future. I’ve gone back to a huge project I’m working on – to fulfil a childhood dream. Maybe more about that one day too.
10. I’m setting realistic goals. I figure I’m more likely to achieve them that way.

See you in 2018!

Follow my journey on here and on Twitter – @HealthFreelance 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Active working

Research shows that office workers sit for around 10 hours every day. This may well include home office workers too.

I know that I can certainly sit at my desk for several hours in one shift if I’m engrossed in my work or have a deadline. I’m sure that working alone makes the situation worse as there’s often no reason for me to get up and move.

There’s no one to remind me that it’s time for a coffee break or lunch. I don’t need to wander over to a photocopier or pop over to someone at a nearby desk or in the office next door. Often the only time I do get up and stop working is when my children come home from school – and even then it’s not unusual for me to plant myself at my desk again for another hour or two afterwards.

If you’re someone who sits at their desk all day and lives in Britain, here’s a date for your diary:

Friday 27th April 2018

‘Why this date?’ I hear you ask.

Well, there’s growing evidence that too much sitting can affect your physical and emotional health, increasing your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, circulatory problems, backache, joint pain and depression.

27th April 2018 is the date of the On Your Feet Britain Challenge, encouraging everyone to convert more ‘sitting time’ to ‘standing time’.

Set yourself a challenge: see how much sitting time you can lose each day.

If you’re interested in taking part, here are some tips from On Your Feet Britain:

• Stand during phone calls
• Stand and take a break from your computer every 30 minutes
• Use the stairs
• Have standing or walking meetings
• Eat your lunch away from your desk
• Walk to your colleague’s desk instead of phoning or emailing them
• Stand at the back of the room during presentations.

These tips are aimed at people who work in an office, so they don’t all apply to me. I’ve added some extras for people who work from home.

• Don’t keep your phone on your desk – leave it at the opposite end of the room or even in a different room
• Use the stairs – even if you don’t need to go upstairs during your working day, do it anyway (assuming you have an upstairs, of course)
• Go for a walk – take your work with you, even if it’s just thinking time. Sometimes the best ideas happen when you get away from your desk. Grab a notebook and pen to jot down ideas as you go. Maybe there’s a work-related podcast you can listen to, or just use this as relaxation time – listen to an audiobook or music
• Eat your lunch away from your desk – pop into the kitchen and make some lunch (but don’t take it to your desk) or walk up to your nearest shops to buy it. In the summer, take your lunch into your garden or to your nearest park to get some fresh air
• You probably won’t have any colleagues working with you at home – but assuming you have more than one room, use each room for a different aspect of your work. Make and take phone calls in one room, or corner of the room (see above). Leave your computer or laptop in another. Put your mobile phone somewhere else. Then you’ll have reasons to get onto your feet at regular intervals
• Stand up for some of your work day if you can, or buy a sit-stand desk (more on this soon in another blog post)
• Set ‘stand up’ reminders on your phone, tablet and computer to make sure you’re not sitting down all day

For more information about the On Your Feet Britain Challenge, or to sigh up, visit http://onyourfeetday.com and follow @getGBstanding on Twitter.

Follow my journey as I get fitter & healthier working from home. Begins in January 2018. Follow this blog and find me on Twitter – @HealthFreelance

Who am I?

If you’re new to this blog (and admittedly it’s a new blog so it’s likely you are), you’ll possibly be wondering who I am in the real world. I don’t have a name on this blog or the Twitter account attached to it, or a photo.

Why not?

I haven’t started this blog just to build up followers on WordPress or Twitter (though both would be nice and hopefully I will). I have started it for me.

I already have a fairly big following on Twitter elsewhere, talking about things other than freelancing, working from home and health. I haven’t told them about this blog or Twitter account. I haven’t told my family, friends or work colleagues either.

It doesn’t matter who I am at present – just what I’m trying to achieve. I’m not famous (or infamous). I’m a relative nobody. Just a journalist trying to make a living – one who needs to sort out her health and fitness levels before it’s too late and she ends up ill or worse.

I want to be honest in this blog. I don’t want to worry that people reading it will judge me  because they know me in the real world. Maybe some time in the near or distant future, I’ll put more details on here or associate the real me with this account. But not yet.

Honesty first

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m overweight, unfit and generally unhealthy. I’ve been working from home for over 20 years. My health and weight have fluctuated up and down in that time – currently downwards. As a journalist, I thrive on deadlines and I need constant challenges. So by writing this blog and putting everything down on virtual paper, I figure this is the first step to providing both.

I will be setting challenges. There will be setbacks. There will be times when I wish I hadn’t made this commitment to myself.

