Workout Vs. Work

You are making an effort to change your life in numerous ways. The way you eat, work out everyday, and eliminate daily chemicals: in your makeup, shampoo, and cleaning supplies. So when you’re home, your family hopefully is onboard and you have their support. You have control of the grocery list; you make time in your day to workout. It’s all good at home.

Then you get to work. You sit in your cube at 7:30 AM (as I do) and by 7:45 AM you receive an email regarding  pumpkin squares and brownies in the break room. You know you have to go in there to scramble your eggs in the microwave (Yes this works. I have been doing it for about a week now), and you have to literally close your eyes as you pass by the tinfoil covered plates oozing with what wants to be your next 10 pounds. 

You make your eggs and you run for your life. By 10:00 AM, you must refill your 32 ounce water bottle. You take a deep breath encouraging  yourself to be strong, and enter the break room. This time, the foil is thrown to the side and only crumbs and dirty forks lay about.  Doesn’t this blow your mind? Seriously. What is it that causes adults to run like a pack of wolves, before noon nonetheless, and shove sweets down their throats? Is it suppressed anger towards our parents for yelling at us as children, saying “No dessert till your plate is clean?”  Or we couldn’t have a “snack” till after lunch? Is it we’re afraid someone else is going to get a piece of cake and we aren’t?
(Milton for example, from Office Space, - with the boss’ birthday cake. Great movie.) Do we think we have to have a piece because everyone else is?  Take a moment to look at the people hovered over the sweets at work during the next potluck or Christmas party. Isn’t that what your struggling NOT to look like? (Comment taken from the Medical Weight Loss Clinic survival guide for the Holidays) I’m sorry I’m not trying to be rude. But come on. I am a thinner person, according to the majority of the world’s view. So I just HATE it when anyone tells me I should eat cake or cookies because “I can”  or “You’re thin you can have it. What are you worried about?” I sometimes want to say “Looking like you?” Of course that would just be totally rude and I would never say that. But, so is forcing me to eat junk, so they feel better about eating it. I am thin because I work out and eat organic.

So here are some tips that I have come up with, found in books, and/or podcasts.

When someone announces there is cake in the break room, acknowledge them and tell them “Thank you” then continue working. Don’t let someone make you feel bad for not eating the “treat” donation at the office. Just remember it’s not their opinion that’s going to determine if you lose weight or not. It’s whether or not you put that cake in your mouth.
Avoid the mounding leftover Halloween candy-dish at the front reception desk. Talk to the receptionist after 12:00, because we all know that heaping pile of candy will be gone by then.

Find someone in the office that may be working out and watching what they eat as well. Use this person as an accountability partner and have lunch with them. Then you will only be tempted with carrot sticks.

Avoid the “buffet” style lunches. You never know what someone else has cooked their food in/with. I usually get an upset stomach at these. So make yourself sparse on lunch, go for a walk, or leave the office and say you had an errand to run.

Be in charge of everything you put in your mouth.

Next time you go to the bathroom stall, do five or six squats before you actually squat.  At your desk, raise a leg and squeeze your quad and glute. Lower back down and do on other side. Do several reps. Raise up you leg again and draw circles with your toes, activating those calves.  Sit up straight, imagine  a string tied to the inside of your belly button coming out your back, and someone pulling on that string. Pull your abs in. Once the belly is in all the way, slightly twist to your sides for small crunches.  Do this several times, in and out.

Most important, stay active at work and remember it will all pay off in the end. And hopefully your co-workers will follow your example and bring apples instead of caramel apples with nuts and chocolate. 

Thanks for reading. Lots of giveaways coming soon!!!!