Is Your Job Killing Your Diet?

 You decided to lose weight and your partner is helping you at home, but when you’re at work you just can’t stick to the food plan. The temptations are too great. 

It’s one thing to stick to your diet in the comfort of your own home: You’ve stocked up on cut veggies and fat-free Greek yogurt, and the only person who sees you write in your food journal is your partner, who’s pretty nonjudgmental about the whole thing. But dieting at the office – with the endless supply of home-baked goods in the communal kitchen and the frequent fast-food lunch breaks – is another thing altogether. 

There's an advantage to working from home, but there's also a disadvantage, your too close to the kitchen. You might thing it's easy to find a job working from home so you can eat nothing but nutritious foods, but people who do work from home are generally well-trained in a specific field, or there in Management jobs, or their selling something. In reality, more then  half the American workforce has to travel to work, commute to their job. They might work in retail, warehouses, factories, construction, public service jobs, etc. We can't all work from home. 

I wish I could tell you to keep up the good work at home and let your guard down when you’re at the office, but because you’re probably spending half of your waking hours at work, that’s not going to fly. Outsmart the whole scenario by doing the following:

Eat Breakfast, Seriously

Everyone from your kindergarten teacher to your know-it-all best friend has extolled the virtues of eating breakfast. Studies have shown that if you eat breakfast, you’re likely to consume fewer calories overall throughout the day. Plus, eating in the morning can jumpstart your metabolism so you start burning calories.

Bring Your Lunch

This isn’t exactly rocket science, but the BEST thing you can do to follow your diet at work is to bring a bagged lunch. If there’s anything that derails a diet, it’s feeling that fierce mid-day hunger and not having healthy food handy. Then it’s “hello vending machine!”

The beauty of brown-bagging is twofold:

Packing your own lunch puts you in complete control of your afternoon meal.
A healthy balanced meal will keep you from feeling snackie an hour later.

If You Have to Go Out for Lunch

I get it – you’ve been cooped up in the office all day or you feel the need to socialize with your coworkers or you’ve been bringing sandwiches from home all week and you can’t stand eating another meal at your desk.

There’s nothing wrong with supporting your local lunch economy every now and then. And there are some surprisingly smart options at major fast food chains.

Pack Snacks

Not only will packing your own snacks help keep your hunger at bay, but it’ll give you something to munch on when you’re summoning all your willpower to avoid that birthday cake in the break room. And make sure to pack a few craving busters for the tempting foods you encounter at the office. Those pastries will look a lot less inviting when you’ve got a dessert-flavored snack bar ready.

For snacks, I like nuts like almonds or walnuts, home-made yogurt cups with Greek yogurt and any type of berries, apples etc. Pick healthy snacks and now you can buy healthy snack bars at the grocery stores. Google “snack bars” and look for the low-cal ones. Most of the healthy snacks like fruit or nuts don’t have to be refrigerated so you can keep them in your desk. Be careful of any manufactured snack bars, they can be full of carbs or sugar.

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page.