How to Stay Healthy When You Work Long Hours

If you work long hours, there’s a good chance that taking care of yourself has already started slipping down the priority list. You wake up thinking about work, rush through breakfast or skip it completely, spend most of the day sitting or running around, grab whatever food is convenient, and tell yourself you’ll deal with everything else later. Then later becomes tomorrow, tomorrow becomes the weekend, and somehow you’re surviving on coffee, takeout and five hours of sleep while wondering why you feel exhausted all the time.

Working hard is sometimes unavoidable, especially when you’re building a career, running a business, studying, working multiple jobs or trying to get ahead financially. The problem is when working hard becomes an excuse to treat your health like something you’ll take care of once everything else is finally under control. That moment may never come, so it’s worth finding ways to look after yourself while you’re still in the middle of the grind.

Don’t Let Convenience Become Your Entire Diet

When you’re working long hours, food often becomes about what is fastest rather than what will actually make you feel good. You skip breakfast because you’re running late, grab something from a drive-through because you don’t have time to cook, eat lunch at your desk and then realize at 9 p.m. that you’ve barely eaten anything nutritious all day. Every once in a while, that’s life. When it becomes your normal routine, though, your body eventually starts letting you know that it isn’t impressed.

You don’t need to start preparing elaborate meals every Sunday or completely eliminate the foods you enjoy. Making a few things easier for yourself can go a long way. Keep simple foods around that require little preparation, pack something you can take to work, choose meals that include protein, vegetables, fruit and whole grains when you can, and try not to go through the entire day without eating properly. Even having a few reliable options available can make it much easier to avoid reaching the point where you’re starving and will eat whatever happens to be closest.

Keep Water Within Reach

Be honest. How much water have you actually had today?

When you’re busy, drinking water can become one of those basic things you somehow forget to do. You get caught up in meetings, emails, deadlines, errands or whatever else is demanding your attention, and suddenly half the day has passed. Meanwhile, the coffee has been flowing.

Keeping a water bottle beside you makes the habit much easier because you don’t have to remember to go looking for water every time. You can also make a habit of drinking some when you wake up, with meals and throughout the workday. You don’t have to obsess over hitting some magical number every single day; your fluid needs can vary depending on your activity, environment and other factors. The bigger point is to stop treating hydration like an optional extra that only matters when you’re already thirsty.

Don’t Sacrifice Sleep to Get More Work Done

Sleep is often the first thing people cut when life gets busy because it feels like the easiest thing to borrow from. You tell yourself that you’ll stay up another hour to finish the report, answer a few more emails or work on your side business, and then you’ll catch up on sleep over the weekend. If you’re regularly getting five or six hours because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day, however, you may eventually find that the extra time you gained at night comes with a cost during the day.

Your body needs sleep to function properly, and consistently getting too little can affect your mood, concentration, energy and overall health. If you work night shifts or have an unpredictable schedule, getting enough rest can be even more challenging, which makes protecting your sleep routine even more important. When possible, give yourself a realistic bedtime, keep your sleeping environment comfortable and try to protect your sleep time instead of automatically giving every extra hour to work.

Your Body Still Needs to Move

Working long hours can mean spending most of the day in one position, whether that’s behind a desk, in a car, on your feet at work or moving between different locations. Even if you exercise regularly, sitting or staying in the same position for hours at a time can leave you feeling stiff and uncomfortable.

You don’t necessarily need a full workout every time you feel like you’ve been sitting too long. Getting up to walk around, stretching between tasks, taking the stairs when practical or walking during part of your lunch break can help you break up long periods of inactivity. If you already have a regular exercise routine, great, but don’t fall into the mindset that movement only counts when you’re wearing workout clothes and heading to the gym. Your body benefits from moving throughout the day too.

Don’t Ignore What Stress Is Doing to You

Long hours aren’t only tiring because of the number of hours you spend working. The pressure that comes with those hours matters too. Deadlines, difficult colleagues, demanding customers, financial pressure, responsibility for other people and the feeling that you can never truly switch off can leave you mentally exhausted even when you’re technically sitting still.

That is why your mental health deserves attention just as much as your physical health. Find small ways to create some separation between work and the rest of your life, even if you can’t completely disconnect. Take a walk after work, listen to music, spend time with people who make you feel like yourself, put your phone away for a while or simply give yourself permission to do absolutely nothing for a little bit. If you’re constantly overwhelmed, irritable, anxious or exhausted, don’t automatically dismiss it as something you just have to push through because you have too much to do.

And If You Live Abroad, There Can Be Another Layer

For many people in the African diaspora, working long hours may come with responsibilities that extend far beyond your own household. You may be trying to build your career while helping parents, siblings or other relatives back home, sending money when someone needs it, dealing with family emergencies or feeling pressure to be the person everyone can depend on.

That can make the usual advice about “work-life balance” feel almost unrealistic. You may not be able to simply switch off at 5 p.m. when you know someone is waiting for your help or when you’re working extra hours because you have financial goals that affect more than just you. Still, constantly putting yourself last isn’t a sustainable way to support anyone. If your entire life becomes about earning, providing and solving problems for other people while your own health keeps getting pushed aside, eventually there may be very little energy left for the life you’re working so hard to build.

Setting boundaries, planning your finances and being honest about what you can realistically take on can help create some breathing room. Helping your family is one thing; becoming so overwhelmed by responsibility that your own needs disappear is another.

Your Health Is Part of the Life You’re Working For

There will always be another deadline, another shift, another project, another email and another reason why today isn’t the perfect day to take better care of yourself. You may genuinely have periods when work has to take priority, and that’s okay. The goal isn’t to create some unrealistic version of life where you eat perfectly, exercise every day, sleep eight hours and never feel stressed.

The goal is to stop treating your health as something that can wait indefinitely. If you’re working hard to build a better career, increase your income, support your family, start a business or create more options for yourself, your health needs to be part of that plan too. Because what is the point of working so hard to build a life you want if you’re too exhausted to actually enjoy it when you get there?