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Easy Ways to Lose Weight
25 Ways to Lose Weight at Work
Give workplace weight gain the pink slip by employing these tactics for taking more steps, making healthier food choices, and managing stress sans candy and caffeine
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Move More
Leave the car in the garage. Biking or walking to work is linked to lower prevalence of obesity, especially if your commute is 30 minutes or longer, according to a Preventative Medicine study of more than 6,400 Polish adults ages 20 to 74. If you have to drive to work, park your car in the space farthest away from your building. Or if you travel by bus or train, get off a few stops before your destination and walk the rest of the way, suggests Manuel Villacorta, RD, creator of Eating Free, a diet and weight-management program.
Track your steps. Snap on a pedometer and shoot for 10,000 steps every day (that’s close to 5 miles). “Throughout the day, look for ways to increase your steps without hitting the gym,” says Mangieri. “If this effort results in an extra 30 minutes of walking, you just burned more than 100 calories.” To increase the number of steps you take on an average day, use the stairs instead of riding the elevator, or get up and walk to a coworker’s desk instead of sending an e-mail or IM.
How much weight will you keep off by climbing three to five flights of stairs each day? Find out here.
Fidget with fervor. Foot tapping, leg shaking, hair twirling, and squirming in your seat do more than annoy your officemates. These ticks also effortlessly torch calories. According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, energy expenditure was 54% higher when study participants fidgeted compared with resting on their backs. Sitting motionless burned only 4% more calories than lying prone.
Work inefficiently. Your boss may not love you for this, but inconvenience can keep you moving throughout the day, says Joan Salge Blake, RD, a clinical associate professor at Boston University’s Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. Here’s what she suggests: Use a restroom that is on another floor from your office so you have an excuse to squeeze in some stairs. Adjust your printer settings so that the pages pop out at the farthest copy machine from your desk, and print items separately and retrieve them one at a time. Empty your recycling or shredding bin both at noon and at the end of the day.
Make yourself at home. Become familiar with the neighborhood around your workplace, suggests Blake. During your lunch hour, stop at the drugstore for shampoo or swing by the dry cleaner on foot instead of running these errands in your car on the weekend. Bonus: You’re doing Mother Nature a favor.
Walk and talk. Get a wireless headset and make a habit of pacing or walking in place any time you’re on a call, suggests Blake. Keeping active throughout the day is more effective for weight loss or weight maintenance than being sedentary during the day and then spending an hour at the gym, says Villacorta.
Climb every hour. “Set a timer on your computer to alert you every hour,” says Blake. “When the timer goes off, walk up and down three flights of stairs. This will take you about 3 minutes and at the end of an 8-hour work day, you will have walked for 24 minutes.”
Stretch at your desk. Sooth stiffness and boost energy instantly by doing a few exercises right at your desk. To start, give these four moves a shot: neck stretch, hip stretch, spine stretch, and side stretch.
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