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Andile Tshuma on Health

Do you love your job? Every morning as you wake up, are you looking forward to getting to work?

How’s your work environment like? Work is fun when you do what you love, it’s like you’re doing your hobby all day long.

When you’re just in it for the money and the passion is non-existent, your workplace may tend to be hell on earth.

It’s not healthy arriving at work and starting to count down to knock off time, especially when you’re working a conventional 8AM to 5PM shift.

Considering the amount of time we spend at work, the workplace ought to be a pleasant place, if we’re to be physically, emotionally and psychologically healthy.

Having talked about lifestyle health audits last week, did you try to audit your personal lifestyle? If so how did you find it? If you’re happy, congratulations, but if you’re not, we’re in the same boat.

So, following my own health and lifestyle audit, I spent the week trying to make a few changes to how I do things.

For starters, my day now starts an hour earlier; I just hope I’ll manage to keep up with it, but so far so good.

My number one craving of French fries was a bit difficult to completely do away with, but I’m proud to share that I only had them twice this week.

I could eat chips and fried chicken week in, week out. These are small changes but it is better to start small than not to try at all. I went out running for two days and went for power walks another two days, for 30 minutes each session.

The other extra 30 minutes of my morning was for preparing breakfast. It’s cheaper to carry a home-made breakfast to work, and it’s much healthier too! I’m not sure how most people do it, but I’d recommend you make yourself a sandwich or two in the morning, or carry some cereal, for a morning fix.

The downside of my week is that I didn’t manage to eat a light breakfast early morning before going to work and I didn’t get time to rebuild relations with my jump rope.
Nonetheless I’m happy because I’m now steps away from where I started.

Back to work, what do you think about your work ethic and wellness culture?

What’s your typical day at work like? Do you work during the weekend sometimes?

Does your workplace have a workplace wellness policy, for instance a group gym subscription?

A good workplace wellness programme may be a social sports club, for example, a soccer club or netball club. A few hours of running on the pitch on a Saturday or Sunday makes a difference.

You get to build relationships at work and it’s very healthy for your social life too. It keeps your body in shape, particularly if you spend most of your time in the office working from a desk. Not having a workplace wellness programme is no problem at all, as you can start one, yes, you.

Invite some friends over for a game of football. Next time a friend will bring a friend and that other friend will bring a colleague, and before you know it, your team is complete.

Zimpapers has a vibrant and supportive workplace wellness culture as sport plays a crucial part in the social lives of members of staff, across departments.

There’s a vibrant football club and a competent netball team. Of course not everyone attends all the time, but having such support systems around is encouraging and the clever ones make use of the opportunities to keep their fitness in check.

Till we meet next week, think about how you can make your time at work worthwhile and healthy.

Also think about how you can increase activity during your leisure time instead of becoming a couch potato or a slave to your smart phone.

For feedback, views and comments to make your Saturday health read better, send a message to 0778502449, email [email protected] or catch up with me on Twitter handle @andile_tshuma.