I work in an Office, and losing weight is so hard!

First off i must say this is a very good forum topic that you started and im 100% certain that this is a majority issue with alot of MFP people today.

I am in the same situation and im just like you, always active, needing to move and that helps control my weight. Sitting around is not my strongest skillset ( even when i play video games i do pushups and situps to stay active)

To counter the many hours of mandatory sitting of a 9-5 desk job, i have dramatically changed my eating habits.

I would say of all things this is VERY key and the first thing you should adjust time NOW!

You can use my food journal logs as a reference if needed but like stated before change your snacking throughtout your ENTIRE workday.

This is actually the prime time for you also to get your water intake up for one of many reasons. First is that it gets your daily water intake number EASY and also it will force you to get up constantly to go to the restroom which is walking calories, running sometimes depending on how far the restroom is and how hard the runs hit you hahahaha

Make sure you use a 16.9 oz water bottle for this, reason for this is because it also forces you to constantly get up to refill your water bottle as well.

Now for the filler details as i like to call them. Snacking: make sure to bring a small yet active workday snack. For me its either sunflower seeds or pecans (you could even try light butter or no butter popcorn). This can also be fruit but you want to be careful because of the sugar that is in fruit. I would limit this if possible.

Sparatic workouts during the day: I dont know how your work place is set up but try sneaking in 10-15 pushups or crunches just to keep the body alive while you are sitting around all day. It will seem weird but trust you will look past it heck some people might get motivated by seeing you do that and join! (personal experience lol)

Lunchtime: Keep your lunchtime meal intake as light as possible especially since you can't get to a gym during or after work because of the distance. For example, turkey sandwhich with 100 calorie soup or homemade grilled chicken tenders with 1 minute brown rice.

I really hope this information helps out for you and if you need any other help or tips, just pop me a friend request and msg me away. I will be happy to help assist!!!!

Eat less, if the gym is too far do workouts at home, like DVD workouts or anything like that!

Don't worry too much about where you'll get your exercise(the above suggestions were great though). It's a relatively small factor in your quest to drop what amounts to the professional version of the "freshman 15". Your diet is far and away the most crucial thing to rein in.

My suggestion, cut out using the cafeteria. Plan out your work week breakfast, lunch and snacks on Saturday. Go to the store and buy things on Sunday, then cook it all up that day and separate it out into portions from the week. I bought a crock pot and just look for simple and healthy recipes online. Just throw everything in, come back a couple hours later (a downside to the crock pot is you end up eating the same thing for lunch for the week. But if you make something super tastey, shouldn't be a problem).

Also pick up some of those water flavoring drops (Mio, Dasani, etc.). I know I wasn't a huge fan of plain water, but with a bit of flavor it gets MUCH easier to drink up.

What you'll need:

1) 30 minutes on Saturday to plan
2) 2-3 hours on Sunday to shop and cook
3) A lunch bag/box to keep things cold/warm
4) Tupperware or other storage
5) A good water bottle you can easily carry
6) Scale to weigh out food/portions
7) Will power to change

You can also try only bringing $2 cash with you to work. Thus limiting your spending and snacking potential. So if you get the craving to snack/buy something... you can only buy $2 worth of snacks.

Excellent post and advice.

I personally didn't have the patience to write something like this for an OP who sounds committed to making excuses but I am glad someone did. Very nicely done.

The gym is too expensive and too far for me, too, so I YouTube Zumba videos and do them at home. My 3 year old daughter loves dancing around while I do them, so it's fun for us both. I will also start walking in our local park once the weather is nice enough to do that.

I take a good, hard look at the people who have worked in this office for years and have no problem passing up the free donuts and pizza!

Do you want convince food or do you want a hot *kitten*? It's all a compromise and swim suit season is coming!

There are no excuses not to work out. Take the bus to the gym. Buy a used treadmill off craigslist and start running in your basement. Do those info graphic workouts that are all over Pinterest on your bedroom floor. 30 minutes every day. No excuses. Can't find time? 5am is available!

Bring healthy lunches and snacks, track what you eat and stay within calories, workout 30 mins minimum, keep a big water bottle with you and filled at all times, and skip the connivence. Free connivence food is why your co-workers look like the round people in floaty chairs from the movie Wall•e. And get out of your chair whenever possible! Talk to a co-worker rather than send an email, do lunges in the hallway when you go to the bathroom, stretch while you're filling your water bottle in the kitchen. Good luck and it is do-able!

It isn't hard, you just need to exercise some control over your eating habits. It can be mentally difficult to make the transition from being extremely active to sedentary because you REALLY can't eat all the foodz anymore. This is where tracking your food intake can really come in handy. You can start to see where you need to make the changes.

