Business Travel, Fitness and Health, Toronto Condos, Toronto Family Travel

How to Be Motivated and Stay Active While Working from Home

June 23, 2021

These days, we’re not moving around as much. Due to the pandemic, many of us are working from home. So, instead of commuting to our workplaces, walking upstairs, or moving around the office, we’re spending most of our time at our desks, in front of a computer screen.

It’s important to maintain an active lifestyle, especially during a pandemic – when we need to boost our immune system to avoid getting COVID and combat its spread.

But it’s hard enough to be motivated to stay active under normal circumstances. And it’s even harder when we can’t go to a gym or physically attend group workout sessions like we’re used to.

Are you unmotivated to exercise at home? Do you feel tired of always doing the same workouts? Read on to find out how you can make your workout routine more interesting and varied, even while working from home.

Follow an Exercise Class Online

There are more online exercise classes available online than ever, so you can take advantage of this broad selection of online classes. Find the one that’s right for you – whether it’s a more relaxed cardio workout or a more intense weightlifting tutorial.

Many of these classes are available for free on YouTube. So, you can easily access them right from your home. Just put on a video, and you’re in a virtual class.

For example, Yoga with Adriene is trusted by her 9 million-plus subscribers to give a soothing, relaxed approach to yoga that will leave you feeling completely refreshed.

Keep in mind that if you don’t have a lot of experience performing these exercises, you should try to be careful and know your own limitations.

Add New Exercises and Equipment to the Mix

Doing the same exercises day in and day out can cause us to end up in a fitness rut. Do you need to reinvigorate your routine or want to stretch your body’s limits? Add something new to your routine to mix it up.

If you tend to stick to running, try building your strength by incorporating more weightlifting into your routine. Or if you strictly use the same weights, challenge yourself by adding more weight.

On the other hand, you may already be big on weightlifting but not so keen on doing cardio. If so, try spending more time running or biking to train your body in different ways. You could even add a new cardio machine to your home like a rowing machine, a stepmill, or an air bike.

Get Creative With Your At-Home Exercises

In order to motivate yourself to work out, it’s always important to be able to pinpoint the reason you’re not feeling motivated. That way you can know the best way to increase your motivation.

Here are a few interesting and creative solutions to get you motivated to stay active:

Have a virtual workout session with friends: Do you miss being in an environment where you can work out with others? Do you need that motivation you can only get from working out with someone else? Have a video call with a friend while working out and motivate each other to get through each workout.

Play sports with your family: Are you looking for a more fun way to get moving while working from home? Why not encourage your family to get active, too, by playing active games or sports like soccer with them.

Design a circuit workout in your own home: Doing the same workouts in the same room each day can get boring and difficult after a while. Consider coming up with a circuit workout where you do different activities in each room. A few workouts you could do are jumping jacks, burpees, and lunges.

DelSuites: Stay Active on Your Business Trip or Vacation Using Our Exercise Amenities

DelSuites makes it easy for you to stay in shape when staying at one of our locations. All of the buildings include fitness centers. However, keep in mind that they are currently closed due to COVID-19.

If you’re going on a business trip or vacation or just need a place to stay for a while while you’re transitioning from one house to another, you can rent or lease one of our short-term rentals.

Find one of our rentals wherever you need to go – with locations spread out across Downtown Toronto, Etobicoke, Markham, and more. Find the rental that suits your fitness needs today.

Fitness and Health

How You Can Protect Your Mental Health While Working From Home

April 5, 2021

Many of us have recently begun working from home due to COVID-19 while others have been doing it for years. No matter your reasoning or experience, there are many enjoyable benefits of remote work: no commute, comfortable clothes, your pets nearby, and working from your furnished condo.

But like many things, there are challenges as well. Isolation can lead to loneliness, a disrupted and different routine can make the work-life balance even more difficult than usual.

So how do you protect your mental health while working from home?

According to the experts at working from home, the simple answer is to stay on schedule and stay connected. Let’s break this down.

Stay on Schedule

One of the easiest and most important actions for you to take is to create a schedule and stick to it as much as possible. If you have the flexibility, set your schedule around your most productive hours.

Create a Morning Routine

It is good to have a normal routine similar to when you went into the office. Take a shower, if that’s what you usually did, and give yourself time for a healthy breakfast. Sit down with your breakfast and coffee (or drink of choice), giving yourself a moment to fully wake up and mentally prepare for the day.

Get out of Pajamas

Putting on a set of clothes for the day, comfortable but different than your pajamas, will have an impressive impact on your mindset for the workday. Your brain will separate sleep/snuggle time from work time and know that the day has started.

Take Breaks Away From Desk

As part of your daily schedule, you should have a few breaks that are around 15 minutes long. When you do take these breaks, move away from your desk. If possible, try going to a different room. This will help with minimizing screen time and clearing your mind. Doing this will also prevent burnout from hours of focusing on one task or staring at one screen.

