Eight hours of sleep. Ten thousand steps. An hour of exercise. Cook nutritious meals from scratch. Stretch. Meditate. Drink plenty of water. Look after your skin. Floss. Get outside. Maintain friendships. Keep your home tidy. Avoid screens before bed.
A Healthy Day Takes 25 Hours.
We wanted to break down what an ordinary person without children but with a full-time job and an hourcommute is meant to have for the supposedly “ideal” healthy day
This is assuming an eight-hour day with an hour’s commuting in total….. dream number 1.
The recommended eight hours’ sleep – show me who gets that ….
| Activity | Time |
|---|---|
| Sleep | 8 hours |
| Work | 8 hours |
| Commute | 1 hour |
| Shower, dressing, hair and teeth | 45 minutes |
| Morning skincare | 10 minutes |
| Evening skincare | 15 minutes |
| Exercise | 45–60 minutes |
| 10,000 steps | 1 hour 20–40 minutes |
| Breakfast | 20 minutes |
| Lunch | 30 minutes |
| Dinner | 45 minutes |
| Food preparation and clearing up | 45–60 minutes |
| Housework, laundry and tidying | 30 minutes |
| Stretching/mobility | 15–20 minutes |
| Screen-free bedtime wind-down | 30–60 minutes |
| Total | Approximately 23 hours 25 minutes–25 hours 15 minutes |
We have, with all the running around, quite literally, run out of day.
And this is before grocery shopping, fuelling the car, washing your hair, going to the dentist, answering personal emails, taking the dog out, looking after children, helping elderly parents, paying bills or dealing with the mysterious administrative tasks that seem to reproduce when nobody is looking.
We also haven’t allowed any time for hobbies, television, reading for pleasure, sex, seeing friends or simply sitting down and doing absolutely nothing.
Apparently, relaxation is very good for us too. We just don’t have time for it. We are supposed to:
Walk 10,000 steps.
Exercise for an hour / Strength train several times a week.
Stretch every day.
Practise mindfulness /Get outside.
Cook whole foods.
Prioritise sleep.
Each is relatively manageable in isolation. Put them together and maintaining your health begins to resemble a demanding second career unless you look at things differently.
For example, a brisk 30-minute walk is simultaneously racking up steps, cardiovascular activity, outdoor time and potentially time for a chator to stay on hold tackling an admin task….
Take a dance class and you’ve combined aerobic exercise, balance, coordination, mobility, social interaction and thousands of steps.
Gardening is movement. Cleaning is movement. Walking around the office counts. Playing with children counts. Taking the stairs not only counts but deserves a reward!
A health app may divide life into neat categories. Your body doesn’t.
There is good evidence that benefits occur at lower step counts too, with additional activity generally adding further benefit. The important message is to avoid prolonged inactivity and move regularly – not to regard 9,742 steps as some kind of personal failure. and hey, if you do 6,000 today and 15,000 tomorrow – that averages out, right?
You need to factor in real tine for you. Where you get to talk to your partner / play with the kids, read a book, watch rubbish television, telephone a friend, potter around the garden, have a glass of wine, play with the dog or stare vacantly into space wondering where you put your glasses.
Humans don’t need to perform every beneficial activity every 24 hours. A longer walk can happen at the weekend. Housework can be spread across the week or better still, outsourced. Meal preparation can cover several days at once.
Health is built over weeks, months and years, not between midnight and 11.59pm.
So stop rushing home from work, frantically trying to reach your step target, squeezing in a workout, preparing the nutritionally perfect dinner, performing a multi-stage skincare routine and worrying that we’ve only slept seven hours and 43 minutes…
…because we’re trying to reduce stress.
There is surely a point at which the pursuit of wellness becomes distinctly unwell. Sleeping adequately, eating reasonably well, moving regularly, doing some cardiovascular and strength exercise, maintaining relationships, looking after your teeth and skin, and having time to decompress will take you considerably further than a 37-step morning routine involving lemon water, dry brushing, gratitude journalling and standing barefoot facing the sunrise.
Us human beings aren’t productivity projects.
If your “healthy lifestyle” leaves no room for dinner with friends, an afternoon nap, dancing until midnight, a lazy Sunday or occasionally doing absolutely nothing, it may be worth asking what all that health is supposed to be for. The aim should be to be well enough to enjoy your life.