But this is the only way that I’m going to stick with a change in lifestyle. I have set myself a target and a major challenge – which I can’t reveal just yet. If I don’t succeed in getting healthier and fitter and losing weight, then the challenge becomes meaningless.

So I’m here to stay.

Follow my journey from January 2018. That’s my first milestone deadline, with not long to go. I’m getting ready physically and emotionally to take these steps forward, assessing my diet, exercise habits, posture, stress levels etc.

I’ll be looking at some of the medical evidence behind different approaches, trying out new things and telling everyone about it on this blog and via Twitter.

Watch this space!

Follow my blog if you want regular updates. Find me on Twitter too. And please do come back and visit me soon!

Exercise: what needs changing

I’ll begin this blog post by telling you that I wear a FitBit Blaze, which is a watch that also counts my daily step count. 

I’ll then follow this up with the fact that my daily step count is often very pitiful.

Now I’ll hide…

Seriously though, this is why I need to do something about my exercise habits – in fact, not even my exercise habits, more my activity habits. Keeping active doesn’t have to involve formal exercise.

What are my average daily step stats?

On a good working day, if I get myself out of the house once for a 30-minute walk, I’ll manage 5000-6000 steps at the most.

On a bad working day, if I don’t get myself out of the house at all and barely get myself out of my chair, I’ll manage 2000 steps at the most. Once or twice, I’ve barely reached 1000 steps.

On a day when I’m not working and I’m out and about instead, often in central London, I can easily get closer to 10,000 steps (sometimes more).

Yes, there’s a moral there…

But sadly giving up work and becoming a lady of leisure isn’t on the cards. So my working days will continue. What I need to do is get myself out and about more often.

Slight spanner in the works

You may wonder why I don’t go to a gym. Well, firstly, it’s costly. Secondly, it takes time away from my day. Thirdly, for health reasons, I can’t use a lot of the machines – to complicate matters (not mentioned so far), I have early onset osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia. BUT these don’t stop me doing anything and aren’t an excuse for me not to exercise at all. They just limit my options slightly and mean that I have to pace myself.

So what are my options so far?

1. Go for a 30-minute brisk walk every morning, every working day, whatever the weather.
2. Go for a 30-minute brisk walk every lunchtime, every working day, whatever the weather.
3. Go for three 10-minute brisk walks during the day, every working day, whatever the weather (or two 15-minute brisk walks if that’s easier to fit in).
4. One of the above every day to vary the routine.

If you have any other suggestions, let me know.

Moving more often

In addition to walking, I need to be more active when I’m working. So rather than sit for long periods, I’m wondering whether a sit-stand desk will help. This is something I’m going to explore, but I need something lightweight, so that I can move it on and off the dining table, and nothing too big. I also want to see what I’m buying before I make that commitment – so either through a showroom or a ‘try before you buy’ offer. Plus, because space is limited, I’ll need to persuade my OH that we do need one in the house!

I’ve recently read about the 20-8-2 routine. Sit working for 20 minutes, stand working for 8 minutes and then walk around for 2 minutes. So this is something I can try. If you have any other suggestions, let me know.

I definitely need to set regular alarms or prompts to move around more. My FitBit vibrates when I’ve been sitting for too long – the aim is to do at least 250 steps per hour. But I often ignore the vibrations or don’t even notice them at all.

So that, I think, sums up my current exercise routine, or lack of it, and what needs to change in 2018.

More proposed lifestyle changes coming soon, so come back and visit!

Keep in touch and follow my journey to healthy freelancing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eating habits: what needs changing?

At the moment, I snack a bit too much. I like eating at my desk a bit too much too. Probably because my desk is the dining table… and just by the kitchen door.

Not ideal, you may think. I don’t think it is either, but there’s nowhere else left to work.

No really, there isn’t.

Unless I brave the quagmire of my eldest son’s bedroom to work at his desk. This would involve stepping over huge obstacles and swimming my way to the other side of his room. If you’ve ever had teenage boys, you’ll understand why I’m not prepared to do that – and certainly not without the bedroom being fumigated first.

So how can I change my habits of more-than-half-a-lifetime?

Well, to start with, I need a better breakfast and a definite lunchtime.

Breakfast

So what do I eat? I’d better mention now that I don’t like cereal and never have done, even as a child. I should also mention that I don’t like milk. So even if I did have cereal, it would be dry cereal – yuck. And don’t mention porridge, as I really just can’t eat it.

When I’m being good, I’ll make myself some egg, or weird combinations like sardine mixed with cottage cheese or tuna mayo (light) mixed with cous cous.