End Your Work Day

Your schedule should also have a set time off. This time might change from day to day because of your flexibility or needs but whatever time you decide on, end your workday at that time. Shut the laptop, close the notebook, walk away from the desk. The rest of your day is for you and your home life. This is very necessary to protect the boundary between work life and home life. Working from home and not doing this will make it feel like your workday never ends.

Stay Connected

To resist those feelings of isolation while working from home, staying connected with colleagues, family members, and friends is incredibly important. Luckily, in today’s digitally interconnected world, this is easier than ever.

Conversing with Colleagues

When you work in an office, interactions with your colleagues can play a huge part in your daily activities. From collaborations over a project to gossiping in the break room, many of us have so many conversations within the office. Working from home, you should try keeping these conversations going as much as possible. Most companies will have some form of recommended messaging service so keep a few of these windows open. Keep chatting with your friends, collaborating with your peers, and asking questions when needed.

Use Video Calls

Whenever possible, use video calling with colleagues to actually see their faces. This will more replicate the in-person interactions from the office and can also be a more productive form of communication. Facial expressions play a large role in conversations and are lost with messaging. A video call or meeting will help with each person’s focus and involvement in the conversation at hand.

Don’t Forget Friends and Family

Outside of work, video calls with friends and family will be very helpful. If you had a group of friends going to happy hour on a particular day of the week, keep this going digitally! Having a few group chats and individual chats going throughout the day will keep you connected to your loved ones, no matter their location or the current restrictions.

Mental Health Support

For some, the struggles of working from home might be deeper and more difficult than the recommendations above can help with. If you are feeling depressed or isolated and need to talk to someone, Crisis Services Canada provides local resources and support, no matter where you live.

If you:

Are not feeling yourself
Are experiencing a crisis
Have emotional pain
Have thoughts of suicide
Know someone who needs help

Visit Crisis Services Canada for the distress centres and crisis organizations nearest you. You can access many of these services virtually from your furnished condo.

Looking for a Change of Scenery? DelSuites Can Help

Sometimes a change of scenery can make all the difference in your work routine. Here at DelSuites, we have fully furnished condos available throughout Toronto and the GTA.

Get in touch with our team today to explore our wide selection of short-term rentals.

Fitness and Health, Lifestyle talk, Vacation Travel

Tips for Staying in Shape While Traveling

October 18, 2019

It’s not always easy to stay in shape while traveling. The temptations of convenience food on the road and the disruption of your normal routine can make it a challenge to stay fit.

Do you find that you abandon your healthy habits when you are traveling and take a step backward on your health? It doesn’t have to be this way, it’s possible to travel and stay in shape.

Consistency Is Key

One of the main reasons why it can be challenging to stay in shape while traveling is because it’s difficult to maintain a routine while you are on the road. You might be in the habit of going to the gym every day after work, but when you’re traveling that pattern is not there.

In order to stay fit while traveling, you have to make the effort to build a healthy routine into your travel days. Even if every day of your trip is different from the next, you can still try to add in a consistent habit you follow through with every day. Your workout becomes the one thing that is always in your day, no matter where you are.

For example, try to wake up at the same time every morning and head to the gym for a workout before you have breakfast. (At your DelSuites condominium you’ll have access to a fully equipped fitness centre, which makes this very easy!)

Explore Your Destination in Active Ways

Another way to build more exercise into your daily routine is to look for active ways to enjoy your destination. This could include taking a long walk through the city, checking out a local hiking trail or going for a run in a nearby park.

One of the great things about Toronto is that it offers an extensive trail system and many lovely, peaceful parks that are ideal for walking, running and cycling. You’ll get to see some of the most beautiful areas of the city, while also keeping yourself fit and healthy.

Look for Healthy Local Eats

One of the joys of traveling is tasting all the delicious local food, right? There’s no need to give up on this pleasure, but think about how you can seek out healthy local treats so you can try something new while treating your body right.

Toronto has a superb collection of restaurants serving up healthy, nutritious food that is actually yummy – including the organic restaurant Rawlicious, the superb smoothies at Belmonte Raw and the tasty meals at Camros Organic Eatery. Check out this guide to healthy restaurants in Toronto for more ideas.

Don’t Eat Every Meal in Restaurants

When you stay in a hotel room while traveling, you don’t have an option to prepare your own meals. This means you end up eating every meal in restaurants, which can really have a negative impact on your health.

This is because most restaurant meals are often served in large portions. Plus, in order to make the dish taste delicious they often use much more fat, sugar and salt than you would if you were cooking the dish yourself. It’s nice for a treat, but when you eat restaurant meals all the time the calories really add up.

Staying in a furnished apartment means that you will have your own kitchen, so you can prepare simple, healthy meals with fresh ingredients you pick up from the local supermarket.

