Creating a Balanced Lifestyle: Integrating Fitness, Work, & Personal Life
Life can be a constant juggling act, trying to balance our professional duties, personal pursuits, and fitness goals. All too often, however, we let one area of our lives dominate over others, leading us to feel overwhelmed and stagnant in our goals.
Fortunately, you don’t have to neglect one area of your life to excel in another. The key to success is making conscious decisions about balancing your day best so you can attain steady progress with your goals. So, let’s explore some actionable tips for integrating your fitness, work, and personal life.
1. Practice Work Life Balance
The significance of work-life balance cannot be understated in today’s work environment. This is because overworking and outperforming others is highly emphasized in work culture, causing undue stress and pressure, raising cortisol levels, and encouraging unhealthy coping habits like excessive indulgence.
By setting healthy boundaries at work and making space in your life for things other than emails, you can avoid burnout, commit to your health and wellness journey, and, most importantly, start enjoying life.
2. Hold Yourself Accountable
Oftentimes, all of our focus is dedicated to work and fitness, leaving us little room for our personal lives. Or, we may be struggling to balance a fulfilling personal life with their fitness and professional goals. Whatever the case may be, holding yourself accountable is the only way to ensure you’re committing to bettering all areas of your life. This may mean holding yourself accountable when it comes to making your workout class, or ditching takeout and making your own healthy meal prep.
3. Get a Trainer
Speaking of holding yourself accountable, hiring a personal trainer might be your best bet if you struggle with this. Personal trainers are great for those just beginning their fitness journey, and those who are seeking to optimize their results. Personal trainers work with you to set realistic goals, improve your performance, while ensuring you’re showing up for training sessions, and ultimately, yourself.
4. Try Meal Planning
Think about it: would you rather dedicate a few hours once a week to planning your meals and having everything ready to grab and go, or would you rather spend the time gathering ingredients, cooking three meals a day, and cleaning up the mess? To us, the answer is a no-brainer.
Meal planning is a popular way for fitness enthusiasts to control their food intake, ensure proper macromolecule consumption, and reduce food prep time. Those who incorporate into their busy lifestyle benefit from the time and cost savings, reduced stress, and remaining on track with their fitness progress.
Not a huge fan of cooking? Meal subscription services are a great alternative, allowing you to pick your meals for the week and ship them right to your address. Simply unwrap, heat up, and eat!
5. Getting Plenty of Rest
This tip may seem counterintuitive but hear us out — sleep is by far the most essential component of self-care and maintaining a balanced lifestyle. Countless studies tell us that getting enough sleep is linked to better cognitive function and healthy energy levels and can even help manage those pesky food cravings. Conversely, a lack of sleep can throw off your whole routine, leading to inevitable setbacks in your fitness, work, and personal goals.
Without sleep, your energy levels are easily depleted, and your cravings spike to compensate for the lack of energy. When you give in to said cravings, you are negatively impacting your fitness goals as a result. So, the moral of the story? Ensure your work, fitness, and personal life leave enough time for some Z’s.
-Jeremy Torchinsky, Co-Founder