Yes, I know… but I do like this stuff for breakfast. Don’t worry, my family thinks I’m strange too.

When I’m not being good (more often than not, at the moment), I’ll have Nutella or Marmite on bread. I shouldn’t eat bread as it doesn’t like my digestive system very much (even though I like eating it).

I have also been known to grab the first food items I find, such as a bar of chocolate. I can hear your gasps of horror from here. But at least I am being honest, which is the aim of my blog.

Lunch

I don’t like sandwiches, so tend to have eggs, soups, salads, tuna or roasted vegetables with cous cous or quinoa, which are all healthy options. I’ll eat fish during the day, but not meat.

Sometimes I’m too lazy to make myself a proper lunch, but I do try to push myself to eat something from the list I’ve just mentioned, even if it’s just a bowl of soup.

It’s the dreaded snacks that are the main problem for me – and the fact that there are too many of them.

So really, I need some healthier snacks.

Currently, my snacks range from the healthy (almonds, chestnuts, hummus and carrots) to the bizarre (bowl of soup, artichoke hearts, pickled garlic(!)) and the terrible (chocolate, chocolate and erm… chocolate).

Though funnily enough, other than the chocolate, I’m actually more partial to savoury foods.

Drinking time

I should mention drinks here too. And no, I don’t mean alcohol. I don’t actually drink much in the way of alcohol, and certainly not on a daily, or even weekly, basis.

I usually drink sugar-free squash or, when I’m feeling cold, peppermint tea. I don’t drink caffeinated tea very often and I don’t like coffee at all. I also don’t like fizzy drinks – and juice is an occasional treat.

What I don’t do though is drink fluids often enough, so, again, this is something that needs to change.

Secondly, I need a better eating routine. 

On most days, I have breakfast around 8, and then I’m hungry again, so the snacking begins. If I’m engrossed in work, I may not stop for lunch until around 3, but I won’t have stopped the snacks. Some days I forget to have lunch completely, and then I’ll grab some unhealthy (see above for ‘terrible’) foods at silly o’clock, just before we have dinner (or supper – whatever you want to call it).

Dinner should be with the family and we do try, but we’re a busy bunch so it can be a case of grabbing what I can between everything else going on. The teenagers have a meal, and my OH and I try to have the same, though sometimes they don’t like what we’re having, or vice versa. On the whole though, evening meals are usually fairly balanced and healthy. We get takeaway around once a month, otherwise it’s more likely home cooking.

Thirdly, I need an ‘in-house’ chef.

Ok, maybe this isn’t going to happen so I’ll stop here.

But I can dream…

If you have any suggestions for the above, let me know via Twitter or by commenting below.

Welcome to a new ‘me’!

Welcome to my Healthy Freelancing blog – and more importantly welcome to my new way of life.

What is healthy freelancing?

According to the TUC, almost one in seven people now work from home – either part-time or full-time. And a further 1.8 million people would work from home if they were given the opportunity to do so.

Working from home certainly sounds delightful. No commuting, no office politics, less pollution (unless you live in a city centre, obviously)…

BUT it also has its downsides.

Working from home can be a lonely business and it’s much more tempting to snack while you type. It can also be harder to get motivated in the morning and stay motivated all day. There’s no one checking you have an ergonomic work environment, which can lead to backache, or that you’re taking regular breaks from your screen, which can leave your eyes dry, gritty and tired. You’re pretty much on your own.

Plus you may also have to deal with household chores, family members (kids off sick or needing entertaining in the school holidays) and neighbours popping by for ‘a chat’.

Healthy Freelancing aims to address all of that, with some simple lifestyle changes and top tips to keep you fit and healthy in body and mind. To do this, I’m going to take you on my own journey as I try to change my way of life.

This blog is mainly for people with an office-based job, involving sitting at a computer for most of the day. Though some of the tips will be relevant to other types of jobs too.

Who am I?

I am a freelance journalist and editor. I have been working from home for most of the last 25 years, and this has taken its toll on my health. I’m tired, stressed, overworked (and underpaid at times), unfit, overweight and, in general, in need of a lifestyle overhaul. Now I need to get my health back on track, with a better diet and more regular exercise. That is why I have created this Healthy Freelancing blog.

Join me on my journey as I explore the science behind healthy freelancing, and how it is possible to stay fit and healthy while working from home. I will be looking at all aspects of my lifestyle, from my daily snacks and writing routine to my posture and mental health. I also hope to speak to experts in these areas of health too.

More coming soon!

I’ll be blogging mainly from January 2018, as I have some research to do before then. This blog is very much a work in progress. So watch this space!

Follow me on Twitter – @HealthFreelance – for some updates in the meantime.

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