Adopt these healthy office habits today

You spend approximately 6 to 8 waking hours in your office. But are you aware of the fact that for most of us, the office is a hub of bad diet decisions accompanied with a sedentary lifestyle. Bid farewell to these unhealthy office foods with these healthy office habits from Ms. Divya Choudhary, Senior Nutritionist at Fortis Hospital, New Delhi.

Eat breakfast to keep hunger pangs at bay. Office life can wreck your diet decisions if you are are not careful. One of the most common reasons behind our urge to overeat at work is the lack of an adequate breakfast. Skipping breakfast leads to an erratic lifestyle pattern. It's the most important meal of the day, and we end up neglecting it. Come lunch, and we are so hungry that we hog on almost anything and everything. Click here for a few healthy breakfast ideas.

Also Read – Healthy Office Canteen Snacks

Be friendly with your Coffee Machine. Caffeine stimulates the heart and respiratory systems. But don’t be too friendly. Limit your coffee consumption to just two cups a day. Make sure that for every coffee you drink, you drink two full glasses of water, to help your system replenish what the caffeine takes out.

Also Read – Fun ways To Stay Healthy For Desktop Dweebs

Try and replace normal water intake with lukewarm water. Warm water has many health advantages, such as:

     It flushes out toxins from our system, which if accumulated can lead to aches, pains and headaches.
    Warm water helps our digestive system work more efficiently, while keeping gastro and colon related diseases at bay. 
    Warm water keeps our skin hydrated. Drinking enough water can combat skin problems like eczema, psoriasis, dry skin, wrinkles etc.


Carry healthy meals from home. If possible, one should always carry home food because it has all the advantages of being infection free, and hygienic. Canteen or restauran food, when eaten too often, can also lead to all sorts of problems that arise from lack of essential nutrients since most cooking methods in fast food kill the nutrient value of food.

Also Read – Healthy Lunch Ideas

If you must exist in a cubicle, at least make it a healthy one. Eat your meals on time and preferably in a relaxed environment. Drink lots of water through the day. Always carry fruits (excellent snack without making you gain weight). Look at other snacks like roasted chana and 100% whole grain crackers instead of biscuits. Keep them in your desk drawer. You can also try unsalted almonds, walnuts or unsweetened figs.

Health Me Up’s Tip for Eating Healthy in the Office: Maintain a well-stocked office box or bag that contains healthy snacks and foods like yogurt, low fat cottage cheese, low fat string cheese, your favourite fruits, hummus, and raw veggies and put them in your office refrigerator. Don't forget to seal and mark it with your name. This will give you a great excuse to get off that chair every couple of hours, and will also serve your need to eat healthy at work. And yes, don’t be too food-friendly when it comes to enjoying colleagues' birthdays, baby showers and receiving high calorie gifts from clients. Respect your limits!

Premature kids likely to face behavioural problems

Children born prematurely have greater chances of experiencing behavioural or emotional problems or both in the pre-school years, a study reveals.

While the rate of premature births has remained more or less constant for some time, the rate of moderately premature births has been rising, Dutch researchers say.

They based their findings on more than 1,500 children whose behaviour and emotional development was assessed for four years, the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood reported.

About 1,000 children born between 32 and 35 weeks of pregnancy, were classified as moderately premature and just under 600 were born at term.

All the children were part of a long term study - The Longitudinal Pre-term Outcome Project or Lollypop - that looked at the growth, development, and general health of children born prematurely.

The study was conducted by paediatricians and neonatologists Marieke R. Potijk, Andrea F. de Winter, Sijmen A. Reijneveld, Arend F. Bos and Jorien M Kerstjens from the University of Groningen Medical Centre, The Netherlands.

Seven behavioural or emotional components were assessed, including anxiety or depression, aggression, attention disorders, and somatic complaints - conditions with no obvious physiological cause, according to a university statement.

"Our results demonstrate that moderately premature children are more likely to have behavioural and emotional problems before they enter school," said a researcher.

These types of problems tend to persist into later childhood and adolescence of the pre-mature children and is likely to affect their academic performance and friendships at school.