Men's Health Guide: Keeping Fit With A Busy Schedule In China

Working from dawn to dusk and no time for exercise? Here are some tips that can help.

As any expat who has lived in China for any extended length of time can attest to, the only part of you that seems to get enough exercise is your patience. Unfortunately, patience isn’t attached to any muscle except your heart, and keeping your heart stressed out all the time is a recipe for disaster. To combat the battle of the bulge and reduce the risk of a massive spike in your blood pressure, here are some back-to-basics tips on keeping fit and healthy while still juggling a busy schedule in China.

Make Healthy Food Choices

Just like our mothers told us, eat your vegetables and avoid the sweets. But, when your day starts at 6 a.m. and ends at midnight, making a healthy breakfast and packing a lunch isn’t usually possible. Still, even when breakfast is on the go and lunch is a dine-out five days a week affair, there are ways to avoid packing on the pounds.

If breakfast is the most important meal of the day, make sure it is more than just a double espresso, but skip the street cart grease-fest or fast food chain breakfast combo and grab some fruit, a yogurt, or fresh juice instead. These choices are all quick and readily accessible, will keep you going, and aren’t loaded with fat and cholesterol.

When it comes time for lunch, think sushi over xiaolongbao, and salads over hamburgers. Keeping some healthy snacks such as nuts, granola or fruit around the office is a good idea too, since they will drastically cut down the number of trips you take to the vending machine for candy bars and sodas.

Avoid Multitasking and Prioritize for Reduced Stress

Every CV claims that the job applicant is a “great multi-tasker, able to handle several tasks at once,” but the reality is that our brains can only focus on one important task at a time. To reduce stress, errors and frustration (and ultimately increase productivity), limit your tasks to one important item at a time. Focus on that task to its completion and then quickly move on the next one.

What does reduced stress have to do with keeping fit? Stress triggers the release of the hormone cortisol, which is linked to fat storage. So, reducing the amount of cortisol flowing through your body, and increasing the amount of endorphins that come from feeling fulfilled, happy and energized by getting things done is a big step in the right direction towards keeping fit even when busy.

One place it is OK to multitask is at the gym. While on the treadmill or elliptical machine, read through and sort out junk emails, review a proposal, or work on your next day’s To Do List. This way going to the gym isn’t viewed as time wasted, but time found.

Learn to Delegate

Successful people hire smart people to help them get their jobs done more quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, many managers don’t actually utilize their staff to their full potential, instead handling many simple tasks themselves that should be done by someone who was hired specifically to do that job.

Review your daily tasks and look for items that could and should be done by staff members, and don’t be afraid to challenge them a little. Putting faith in an employee is a sign that you trust and value them and it’s a great way for them to prove they are worthy of promotion and more responsibilities. Plus, every small task you can allocate to capable staff members frees up more time for you to manage important tasks like business development, or getting to the gym.

Hit The Gym/Exercise Early

Everybody knows they are supposed to get 20 to 30 minutes of cardio per day, and men should do some strength training as well to keep their muscles and joints in shape and avoid problems later in life. But finding an hour to get to the gym in China during their obnoxiously short business hours (10 a.m. to 10 p.m. is ridiculous when there are 24-hour KTVs on every second corner) is a struggle to say the least.

Still, putting WORKOUT in your weekly schedule and syncing it to your assistant’s schedule so that they know not to schedule a pointless marketing or vendor meeting during that time is a big help. Then remind him or her to remind you to go to the gym when it is time. It is also smart to look for a gym that is close to the office, since waiting until you get home to go to the gym in your neighborhood or residence compound is a great way to lose all motivation to workout.

If possible, try to get your workout in before starting your workday. Sure, it is tough to find a gym that opens early, but in this author’s experience California Fitness typically opens at 5 or 6 a.m., so it’s worth checking if there is a location in your city. Otherwise, jogging, doing some sit-ups and push-ups, or even borrowing your wife or girlfriend’s workout video to get some exercise in the early morning is the best way to crank up your body’s metabolism for the rest of the day, which aids in losing weight and keeping it off.

Don’t Skip Your Regular Physical

This doesn’t mean the required health-check for foreign professionals. Get your routine complete physical as suggested for a man of your age. Beyond just checking for prostate cancer, a thorough physical that includes a full blood workup can reveal chemical and hormonal imbalances, as well as risk of potential hereditary disease, and having that information can add years to your life. With early detection, many potential chronic diseases can easily be regulated through diet or medication if necessary to keep you in good physical shape.

If getting your full physical in China seems like a waste of time, or you are a bit suspect of the opinion of local doctors with regard to foreigners’ physiology, then plan to visit the doc the next time you are overseas, either on vacation, when visiting family or on a business trip with a day to spare. Your health insurance probably pays for it anyway.

Neglecting your health and failing to keep fit is a guarantee of an early expiration date on your career, and potentially your life. So take some of these tips to heart, remember what your mother told you when you were growing up, and make the time to keep fit.

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