Feedback and Reviews, Fitness and Health, Lifestyle talk

Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions

December 21, 2017

When the New Year rolls around it’s time to start with a clean slate. You feel refreshed and invigorated, ready to start new projects and build better habits in your life. So, you make a list of new year’s resolutions that you are going to achieve this year.

Sometimes though, these resolutions may be the same as your new year’s resolutions last year – and the year before. Lose weight, write a book, pay off debts, save money, learn a new skill… they are all things that you would really like to do, but you keep putting off until tomorrow.

How can you make 2018 the year you accomplish those goals and stick to your new year’s resolutions? Here are some tips.

New Year’s Resolutions – Turn Vague Ideas into Specific Actions

If your resolution is too vague, it will be very difficult to stick to. Instead, turn it into a specific action that you can carry out. Instead of saying, “I’ll save more money and pay off my debts,” you can say “as soon as I get paid each month I’ll place 10% of it in a savings account that I can’t easily access.”

Or, instead of saying “I’ll lose weight” you can say “I’ll walk at least 10,000 steps per day and stop drinking soda.” Instead of saying, “I’ll write a book” you can say, “I’ll sit down and write for 30 minutes every day with no interruptions.”

Make Sustainable Changes

Don’t make a New Year’s resolution that is too dramatic and will mean a huge change to your lifestyle. You’ll get excited about it in January, but you won’t be able to sustain the commitment throughout the year.

This “all-or-nothing” approach can be discouraging and if you fail it’s tempting to give up completely. It’s often much more effective to make small changes that you can maintain for the long term. For example, if your goal is to eat healthier don’t ban yourself from any sweets or unhealthy treats. When travelling or you are away from home, a furnished apartment may be a suitable option so you can cook your own meals and its easier to measure your salt and sugar instake. Limit your intake gradually until eating less junk food becomes the norm (but you can still indulge on special occasions).

Identify Trigger Points

Think about the situations when you might be tempted to break your resolutions and try to avoid them in advance. For example, perhaps you are trying to quit smoking. If you find that you are often tempted to light up when you are standing outside at the pub talking to other smokers, go indoors to get away from the situation and chat with them later.

Put a Positive Spin on It

Think about the positive reasons why you want to stick to this resolution. If your goal is to start your own business, think about how rewarding and exciting being your own boss will be. If your aim is to exercise more, think about how energized and healthy you will feel. If you want to save money and pay off a debt, think about how peaceful you will feel when the debt is gone and you are financially free. These positive motivations are often much more effective than negative ones.

What techniques do you use to make yourself more likely to stick to your goals?

Downtown Toronto, Family Vacations in Toronto, Fitness and Health, Lifestyle talk, Toronto Entertainment, Toronto Family Travel

Outdoor Toronto Swimming Pools To Enjoy

June 23, 2017

Pack your towel, sunscreen, a good book and your favourite swimsuit and spend the afternoon soaking up the rays and splashing around at one of these great Toronto swimming pools. They are the perfect place to chill out on a hot day.

If you are not from Canada you might find it strange that we have so many outdoor pools even though we can only use them for a portion of the year. However, it’s the long cold winters that really make Canadians appreciate and enjoy the summer months so much more.

Alex Duff Christie Pits – Toronto Swimming Pools

This swimming pool is popular with both families and young hipsters and it features a 25m pool, a kid’s pool and an enormous hot tub. Also, you can enjoy the thrill of hurling yourself down the two storey waterslide to splash into the pool below. There is also a diving board iboard in the big pool, so you can dive and cannonball again and again.

Gus Ryder Sunnyside

This 25 metre swimming pool has stunning views of the downtown toronto apartmentswaterfront and skyline. Plus, if your goal is to get in shape they offer offer Aquafit lessons, so that you can burn some calories

while you cool down. The surroundings of this lovely park include lots of sand and trees, so if you use your imagination you could almost pretend you are at a tropical resort.

Alexandra Park

This chilled out 2.7 hectare park offers more than just a swimming pool. It also has a picnic area, a ball diamond, a volleyball court, a community garden and much more. On a warm day it is often packed, so it is a great place to socialise and make new friends – or maybe even find someone cute to go out for ice cream with!

Monarch Park

Slide down the two storey wat Outdoor Swimming Pools er slide, plunge off the diving board or chill out in the wading pool – there is a lot of room to play at this great swimming pool. There is also a playground, so it is a great place to bring the kids on a sunny day. Your young ones can cool down in the wading pool without worrying about getting splashed by the bigger kids.

Greenwood Park Outdoor Pool

This is another park that is great for kids, as it has a shallow pool for little ones and a big pool for the older kids. The 35 m pool is approximately 2 m at the deep end and there is a great raised seating area where you can chill out. It is a lovely spot for a summer picnic, but you will need to bring your own lunch as there is nowhere to buy food.

These are just a few of the best outdoor Toronto swimming pools that you can enjoy this summer. Where is your favourite summer Toronto swimming spot? Let us know in the comments below.

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