Weight Loss at Work

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Many people complain that they gain pounds from sitting all day at work. Not only do people tend to sit all day at office jobs, but they eat their lunches there 2 or even 3 times a week on average. That adds up to a lot of sitting, and a lot of extra pounds.

Here are some easy adjustments you can make to ensure you aren’t sitting all day, and gaining those extra pounds.

1. Invest in an air freshener. A neurological researcher, Alan Hirsch, M.D., of the Smell and Taste Treatment Center in Chicago, notes that scents can actually suppress instead of stimulate the appetite. After doing tests on a group of 30 overweight people, he found that sweet smells such as peppermint, green apple, banana, and coconut, when inhaled during hunger allowed these 30 office workers to lose an average of 30 pounds over 6 months. And, if you can’t stand the smell of an air freshener you can always invest in the real thing.

2. Camouflage your sweets. If you tend to have a sweet tooth at work, try placing your candies in an opaque dish. Studies show that 71% of workers tend to eat more candies at work when they are placed in a see through container. Therefore, not being able to see the candies directly will keep you from indulging. Also, if you are trying to cut back on sweets at work, switch to hard candies which are lower in calories and will last much longer.

3. Get your greens. Try keeping a mug at work full of green tea. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition did a study on drinking green tea and regular tea at work, and found that the green tea drinkers lost an average of 2.4 pounds a month more than those regular daily tea drinkers. Antioxidants found in green tea can help stimulate the body to burn calories, and lower your overall body fat intake.

4. Use a drawer on the left of your desk to keep temptations out of sight. Researchers have found that generally most people will look for things to the right hand side of themselves at work. Even regardless of handedness, we all have a tendency to look for things to the right of our field of vision. So, the farther the temptation is away from us, the more likely we can avoid it.

5. Get up! Most importantly, you can stand and work at the office using the many new advances in technology. Get a headset and walk while you take your calls. Invest in a special ergo chair to keep your posture proper and encourage you to break the chains from your desk. You can burn 1/3 more calories standing than you can sitting, so what are you waiting for?