I had a feeling this day would come, and it finally has. I’ve read a lot (and heard a lot of people) talk about gaining weight when they get a job. The job is stressful, they work long hours and dont cook for themselves, they don’t have time to work out because they are too busy working, and on and on. Before I had an office job, I thought to myself ”well, how hard could it be?” The answer is: much harder than you realize.
I’ll give you my situation. It seemed like I had much more to do 2 weeks ago than normal (although this probably wasn’t the case, I was probably just misusing my time). So, for a couple of days that week, I ended up having to buy my lunch at a grocery store near my office instead of having one to eat that I packed at home like I normally do. While I would try to grab some extra foods while I was headed out the door (2 of the days I brought an apple so I wouldnt have to buy one) I still had to buy some food. Most days I just picked up one of their pre-made chicken salad or tuna sandwiches and a bag of chips. The problem was that they dont have single serving bags of chips, just ones that you’d buy for a family and expect to last a few days.
Well, I mindlessly ate a whole bag of potato chips (2 days in a row) that week. The first time, it was rather innocent. I was just eating straight from the bag, and I reached in there and to my dismay, there were not that many chips left. I decided to bite the bullet and eat the last 5 chips, knowing that it meant that I had eaten the whole bag. The worst part about this was that I did it again the next day. I told myself that it needed to stop, and I haven’t done it since.
What that episode did do, however, was get me into thinking about things that you could do to cut out the mindless eating at work and replace it with healthy snacks you can have at your desk. By that I mean it’s a fruit or a vegetable, or is not loaded with bad-for-you oils, saturated fats and sugar. Without further ado, here are some tips to avoid mindless eating and some healthy snacks that wont turn green while sitting on your bookshelf.
1) Get it out of arms reach. This I think is the most important one for me. When the chips were at arms length, I would move them into my mouth with one hand and use my mouse with the other hand. It was easy to eat the whole bag this way. If you move the stuff out of arms way, you’ll be less tempted to grab it and start snacking. Bonus points if you put it under a stack of something, making it more trouble than it’s worth to get to
2) Drink More Water. A while back I wrote about another great tip for heath, and that was to get a water bottle. Not too far after that, Austin at Foreigners Finances had a guest post at Get Rich Slowly about how he used a water bottle to save money.
3) Think about what you’re doing. This has been a popular topic recently (in personal finance), but I’d have to say that your eating is one thing you shouldn’t “automate”. As you start to eat it becomes difficult to stop. Before you eat that 37th potato chip, (or the first) ask yourself if you really want to/should be eating it. If you’re trying to lose weight, the answer is no. Don’t kill yourself over this though. Always allow for a bit of slack when you can handle it.
Easy and Healthy snacks to keep at your desk
After some consideration (and taste testing, of course) I found out the snacks that I most like to keep at my desk. Here they are:
1) Rice Cakes: These are good because they are easy to keep and filling enough for a snack. Looking to spruce it up? Look no further than my next item:
2) Peanut Butter: This is always a good snack because it’s high in protein and does not go bad. Tastes great on the rice cakes, too. (yogurt and cheese are also good, but need to be kept in the fridge)
3) Nuts of some kind: My favorite are the roasted almonds. It seems like a handful of these will stave off hunger for an hour or so until lunch. If you want to spruce these up….
4) Mix with Raisins: These go with almonds quite nicely. They taste great, and get a little bit salty from the being in the same container as the almonds.
5) Fruit is great too, but can’t be kept at your desk for long periods of time like the others can.
Other great advice I’ve gotten is stick to things you were fed at snack time as a kid. I got a lot of celery with peanut butter and raisins on it, apples with honey, or even trail mix is good. What you’re looking for is something that’s high in protien and has complex carbohydrate chains. The long carbohydrate chains break down differently and contain more energy than the short ones.
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