Some Useful Tips For New Nurses- Meal Prep, Exercise, and the Right Footwear

Being a nurse means balancing a hectic schedule of nursing care and personal life.  It means that you have to be able to work long hours and still find time to spend with your family and fit exercising if you want to stay healthy.  This can be a difficult challenge for even the most dedicated nurse.

Let’s face it though in today’s fast and instant gratification society, we are always on the go.  With the severe rise of obesity among healthcare workers in recent years we have begun to see a shift in focus of healthcare facilities.  The focus has become healthy lifestyles through exercising and proper dieting.

Meal Prep

Meal PrepOften time as a nurse finding those few precious moments to eat can be difficult between vitals, assessments, and dosing of medications.  This can at times make quick fast foods more realistic however if you as the nurse wants to be healthy there are little things you can do.  Packing your lunches can be one way of ensuring that you eat healthy.

Meal prepping has become extremely popular in recent years.  To meal prep you essentially map out your meals for a certain number of days.  Then you spend one day cooking your healthy food choices for those days.  These meal choices ought to include a protein like chicken or fish.  A vegetable should be included like corn, carrots, or even green beans.  Next a starch should also be made to accompany the other items.  You could include brown rice or even baked potatoes but you should skip the butter and sour cream here.

Exercise

The other piece of the puzzle is to exercise and in order to do this you need time, knowledge, and the proper equipment.  The knowledge of knowing what exercises to perform for what muscle groups in the proper forms.  The time to commit to working out and helping your get healthy.  And the right equipment means that you have the correct apparel including clothing and shoes.

Footwear

Nurses taking a breakWhen it comes to nursing shoes, in my personal experience I find that nurses tend to use their shoes as a way to express themselves.  Especially in places where the nurse is required to wear a uniform or a certain color of scrubs.  Nurses will often pick shoes of their favorite colors and designs.

As a nurse I know that I will pick a shoe that is comfortable and able to be worn all day long.  Green being my favorite color means that I gravitate towards green shoes.  For comfort I tend to pick a running or crossfit type of shoe.  I also like to have this type of shoe so that I can eliminate an excuse.  By not being able to say that I have to go home before the gym to change my shoes.  It might should silly but after working 12 hours there has been more than one where I ended up going to the gym based on the fact that I didn’t have that excuse.

Finding that balance is always going to be one of the biggest challenges that we as nurses will face.

Stay strong!!!

Meal Prep!!!

And get the right Shoes!!!