My Job is Making Me Fat

                                                   My Job is Making Me Fat

Fighting weight gain? Sitting all day at work isn’t helping.

You probably know that already but consider what one study found. A “significant portion” of the increase in body weight by men and women in the US since 1970 is attributed to the increase in sedentary jobs. Researchers found that both men and women expend 100 calories less a day on the job. This “change ... closely matched the actual change in weight for 40-50 year old men and women” over the years.

There are opportunities to expend more calories during your work day by moving more and taking breaks from sitting. An added benefit: it’s not just your weight that will benefit as you make plans to un-sit at work. You can improve how your metabolism works and lessen your risk for heart disease and diabetes.

Consider the calorie count for a typical day at the office:

Park by building, take elevator to your floor: 15 calories

Make phone calls for an hour at desk: 15 calories

Seated 45-minute lunch: 25 calories

Seated one hour meeting: 15 calories

Take elevator to ground floor. Walk to car. Drive home: 15 calories

Total: 85 calories

Consider the calorie count for a typical day at the office with some planning:

Park 5 blocks from office. Take stairs to your floor: 80-120 calories

Take calls standing up and pacing with notepad on bookcase or filing cabinet to take notes without bending down: 100-130 calories

Walk 30 minutes at lunch; sit and eat 15 minutes: 100-130 calories

One hour walking meeting: 150-200 calories

Take stairs out of the building, walk back to car: 80-100
Total: 510-680 calories

(Adapted from Move a Little, Lose a Lot by Dr. James Levine and Selene Yeager.)

Taking breaks

Taking breaks in sitting at the office expends from 24 to 132 calories during an eight-hour day depending on how much of a break you take each hour: 

• a 1-minute break every half hour results in the expenditure of an additional 24 calories over an 8-hour time period 
• a 2-minute break every half hour results in 59 extra calories expended 
• a 5-minute break every half hour results in an 132 additional calories expended.

Consider using a standing desk
“Standing burns 40 percent more calories than sitting, which translates to weight loss for a 175 pound person in the following way:
• Standing for 2.5 hours each day would result in an extra energy expenditure of 350 calories per day.
• It takes 3,500 calories to equal 1 pound of weight loss
• Ten days of 350 calories per day equal 1 pound of weight loss
• There are 250 working days in a year or the potential for 20-25 pounds of weight loss by adopting this method of working.”

(From Dr. Mark Benden, advocate of the use of a standing desk at he office, researcher and author of Could You Stand to Lose?)