I sit at a desk all day as well. I do make time for the gym, but I don't find the desk job a hindrance to my weight loss. I hinder my weight loss by not being diligent about watching my intake. You can add more activity to your day by implementing many of the good suggestions that have already been said.

As for the diet, that is the biggest cause of why you have gone up in weight. It will be the reason you lose the weight as well. You don't have to rely on the cafeteria for lunch. Pack your own food that you like and can easily keep track of. Keep to what you bring that fits your goals. Exercise will power and patience and commit to keeping a reasonable calorie intake based on your new lifestyle.

I work in an office 9 hours a day. I also go to school full time for 4 hours 4 nights a week. I pack my own lunches and snacks. I get up at 4:30am to go to the gym and then go home to get my 3 kids ready for school and myself ready for work. I am exhausted 85% of the time. There are mornings where I struggle to roll out of bed!!! If I miss the morning work out I run when I get home. I had to decide that I am important. My health and fitness are a priority to ME. As already recommended, pack your own lunches and snacks. Make yourself a priority and find the time to fit it in.

Food:

Planning is everything. If there are vending machines at work, maybe make them off limits. There might be some choices that could fit into a healthy diet once you get good habits established, but at first, I'd stay away. Bring some fruit, nuts, and healthy meal pre-measured so you can track calories accurately.

Get a water bottle and keep it full. Drink water all the time. I have a big bottle that works out to just a tic under 4 8 oz. glasses of water. I try to drink it twice while I'm at work.

Have a couple of "treats". I keep Hershey's Special Dark snack size chocolate in my office. It's got good stuff for you and one of the little bars is only 51 calories. But it feels like a treat.

Exercise:

I assume you're taking public transit to work since you don't drive (you kids today!) Get off a stop early and walk the rest of the way. Same on the way home.

If you're not on the first floor of your building, take the stairs. Or if you're on the 20th floor, take the elevator to 15 and walk the rest.

Look for opportunities to get out of your desk. The water bottle will help here. You'll get a few steps in just making 8 trips to the bathroom. If you get a brake, find a place to walk a bit, or go back to those stairs. There's a conference room here that's rarely used and I do laps around the table. You'd be surprised how much you can get done in 10 minutes.

In short, it's not a big thing, it's a bunch of little things and they really do add up.

Stick with it! You got this.

Sorry OP. I work in an office too, I walk ten steps to my car, twenty steps to my desk at work and sit for 8.5 hours. Stop making excuses, cut your calories, stop eating rubbish and stop making excuses.

Wow, what words of encouragement! Because ya'll already knew how to do everything right from the geto-go, too!

lol. well put.

I remember the temptations at work so I think bringing in packed lunch is a good idea and then maybe on a friday treat yourself. SOme one else above also had the great idea of limiting how much money you bring into the office each day.

Fitnessblender.com and hasfit.com have great exercises so you can get something in before or after work which ever suits.

Good Luck you can do it.

First off i must say this is a very good forum topic that you started and im 100% certain that this is a majority issue with alot of MFP people today.

I am in the same situation and im just like you, always active, needing to move and that helps control my weight. Sitting around is not my strongest skillset ( even when i play video games i do pushups and situps to stay active)

To counter the many hours of mandatory sitting of a 9-5 desk job, i have dramatically changed my eating habits.

I would say of all things this is VERY key and the first thing you should adjust time NOW!

You can use my food journal logs as a reference if needed but like stated before change your snacking throughtout your ENTIRE workday.

This is actually the prime time for you also to get your water intake up for one of many reasons. First is that it gets your daily water intake number EASY and also it will force you to get up constantly to go to the restroom which is walking calories, running sometimes depending on how far the restroom is and how hard the runs hit you hahahaha

Make sure you use a 16.9 oz water bottle for this, reason for this is because it also forces you to constantly get up to refill your water bottle as well.

Now for the filler details as i like to call them. Snacking: make sure to bring a small yet active workday snack. For me its either sunflower seeds or pecans (you could even try light butter or no butter popcorn). This can also be fruit but you want to be careful because of the sugar that is in fruit. I would limit this if possible.

Sparatic workouts during the day: I dont know how your work place is set up but try sneaking in 10-15 pushups or crunches just to keep the body alive while you are sitting around all day. It will seem weird but trust you will look past it heck some people might get motivated by seeing you do that and join! (personal experience lol)

Lunchtime: Keep your lunchtime meal intake as light as possible especially since you can't get to a gym during or after work because of the distance. For example, turkey sandwhich with 100 calorie soup or homemade grilled chicken tenders with 1 minute brown rice.

