Worrying about how fit your company employees are, and if they are working towards being fit while working from home? Here is a guide to help you understand the meaning of fitness, the way in which you can guide your employees to pay attention to their health, and the intimate relation between fitness and sleep.

While doctors and other health researchers prove that a minimum of 5,000 to 10,000 steps should be taken during the course of a day to stay physically fit, we argue that there is more to fitness than just walking. While the act of reaching a step goal can help to motivate oneself, there are other forms of fitness that require equivalent attention.

Personally, every individual has a different definition of what fitness is and what it means to them. Someone’s perspective of being the “ideal” type of fit might be different from someone else’s entirely.

Generally speaking, fitness refers to one’s own optimal health and overall well-being. Fitness, being a broad term, is not entirely made up of one’s physical fitness, it also consists of one’s mental and emotional health as well.

The Food and Nutrition guide by the Academy of Nutrition and Diabetic’s, confirms that when someone is fit, they:

• Are productive and have the energy to do what’s important
• Have a positive outlook and the stamina to deal with the perils of everyday life
• Are at a reduced risk of for health problems including diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc.
• Have a body-positive outlook and feeling good about your yourself
• Possess the strength and endurance to get through any type of physical challenge that presents itself
• Lead a longer, better quality life

While in general physical fitness can be defined as being the overall well-being of one’s body, but there are actually five components that merge together to form it.

1. Body Composition

Body composition refers to the percentage of bone, muscle, fat, and organ mass that composes the makeup of an individual. With this definition, it should be noted that two people with the same height and the same weight may look completely different because of the difference in their body composition.

When talking about body mass, the measurement of body composition, also known as BMI or Body Mass Index should be considered.

Ask your employees to calculate their BMI Score. Through this, they will have to put in their weight and height to find out their score. A BMI Chart is also available for those who want to check if they fall under the normal, underweight, or overweight category of body type.

2. Flexibility

Flexibility is not only the ability to touch one’s toes, it is defined as the range of motion that is possible between different joints. Flexibility allows someone to have a wide range of varied movements that can be executed with ease.

The more flexible you are, the freer and less restrained your range of motion is. Moreover, having flexibility gives anyone immunity from joint pains, muscle pains, and several other physical ailments.

It takes minimum effort to stretch your body from time to time. Ask your employees to stretch before or after working for long hours. Yoga, a discipline that is entirely dedicated to helping attain flexibility and to calm one’s mind and attain peace should also be encouraged among employees.

3. Strength

Strength is defined as the ability of a muscle or a group of muscles to exert a type of force. Using your muscles regularly, training with a bit of weight and increasing the overall strength or the capacity of exerted force for all your muscles can ultimately help in the long run. It is through strength building that muscles are actively used and the body becomes toned and looks, fitter.

Bodyweight training is a great way in order to gain strength over time. Using one’s own body as gym equipment and doing light to heavy exercises regularly have great results. For those who are looking to do strength training while working from home, bodyweight training is proven to be an effective way to lose weight and get fit.

4. Muscular Endurance

In layman’s terms, muscular endurance is the ability of the muscles to endure a physical activity without getting fatigued. The more your muscular endurance is, the less fatigued you get after physical activity.

Those who exercise for the first time often complain about their body hurting, this is nothing but the muscles exceeding their own limits and trying to cope with the muscular exhaustion. Over time, the capacity of the muscles to endure long hours of physical exercise broadens. Again, there are specific muscle-building exercises that can be done for getting rapid results.

5. Cardiovascular Endurance

During intensely physical activity, the ability of your respiratory systems to supply oxygen to the body is known as cardiovascular endurance. Athletes and others who are used to long hours of strained physical activities have higher cardiovascular endurance as compared to those who do not do such activities. An increased flow of oxygen all around the body is good for blood flow and helps to rejuvenate the body.

Cardiovascular endurance is directly linked to stamina. This is the reason why runners and other athletes of sports like basketball and football do not get easily tired from long hours of physical activity.

According to a consensus by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, it has been found that 35-40% of the population today are sleep deprived, this means that nearly 1 in 3 people aren’t getting the sleep that they require on an everyday basis. When it comes being fit and healthy, sleep is one of the major contributors and is often overlooked.

Leading an active lifestyle inevitable makes your body crave for rest. A well-rested person is someone who can perform their tasks to the best capacity. No matter how busy someone’s schedule is, a minimum of 7 hours should be dedicated to sleep.

Regular exercise sometimes can be the key to helping you sleep better. In fact, those who follow an intensive workout routine are required to sleep for more than 8 hours a day. It is during a workout that you sweat, strains different muscles, works on your body fat, etc., but it is through sleep that the actual results for the workout come to light. While muscle fibres are torn during a workout, it is the sleep that helps repair and grow them.

Believe it or not, sleep and diet are closely related. Sleep deprivation is linked to obesity and weight gain. If you are dieting, but you do not get the 7 hours of minimum sleep that is required for all individuals then it can undo the effect entirely. Researchers speculate that weight gain is a side effect of not sleeping either due to an increased intake of food while staying awake added to the decrease in energy burnt.

Sleep is an extremely important contributor to energy metabolism. The fat cells in your body story and release energy that are helping you to perform your day-to-day tasks. Sleep deprivation leads to energy running out, making the body overwork. As a result, the energy cells in the body are destroyed. Sipping coffee and working through long hours of the night is not an effective way to get energy.

According to a Survey by Deloitte, about How Overworked Employees get. It was found out that,

• 45% of Indian workers usually work 9 - 11 hours every day compared to 38% of global workers.
• 10% of workers in India regularly work more than 11 hours a day, the survey said. As much as 44% workers in India take office tasks home more than 3x a week, compared to 43% globally.

Inconsistent sleep timings and inadequate sleep quantity can negatively impact your impulse control. For example, if you are well rested then you can complete a task easily, but on the sleep-deprived mode, the same task may seem incredibly difficult to complete. Sleep directly impacts the motivation of a person.

Let’s talk about some methods that can help your employees to sleep better.

1. Creating a schedule for the weekends and the weekdays and trying to stick to it as much as possible. Highlight the importance of 7-8 hours of sleep and having a consistent schedule can help regulate one’s sleep patterns.
2. In order to relax and de-stress from the activities of the day, bring forth the idea of having a bedtime ritual or routine. Doing small tasks before going to bed like reading a book can help induce sleep.
3. For constant and uninterrupted sleep, the room should be comfortable, quiet and dark. Unhindered, peaceful sleep is the best quality of sleep that can help your body recover.
4. Not to eat too much right before bed. Eating dinner and immediately going to bed doesn’t allow your body to digest properly and can cause discomforts and health problems. Highlight the point of not going to sleep completely stuffed.
5. Though many would disagree, the hours slept before midnight are usually higher quality than the hours slept after midnight.

MyBenefits360 is a fully integrated, flexible benefits SaaS platform for employee engagement, wellness, fitness and benefits administration. We make it easy for employees to enroll in benefits, excite them with savings on wellness services and engage with fitness gamification. With built in analytics and AI powered dashboards, we simplify your benefits administration process, reduce risk and save costs. Whether you have 10 employees or 10,000, with our SaaS platform, we guarantee to onboard your organization in less than one hour, no matter how complex the underwriting.