The Office Diet

I’ve been enjoying some great posts and articles recently, and thought I’d share a few of my favourites with you.

Food diaries and food labels

As someone who lost weight by tracking calorie intake and expenditure, and who regularly advises you all to write a food diary, I was delighted to be proved right by this recent study on keeping a food diary, reported on Diet Blog, that shows strong evidence that food diaries do help people to diet successfully:

A long-term weight loss trial undertaken by Kaiser Permanente has shown how using a food diary can double a person’s weight loss.

Kathryn from Limes & Lycopene has a great, eye-opening look at five ways marketer use food labels trickery to encourage us to buy things that might not be the best choices.

Some aspects of food labelling are heavily regulated. However most of what’s on the label is marketing. And marketing is about selling a product. It’s there to entice you to buy. Marketing emphasises the good parts and downplays the negatives of a product. Which is exactly what happens on food labels.

Fitness humour

Long-term readers know I’m a great fan of the very funny, honest, “tell it like it is” fitness and exercise blog, Cranky Fitness, run by the wonderful Crabby McSlacker. I’m hoping that the rumours of impending fluffy bunnies, unicorns and rainbows are unfounded, but Crabby’s recent post on the joys of after-dinner walks gives all her fans cause for concern…

Merry, also over on Cranky Fitness, brings us a fantastic alternative dictionary of fitness related terms, including gems like:

Marathon: When a TV channel runs several episodes of a television program back to back. Usually occurs over a major holiday when you were hoping to watch something else.

and

Nike: Greek goddess whose devotees are hip, cool, smug, well-shod, and broke.

There are also some great additions in the comments over there, so if you’re stuck in the office looking for something to fill the dragging afternoon, why not make up some of your own definitions for popular fitness terms?

In the newspapers

For anyone who, like me, seems to have a stubborn few pounds of fat clinging round the midriff — despite being at goal weight — this article from The Times, Did spending £3,000 for a flatter stomach really work? is worth a read. I’ve never really given liposuction any consideration, but this account was enough to put me off for life!

Perhaps it is my genes. Anyway, what a silly waste of money; and what a potential risk, having an intrusive procedure done to my healthy body that was deemed necessary because I deemed it thus. I put the experience behind me and resigned myself to loving my tummy.

The Guardian’s advice on How to eat at your desk will probably resonate with anyone who read and agreed with my recent post on the unwritten rules of office food. Giles Morris writes:

So what are the good, the bad and the ugly of desk-top delicacies? Top of the list of pariahs comes smelly food - burgers, kebabs, hot dogs, saveloys and the like. In fact, any food which is normally consumed after four or five stiff drinks is best avoided at your desk.

Great posts to bookmark

I may have linked to this one before, but it’s a brilliant set of images from WiseGeek: What Does 200 Calories Look Like? If you’ve ever thought that 200 calories of one food should fill you up as much as 200 calories of another … this might give you a visual explanation of why it doesn’t. Try comparing the celery with the peanut butter, for example…

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average adult needs to consume about 2000 - 2500 Calories to maintain their weight. In other words, you have a fixed amount of Calories to “spend” each day; based on the following pictures, which would you eat?

And last but far from least, Nursing School Research have put together a fantastic list of 100 Food Blogs to Inspire Your Healthy Eating. The Office Diet is listed there (under “Healthy Snacking”) – check out the rest of the list for tips, ideas and loads of healthy recipes.

These 100 food blogs are maintained by writers who understand that making good meals means incorporating flavor as well as healthy ingredients. This list has something for everybody, from hardcore dieters to gluten-free eaters to natural and organic foodies.

If you have a great post that you think The Office Diet’s readers would enjoy, why not drop me an email (ali@theofficediet.com) with the link?

(Image above by ArTéMiSià )

This is the eighteenth part of the dieting basics series – see the series outline for links to all the other posts so far.

Most diets are abandoned after a few days or weeks not because dieters lack willpower but because the diets form an awkward fit with our busy lives. If you have to slave away preparing separate meals for yourself and the family, or if you end up working late without access to anything healthy in the office, no wonder your diet “fails”. You need ways to fit your diet around your life, so that it isn’t an extra burden, but a natural part of your daily routine.

Plan your meals and snacks

I’ve written on The Office Diet before about the importance of planning ahead. Having the right things in the fridge makes cooking dinner simple; there’s nothing worse than getting home from work only to realise that one vital ingredient for your meal is missing. The thought of having to drag yourself out to the shops is likely to make phoning for a pizza all the more tempting… But if you’ve planned ahead and bought groceries at the weekend, everything will be ready for you to cook.

Planning also applies to smaller meals and snacks – making sure you have milk for breakfast, for example, and buying some healthy odds and ends to keep at work (rather than digging into the communal biscuit tin whenever your blood sugar dips.)

Eat the same meals as your family

If your diet involves eating completely different meals to everyone else in the house, you’re likely to give up because of the hassle and the secret resentment that you’ll feel. It’s a pain to keep preparing separate meals (and takes almost as long to cook enough food for one person as it does to cook for four): when you’re feeling busy or harried, you’ll wonder what the point is. Plus, when everyone else is tucking into a roast dinner, it’s unlikely you’ll feel completely satisfied with your healthy chicken salad. Whether you admit it or not, part of you resents the fact that you’re stuck with “diet food” and everyone else gets to eat what they like…

There’s no reason why your family can’t eat the same meals as you. Granted, you might get a few grumbles at first, but try to find options that everyone enjoys and that are healthy. (If you’re not sure where to start, try some of the ideas on the recipe pages.) Dish up extra for those who aren’t dieting, and make a few tweaks – perhaps you’ll have low-fat salad dressing on your potatoes, whereas they’ll have butter. You won’t feel left out or ostracised by your diet, and you’ll know that you’re helping your loved ones to eat healthily too: a powerful motivation to stick with it!