I really hope this information helps out for you and if you need any other help or tips, just pop me a friend request and msg me away. I will be happy to help assist!!!!

I'm in the military and we call it "morale minutes" to get the whole office up to do a minute of pushups or situps. Make it a thing in the civilian world too!

do you work in the city, or out in Long Island - one of the things I did when I lived in the city was get of the subway a stop or two earlier and walk part of the way - I lived out in Washington Heights, but worked on the upper east side on 2nd Ave - so if time/weather permitted, just stayed on the west side trains and walked crosstown.

Living in Long Island, I suppose you can bike - or at work, do office exercises/chair exercises, you can exercise/walk in your neighborhood at home

you are on your own with the cafeteria, never had experience with an office that had one of those - but you can try bringing your own healthy snacks to munch on instead

^^^ good ideas, also If you can walk up to the office or down, stairs are great exercise. the only time i take an elevator at work is if i am moving something between floors. And the walk a few of the stops of your daily trip is an excellent suggestion (I can't walk in it takes too long but i do walk home (6.4 km or 4 miles - basically several stops on transit - takes a little less than an hour, longer if i pass something that distracts me

My job is sedentary (sitting at a computer all day), and I can't afford a gym membership (also I hate gyms). Here is what is working for me (I am just starting out):

--#1 thing is tracking calories in and planning your meals & snacks. A lot of good suggestions above. It takes me about 15-20 minutes in the morning to put together my bag of snacks (small banana, almonds, apple w/peanut butter), my lunch (usually leftovers from dinner or a salad), and my water bottle. I have a food scale so that I make sure my portions are accurate. There are a lot of good suggestions above. If I do have to buy a lunch, I go somewhere where calorie counts are posted and where they have good options so that I don't just end up buying something I'll regret later.

--I also bring my own herbal tea bags so that I can make my own tea with the hot water available at work. I like the Yogi Egyptian Licorice because it is naturally sweet (but you should avoid that flavor if you have high blood pressure).

--People have already pointed out that calorie intake, not exercise, is the key, but for me, the two go hand in hand. When I exercise regularly, I am more motivated to eat properly because I can see and feel the changes in my body. I don't belong to a gym, but I have dumbbells in three sizes, a medicine ball, resistance bands, and a yoga mat in the apartment. These things take up very little room. I use the Sworkit Pro app on my iPad, which uses only body weight and requires no equipment (although I have begun adding weights to some of the exercises). Even if I don't have a ton of time, I know that at minimum, I can fit in a 15-minute Sworkit session. I also own a decent pair of running shoes and walk/run with my dog every day. On Friday nights I play tennis for two hours, which I think burns a lot of calories.

Going from the stimulating world of college to the often stultifying atmosphere of an office can be a big adjustment, and I understand how easy it is to lose track of your eating habits just because of boredom. You need to be conscious of the choices you are making and make a real effort to change them.

Don't worry too much about where you'll get your exercise(the above suggestions were great though). It's a relatively small factor in your quest to drop what amounts to the professional version of the "freshman 15". Your diet is far and away the most crucial thing to rein in.

My suggestion, cut out using the cafeteria. Plan out your work week breakfast, lunch and snacks on Saturday. Go to the store and buy things on Sunday, then cook it all up that day and separate it out into portions from the week. I bought a crock pot and just look for simple and healthy recipes online. Just throw everything in, come back a couple hours later (a downside to the crock pot is you end up eating the same thing for lunch for the week. But if you make something super tastey, shouldn't be a problem).

Also pick up some of those water flavoring drops (Mio, Dasani, etc.). I know I wasn't a huge fan of plain water, but with a bit of flavor it gets MUCH easier to drink up.

What you'll need:

1) 30 minutes on Saturday to plan
2) 2-3 hours on Sunday to shop and cook
3) A lunch bag/box to keep things cold/warm
4) Tupperware or other storage
5) A good water bottle you can easily carry
6) Scale to weigh out food/portions
7) Will power to change

You can also try only bringing $2 cash with you to work. Thus limiting your spending and snacking potential. So if you get the craving to snack/buy something... you can only buy $2 worth of snacks.

This is great advice!

OP: it's important to be accountable to yourself during this process, which is why people don't like hearing the excuses on here. Be honest with yourself about what you're willing to do to achieve your goals. If you're not willing to put in the work, then don't expect the results. Sounds harsh, but it's a simple fact and truth to everything in life not just weight management.