Many of us, especially those of us who have sedentary desk jobs or are not as active as we should be, might be carrying a little extra weight around our midsections, thighs, arms - you name it, there's probably some flab on it.
In an office environment especially, as I had worked in for a few years now, a lot more eating goes on than one would think. Doughnuts for Karen's birthday, bagels for Steven's; a beloved client brings in cake, cookies and candies as a gesture of gratitude. In order to get through the grueling 8-hour work day, we reward ourselves with these treats as "well-deserved" restitution for our efforts: in other words, we eat it because it's right in front of us. Then we wonder why we gain a pound or so here and there.
Through my own experiences, I've seen this happen to myself and it makes me incredibly frustrated. As a person who dreads seeing the inches build up, I've come up with some ways to battle the office-munchies. Tried and true, these have worked just great for me - even with indulging in a bagel and cream cheese every once in a while.
For those of us who reach for our cookie-and-chip stash in the bottom drawer of our desks... I have discovered a few surprisingly simple solutions to this problem. While of course anything in bulk will be bad for you, there are healthy substitutes. 90 and 100 calorie packs are becoming increasingly popular and almost every snack-food brand carries them now. If you've got a sweet tooth, there are miniature substitutes for our favorite chocolate chip, cream-filled, shortbread and alphabet cookies. For salt and chip fanatics, you can buy miniature Doritos, cheese crackers, pretzels and potato chips. While one would think that for 90 or 100 calories per bag, only 5 or 6 cookies and a couple of very broken chips would be included.
However, this is not the case at all. Inside the majority of these bags are between 10 and 20 small cookies, and an average of 20 chips, which, even though they will not give you the feeling of being full (which you don't exactly want from eating cookies and chips anyway), it will give the illusion that you've had more to eat. And at 100 calories or less each, burning the calories in an office environment shouldn't be too difficult (it can take anywhere from 2-4 hours to fully burn 100 calories if you live a mostly sedentary lifestyle - again, that depends on just how sedentary you are). You can pick these up in any grocery store in the snack foods aisle.
Here is another tip that I use almost every day at work. Purchase a box of cereal bars - the kind with the crust on the outside and the fruit purée on the inside (I like the Sunbelt brand personally, but any brand will do). When you decide you want a cookie, take one of these cereal bars and put it in your office-kitchen's refrigerator. Go on about your business and in about 10 minutes, if you're still hungry, take the chilled cereal bar from the fridge, take a plastic utensil and divide into a few pieces and eat it that way, rather than just taking bites out of the whole thing. This tends to help make it last longer, so you're less likely to reach for another one a few minutes later. I've found that this trick is a perfect substitute for Fig Newtons!
Instead of reaching for coffee or tea, grab a cup of ice water or bring your own plastic water bottle with you and drink from it all day. While you may think that the caffeine burst from coffee or tea will help perk you up throughout the day, the effects of the caffeine are temporary and wear off in about 30 minutes. Caffeine also, for a lot of people, does not help with focus and often makes a person less productive. Now, I'm not knocking coffee and tea; they're my second and third beverages of choice. But by drinking ice water, not only will it hydrate you and help keep you feel less sluggish, but the coldness will be a jolt to your senses and will help wake you up. If you drink it continuously throughout the day it will help to curb your appetite and if this is made part of a regular and continuous routine, it can help improve your skin. Water is a miracle element, it works wonders. So keep drinking it throughout the day, and if it means a few extra quick trips to the bathroom, so be it.