Count calories rather than following a set plan

Diets fit much more easily around your life if they don’t involve eating specified meals or snacks: it’s better to count calories than follow a set diet plan. This allows you to eat anything (though means small portions of calorie-dense foods) and lets you have a bit extra at weekends and a bit less on weekdays. The diet plans that you find in books and magazines are almost all calorie-counted, even if calories aren’t shown, so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with devising your own diet.

If you’re not sure how many calories you should be eating, check the recommended daily guidelines (and calculate your own personal allowance.) I also have spreadsheets to help you work out the calories in a recipe.

Don’t become obsessed with your diet

If you’ve ever reacted to the offer of a cookie with, “Do you have any idea how many calories are in that thing? Do you want to ruin my diet? Take it away!” … then you’ll know how easy it is to become a little obsessive about dieting. This all-or-nothing thinking makes your diet feel like something negative which controls your life, rather than a way of eating well to improve your health. (And there are more tactful ways to refuse a cookie.)

Try to relax about your diet. One cookie will not make you gain three pounds overnight. Of course this shouldn’t be an excuse to indulge whenever you feel like (that one cookie won’t make a different, but a whole packet will), but you shouldn’t feel you have to miss out on special occasions such as birthdays. Have the occasional “naughty” snack or indulgent meal … just make sure you get back to your usual good habits the next day.

Make exercise a natural part of your routine

Although you don’t have to exercise in order to lose weight, I (and many experts!) believe that getting active is a perfect complement to a healthy diet. But your motivation for going to the gym is not likely to be high if you try to force yourself there every day after work … especially if that means getting home two hours later than usual.

Find a time of day when exercise can slot neatly into your routine: maybe a quick jog first thing in the morning, or a brisk walk at lunchtime. As with your dieting, try to avoid the all-or-nothing mindset: you don’t have to do an intense gym session every day to see benefits. Once exercise is established as an easy part of your day, it’s much easier to stick with it than when it seems like yet another chore.

The final post in the Dieting Basics series will be a glossary of all those confusing dieting buzz terms, like “GI”, “BMI” and “RDA”. Make sure you’re getting RSS updates so that you don’t miss it!

(Image above by dandelionfourteen)

This is the seventeenth part of the dieting basics series – see the series outline for links to all the other posts so far.

“I need chocolate – NOW!”

Do you ever feel like that? (If you’re female, it might happen a lot at a certain time of the month.) True food cravings are signs of a dietary deficiency, but we all get those occasional “cravings” when we really, really want a particular food. Whether it’s a bag of Kettle chips, a bar of Green & Blacks, a glazed doughnut or a Big Mac … it’s almost impossible to resist the temptation.

Oddly, few people have cravings for fruit and vegetables…

If your reaction to a craving is just to give in, read on! Stop telling yourself that you’re weak-willed … you aren’t, you just don’t know (yet) how you can conquer those cravings.

Don’t keep “trigger” foods at work or in the house

All of us have foods which we find it hard to indulge in sensibly. For many people, a piece of chocolate is just enough … to make them want more, and more. Others find it very difficult to have just one bag of crisps, or one cookie. If you know that you tend to over-eat certain foods, ban them from your house and office. (Or at least keep them in a place that is firmly designated for “Other People’s food” rather than yours.)

The easiest way to beat a craving is not to let it arise in the first place! You’ll find that if you do crave snack foods, the hassle of having to go out and purchase them is usually enough to weaken that craving to a vague “I wouldn’t mind some chocolate right now…”

Wait at least twenty minutes before giving in to your craving

Food cravings can be beaten just by waiting them out. However strong the desire for chocolate (crisps, cookies, cake…), it will fade after twenty minutes. When you have an overwhelming urge for a chocolate hobnob, tell yourself that you can have one in half an hour. Then look at the clock, and take a note of the time – guesstimating when thirty minutes are up is unlikely to work. If it helps, set an alarm on your computer to alert you once the time has passed, and promise yourself you won’t touch the hobnobs till that alarm goes off.

Once the time is up, don’t dive straight for the packet – give yourself a chance to reassess. Do you still really, really want that snack? Or has the desire faded almost completely?

Distract yourself from thoughts of food

Another way to beat a craving is to treat it like a small, whiny child: ignore it. When your craving is screaming “I want ice-cream!”, tune it out, and distract yourself by getting on with something. If you’re at work, get cracking on that report you’ve been putting off, or the backlog of email you keep meaning to tackle. If you’re at home, start on the washing up or ironing, or pick up your paintbrush: anything that keeps your mind and hands occupied.

Cravings only grow when you give them attention: distracting yourself from the craving for a few minutes is often enough to kill it. (Don’t feel bad. Cravings aren’t likely to become extinct any time soon…)

Phone or email a friend who’s supportive about your diet

If you have a diet buddy, a craving is a good signal to give them a ring (or write an anguished email). Unlike the colleagues in your office, who may be getting a little tired of hearing about your daily willpower struggles, your friend will always listen sympathetically. Rant if you have to, complain how unfair it is that you don’t get to eat doughnuts any more – when that stick-thin girl in the office next door can eat three and not gain an ounce.

Once your friend has made the appropriate sympathetic noises, reminded you that you chose to go on a diet, and shared some gossip … you’ll probably have forgotten all about your craving.

The next part in this series will give you the secrets of fitting your diet around your life. Make sure you’re getting RSS updates so that you don’t miss it!

(Image above by Sean Dreilinger)