How to keep healthy when it feels like you don't have time for wellness

There's a saying that keeps popping up on social media: "If you don't make time for your wellness, you'll be forced to make time for your illness."

When you work, it can feel as if you don't have time for daily life and taking care of your health. Things like projects and laundry can feel like they take away the time you need for the basics of wellness like eating healthy food, exercising and going for screening tests. This can cause problems in the long run.

Do you know how healthy you are? People often thinks that they're well if they don't specifically feel sick. This doesn't mean that you're healthy or that your body might not be hiding a serious condition that needs treatment like diabetes or high blood pressure.

Plan so you have time for healthy food and drinks

You can eat healthy food even if you don't have a lot of time every day:

• Prepare healthy meals ahead of time for days when you're too busy to cook. You can cook in bulk on weekends and freeze meals for the week ahead. Packing a healthy lunch can stop you buying unhealthy food at work when you're hungry.
• Drinking enough fluids helps you concentrate better. Keep a bottle of water on your desk and finish it by the end of the day. If you don't like plain water, add fresh fruit or vegetable chunks, or try unsweetened herbal tea.
• If you drink alcohol, don't drink too much. Overdoing it can lead to weight gain and increase your risk for developing high blood pressure, heart disease and certain cancers.

Choose good workouts instead of long workouts

If you don't have a lot of time to exercise, the kind of exercise can matter more than how long you exercise:

• High-intensity interval training is a good way to burn calories in a short time. If you're just starting out, take longer breaks. You can make them shorter as you become fitter.
• If you do 15 to 20 reps with a weight and feel like you can do more, you should use a heavier weight. .
• Make exercise part of your daily routine if you can't fit a full workout in your day. Take the stairs, park your car further away from the shops, engage in active play with your kids or fit a few 10-minute workouts into your day.

Go for health screenings

We pay for certain screening tests from the Screening and Prevention Benefit without using your day-to-day benefits.

You can have these tests done once a year:

Who	Screening	Why its needed
Everyone	Health check	This set of measurements looks for the early signs of diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure
Females	Pap smear or human papillomavirus (HPV) test	Cervical cancer
Males	Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test	Prostate cancer
Everyone	HIV test	To detect HIV