Infograph Special: Being Active with an Office Job

9 Nov 2015

I have just returned from a nice long holiday visiting family in the States. As much fun as I had, I was quite sad that I missed out on this past Saturday as some of the team were out for a walk around some of the Wharfedale peaks.

I believe they walked 16 miles that November day, reaching the midpoint just as my flight was touching down.

For all that I missed this latest activity, I’ve found that setting out active challenges to tackle as a group have been really helpful and motivating to improve my own fitness. It isn’t always easy to stay in shape when you’re sat in an office all day, but by making just a few minor changes to my daily routine and also taking a bit of time here and there to train for one of our team challenges, I’ve noticed a real difference.

My own regime meant that I needed to wake up 30 minutes earlier than usual, not a big change, but I won’t lie – it wasn’t easy at the beginning. The first change I made this past spring was forcing myself to walk or cycle to work as often as I could.

Sometimes I overslept and other days the weather was just too miserable, but just this extra 15-20min of active time really helped. On days where I knew I wasn’t going to walk or where I actually managed to get up on time, I would also spend a mere 12 minutes on my rowing machine.

These weren’t massive changes and didn’t require any gym membership. Most importantly, I was able to fit these pretty easily into my normal routine. And once they became routine, it was even easier.

As part of this new active lifestyle and as a way of motivating myself to keep getting up those extra couple minutes earlier, I started looking into the various benefits of adding moderate exercise to my rather sedentary life. Some of these benefits include the obvious weight loss and health, while others are a bit more surprising.

To help illustrate these benefits, we’ve put together a simple infograph that you can use for a bit of extra motivation.