Office work is not known for its built-in natural exercise, and many people find themselves putting on weight when joining a new team or changing companies. It might be that a new workload kicks you out of the gym outline you’ve carefully constructed or it might be the volume of ‘treats’ that a company provides its staff and the availability of food that encourages day-long picking.
A new poll has shown that office workers are snacking more than any other profession, with the average person munching over 700 extra calories per day. Rebur.com found that a further 1 in 10 eat an extra 1,00 calories per day. Depending on the speed of your metabolism that equates to roughly 1.5 pounds per week. Or half a stone in a month.
Why do people snack?
1) Boredom: nearly 50% of respondents cited that they snack due to the monotony of work
2) Mistaking hunger for dehydration: hunger and thirst result in the same physiological reaction in the body.
3) Treats: The increase of cakes for celebrations or sweets from holidays has increased dramatically over the years.
4) Energy roller coaster: eating the low-fibre, high carbohydrate foods mean that the body’s fuel sources dip dramatically resulting in the need to a quick ‘pick-me-up’ mid-morning or mid-afternoon.
5) Caffeine overload: caffeinated drinks have a similar affect to carbs and sugary snacks, wrecking your energy levels and playing havoc with your metabolism.
The ‘treat’ culture is the most worrying of all. It may seem really generous of your company to provide cookies, cakes or muffins at the end of the week, if you have reached a target or company objective, however, these foods are laden with calories that we just don’t need. If this coincides with a breakfast meeting of croissants and coffee, or a client lunch or lunch meeting where lunch, aka sandwiches, is provided, then your calorific intake will go through the roof.
And then there are the holiday sweets. Who introduced the habit of buying junk food from another country and giving them to your workmates. It’s bad enough that their looking relaxed and sporting a golden tan while you are still hunched over your desk. But to add insult to injury they encourage your muffin top by gleefully delivering a bag of macaroons or Turkish delight, because they were thinking of the team. What happened to the good old postcard??!!
What I’m really saying is eat these foods at your peril. It is stealth weight, the hardest to remove as before you know it you’ll be a dress size bigger and you’ll not understand where it’s come from. Of course its great to have that social aspect of someone’s birthday but have the tiniest slither of cake, if you have to have some.
Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink showed the correlation between snacking and availability. People do not eat because they are hungry, often because they can see it and are tempted visually. Secretaries given clear glass bowls of chocolates had they hand in the bowl 71% more often then those with white bowls. If the bowl was walking distance away from their desks the numbers consumed were significantly lower.
Snacking Tips
1) If you feel hungry drink a glass of water and wait ten minutes before eating.
Keep a bottle of water on your desk and challenge yourself to finish it. Start with 500ml and build up to 2 litres.
2) Make yourself some vegetable crudities to take to work to eat instead of cake.
3) Be ruthless, if you’re a manager, think about ways to motivate without treats, and ban holiday sweets – challenge your staff to find the funniest postcard to send to the office
4) Add the cakes money to a work kitty and blow the lot on a team or workplace outing.
5) Make your own lunch – control what you put in your body and avoid unnecessary calorific intake
6) Allow yourself one day a week when you are allowed a treat rather than every day
7) Go for a 10 minute walk to get some fresh air or even just around the floor to escape your screen when you get bored.
8) Talk to your colleagues rather than email, activity can reduce the brains fixation on needing treats
9) Always combine carbohydrates with protein to keep you fuller for longer.
Image via Yoppy's Flickr