#WellnessWednesday: Wellness is a Journey

Wellness is a journey, not a destination. It takes more than deciding to go on a diet, you have to decide to change your whole life.

Siphiwe Baleka, an Ivy-League swimmer, was already well into his own journey before he decided to help truckers begin theirs. Instead of pursuing an Olympic Career, he found his passion was helping truckers become more active.

And he’s doing a great job at it! In fact, he’s helped thousands of truckers lose tens of thousands of pounds.

Here at ExpressTruckTax, we know trying to eat well and maintain a healthy lifestyle while on the road can be tough. But we’ve got some health tips that might be able to help!

Beat the Boredom

Your mental health is just as important as your physical health. All wellness journeys should begin here. By getting your house (your mind) in order, you can begin to focus on your body. If your mental health is out of whack, then there’s a good chance you won’t be able to focus on anything else.

Boredom is a very common experience in the trucking industry. You have to sit and drive for hours, and listening to a radio station that recycles the same songs over and over isn’t very stimulating.

That’s when overeating can creep in. Because you can’t do much else while you’re driving (you also shouldn’t be eating, but we all do it). And you need to focus your mind on something other than what seems like an endless road in front of you.

But overcoming your boredom on the road can be as easy as buying an ebook, or subscribing to Amazon’s Audible (because you may not always have time to stop by a bookstore). When you have something else to focus on—other than a bad habit of eating when you’re bored—you can retrain your brain!

Which brings us to the next stop on your wellness journey: becoming health conscious.

Be Health Conscious

Nothing is going to change unless you’re willing to change it for yourself. The second step to living a healthier lifestyle is to address the problem.

Most of the time the problem is overeating, which is easy to start doing when you’re on the road all the time. Because most of the time what you’re eating has a skewed sense of serving sizes, not to mention way more than the recommended daily amount of sodium.

To help you become more conscious of what kind of calories, fat, sodium, etc. you’re taking in per day, there’s an app for that! The app is called MyFitnessPal, and you can use their website or log your daily food intake from their smartphone app.

And MFP is set by your weight and lifestyle, so even if you’re sedentary, you can still lose weight or maintain your current weight.

Not to mention, after a while of recording your meals, you begin to notice that you automatically adapt to eat within your allotted calorie range. You begin to eat smaller portions because you realize just how much you may have been eating and you change it.

That’s why the second step on your wellness journey is making a change in the way you eat. It doesn’t even have to be a big one, it’s taking the step that counts!

Be More Active

Now, this next step is usually a red flag for people, but it doesn’t have to be scary. You don’t even have to step foot in a gym (unless you’re comfortable with doing that).

Being more active is just another step on your journey. And like everything else we’ve talked about, you can start small!

You can park a little farther away from where you need to go so you walk a few more steps. Or play your favorite song and dance a little in your truck. You can even spend a little more time walking around in a truck stop.

You won’t become physically fit overnight. And that’s not what this is about, it’s about taking small steps to become a better you. Because each small step you take helps you further along the road on your wellness journey.

And as long as you don’t stop, you’ll get there in no time!

Got some tips for how to stay healthy on the road? Or maybe you want to share some highlights from your own wellness journey. Drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter! We love hearing from you, Trucking Nation!