If you resolved to lose weight this New Year’s you are not alone. According to Forbes, weight loss is the most common New Year’s resolution but also one of the hardest to keep, especially for those of us with office jobs. Sitting at a desk for hours on end can trigger physical processes that cause disease and lower your metabolism increasing cholesterol and fat. So what is a health-conscious professional to do? We scoured the internet, consulted industry experts, and collected our favorite tips for staying fit at the office:
1. Get off your Butt
- Every time you stand up, your muscles produce energy to hold your body upright. This simple act can actually double your metabolic rate. Try standing up while you are at your desk talking on the phone to improve your metabolism.
- Need to communicate with a co-worker? Don’t email, call, or shout from the other room. Stand up and walk to their desk. Face-to-face communication is good for your health and your working relationship.
- Live close to the office? Walking or riding your bike to work is another excellent way to spend less time sitting and more time burning calories (Bonus points for helping the environment).
2. Walk it Off
- For those of you who live too far away to bike or walk to work, try parking as far away as possible to increase the time you spend moving your body throughout the day.
- Don’t even think about taking the elevator. Climbing stairs firms your glutes and quadriceps and burns an average of 10 calories a minute (Bonus points if you’re doing it in high heels).
- Find a co-worker you can buddy up with and spend your break time briskly walking around the building. Not only will walking on a regular basis trim your waistline, it will also increase your energy and improve your mood so you can be more productive when you return to the office.
3. Utilize Technology
- Eating out on your lunch break? Restaurant Nutrition is a great app that offers caloric and other nutritional information for most major chain restaurants. Brown bagging it? The MyFood app offers similar information for the food that you buy at the grocery store.
- Tempted by the doughnuts in the break room? Check out Cravings Manager, an app that can help you resist temptation and take control of your cravings. When a craving hits you open up the app and start a 5-minute timer. During that time encouraging quotes pop up, and by the end of 5 minutes your craving should subside.
- Take pictures of your food. Most of us have heard keeping a food journal is an effective way to loose weight but who wants to carry around a journal and write in it every time they eat? Taking pictures on your phone and storing them in a folder to create a daily food diary is much more 2013.
