Staying long hours at a home office may tempt many stay-at-home mompreneurs to grab fast food. Hectic schedules and heavy workloads may make you decide to skip meals. You can start promoting a healthy home office environment by introducing nourishing and tasty treats to your daily diet. The process of becoming healthy starts within yourself. Here are four tips to help you start eating healthy food while you’re working at home:

1. Prepare Your Meals Beforehand

While it’s vital that you finish projects and tasks on or before their designated deadlines, leaving your home office to cook food might make you lose concentration. Your home office should create a conducive environment to give you a working mindset. Don’t bring work to areas where you can completely relax. Avoid sending emails while lounging on the sofa, and evade work-related notifications while you’re eating at the dining table.

Instead of leaving your work area to cook or to check on your cooking every now and then, prepare your healthy meals and snacks beforehand. Place the food in your designated working area so you can always grab something healthy to eat when you need it.

If you’re worried that healthy food takes a long time to prepare, you can try out these healthy snacks from SnackNation. There are food options listed that won’t take too much of your time to prepare. For example, a mixture of low carb nuts like almonds, hazelnuts, macadamias, and pecans will take only a few minutes to prepare.

2. Plan Ahead

Certain workdays allow you to casually go to your kitchen and raid the fridge for healthy snacks. On the other hand, there are days wherein work seems to pile up every minute. It’s time to plan for both: give yourself healthy snack options for either case.

Commit to one rest day to go to the grocery and shop for healthy meals and snacks. Prepare food days ahead so you don’t have to worry about running out to buy fast food or ordering pizza for delivery. It’s also important to portion your food ahead of time. Make sure the snacks you prepare can last you for an entire workday.

Many people have the uncanny habit of emptying a cereal box or a bag of potato chips before the day ends. If you can’t spare a few minutes to prepare food, you can also order healthy food on HeyYou.

3. Create a Snack Schedule and Stick to it

It takes about 21 days for an action to become a habit. With that said, create a healthy snack schedule and stick to it. Shoot for a snack time two hours between meals. For example, if you eat breakfast at 7 AM, eat your healthy snacks at around 9 AM. Set an alarm so you don’t forget about eating your healthy snacks despite your busy work schedules.

If you miss your snack time, you can seek help from other household members. Your significant other, children, or other family members at home can remind you to eat at designated times. You might even inspire other people at home to take up a healthy diet because of your efforts.

4. Lessen Coffee or Tea Intake

While coffee and tea consumption has a distinct set of health benefits, caffeine content found in these beverages can cause dehydration. Instead of going through the workday drinking nothing but coffee or tea, opt for healthier choices to go with your nutritious snacks. Excessive caffeine consumption may also lead to kidney stone development.

Limit your caffeine intake to one or two cups per day. For the rest of the day, you can opt for a mixture of water and lemon. This beverage helps maintain proper hydration while offering other health benefits like assisting in weight loss efforts and enhancing the body’s immune system to an extent.

If you don’t want to consume a lemon-water mixture, you can always give importance to clean water consumption instead. Daily water consumption should be approximately 2.5 to 3 liters or about eight glasses. Water consumption aids metabolism to keep your body running like a well-oiled machine throughout the day.

Aside from eating healthy snacks, don’t forget to get up and move. A few minutes of exercise can do wonders against your sedentary lifestyle at home. Sitting all day while staring at a computer screen helps in weight gain, and it might even lead to other health issues like high cholesterol and high blood pressure. If you can, schedule a few minutes every hour to walk around the house. You can play with your kids and dogs, or you can take a quick walk around the block. 

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