If you are reading this and you are under age 29, I am very thankful that you picked this article over checking Snapchat. Let’s get right into this:
- Work Work Balance
In Silicon Valley, an unspoken rule is that there is no work-life balance. Taking an yoga break at 3pm? No problem, as long as you finish the correct lines of code. Snack and nuts everywhere? Sounds like heaven until you hit 250 lbs. Here are a few tips to maintain your health for this kind of work environment.
Create a routine that works for you. If you like to wake up at 10, get to work at 10:30 a.m. and leave work at 7 p.m., then stick with it. A good breakfast at 10:15 is practically mandatory. Not trying to be a mom, but if you want to live pass age 45, then you should. This will make your work more productive.
2. Stranger Things? Stranger Things and the elliptical?
Need to catch up with the newest episode of Stranger Things? Try it on an elliptical.
As a traditional office person, I gain the “work 15” right after I started working. When there are unlimited snacks in your office, what do you do?
- Find an exercise activity that you can keep up every day.
- MyFitnessPal app is what I used to track down how much I ate in the beginning.
- Recognizing that you might save $5 on cashews and diet coke, it might cost you $188 on gym membership per month and 2 hours per day on the elliptical machine.
- Ubering my way to the gym and watching Seinfeld, I find walking or running to the gym kills my ability to hit my calorie goals. So I took a car to the gym and I started out with watching my favorite episodes of comedy shows. Nowadays, after it became a habit, I started to listen to audible books.
I lost 50 lbs from July 2015 to May 2016.
3. Nap for 15 hours
Don’t do that, just sleep. Watch this 2 minute video: http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/media/sleep08_epstein_improving.mov
If you didn’t watch this, here are some take aways from the article the video is from: “
- maintaining a regular sleep-wake schedule
- avoiding caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and other chemicals that interfere with sleep
- using light to your advantage by exposing yourself to light during the day and limiting light exposure in the evening”
4. Yoga, Kale and Fried Chicken
According to“5 habits that foster weight loss” by Harvard Health Publications at Harvard Medical School, “most people tend to eat a small breakfast (or not eat at all), a medium- sized lunch and a large dinner.” This needs to change. Eating even sized meals will prevent you from over eating. Breakfast will rev up your metabolism for the day and raise enzyme levels that will make you burn fat. Eating at least 450 calories per meal will help you avoid hunger between meals.
(Resource: www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/5-habits-that-foster-weight-loss)
5. Social, but anti-social
In a city like San Francisco, most of us are over committed by events and parties. If there is a 5% chance to meet the founder of Airbnb or partner at Sequoia Capital, we will go on an adventure to a random person’s house on a Saturday night. However, most times meeting any of these people won’t directly make you the next Elon Musk. To maximize opportunities like this, is to provide something valuable. Which is figuring out what your goal is and approaching social situations strategically. If you have something that will mutually benefit both parties, then go to the party with that in mind. Otherwise, sitting at home and working on your craft would be a better choice. At the end of the day, Elon Musk didn’t get famous for going to parties.
Originally published at medium.com