Tips for losing weight when you work in an office 730am - 5pm

I work from 730 - 330 with an hour and a half commute each way - so I feel you! I have started to bring my own lunch, all weighed and measured, to keep track of what I am eating. I try to have a 0 calorie coke to boost me in the afternoon, and I always budget for chocolate in the afternoon - either a small bar or some malteaser (malteasers are 10 calories each, so it's easy to budget them out!!).

What I do now, is I walk part of my commute, which doesn't sound like an option for you. I drink a lot of water at work, which makes me pee - so I go to the bathroom on a different floor / different bathroom every time, to get a little bit of walking in.

Take your toddler to the mall after work. Spend an hour chasing your toddler, saying "Where are you going?" "Hey, don't touch that!" etc etc. Best workout ever, especially if you pause and pick your child up over your head ever so many yards. As your child grows, so do your biceps. Plus it's quality time with your kiddo!
I'm mostly kidding- I only do this with toddlers that I borrow from time to time. It might not be a sustainable exercise plan long time.

But maybe you can find some room to exercise at home- Get some exercise bands, yoga videos, (there are Mommy Yoga and Pilates vids that incorporate play with your child into them!), hula hoops, kettle bells, fitness balls- whatever looks fun to you- and take twenty minutes after dinner to get moving a little.

I have two kids , five and two, and I work full time. I wake up at 4:30am to get in 45 mins of cardio. I can do 60mins on weekends. I log like a mad woman but I don't own a scale. My weight loss is steady. I was struggling with my eating and snacking at night, mainly bc getting home with the kids and getting through the feeding, bathing, homework, bedtime routine is so exhaust ing that I would you food as a stress relief. When the kids went to bed I would use food to wind down. Now I feed myself dinner early ... As soon as I get home actually. And I find other ways to relax, such as drinking tea or sipping on coffee

I get up at 4:30am and leave the house at 5:30am, arrive at work at 6:30am. I don't leave until 3:30pm and get home around 5:00pm. I have a 3 year old at home as well. First thing I do is focus on cooking dinner and making sure I have a lunch packed for the next day. I might sneak in some exercise but to be honest it doesn't happen much because I feel drained by then.

So if you don't have time to exercise, what do you do? Control your diet. Watch what you eat very carefully and eat more vegetables and little sweets. I get my exercise time in on the weekends where I'll go shopping and walk around the mall a lot, or I'll take my toddler for a long walk. When we go out we also park far away from the doors so it gives us more steps. I could do better by going for a walk at lunch which I'll try today.

Do you have access to a gym during your lunch hour?

Diet is losing weight, exercise is for the cellulite. Focus on the weight loss first. Pre-log your meals in advance and drink lots of water.

My "babies" are now 6 and 9, and this past summer I decided it is DEFINITELY time to get my butt in gear. I've lost 25 lbs of baby fat since midsummer and have another 15 to go. I work full-time in an office, and know how difficult it can be to fit in exercise. But keep in mind, as you face the stressful office environment, you need some mechanisms to de-stress in order to cope and ultimately be a more effective worker (with less impact on the business health care plan, which makes you more valuable in another way). I work in a 7-story building, and one of the most effective things I have found for a "quick burn" is just to walk up and down the stairs for 10 -15 minutes on a break to clear my head. Most people are using the elevators and escalators, so I don't get too many odd looks in the stairwell. Depending on your weight, this is roughly 100 calories per 10 minutes. I also try to get in a half an hour walk outside on warm days; this is about 110 calories for me. Each of these is great for offsetting that chocolate, which is also a healthy treat if you are eating dark chocolate with a high cacao %. As many posters point out, walking or doing stairs while carrying a 2-year-old are significant workouts in themselves, and you get to cuddle instead of dumping your baby off at the gym after being separated all day. Another great workout is riding your bike while pulling a baby trailer. Good luck with whatever approach you take!

I also wear a Garmin VivoFit and have trouble getting over 5000 steps a day. If it's quiet at night or weekends, I do laps around the waiting room and 2 hallways, but I can't stray too far from my desk or phone.

If you predictably crave something sweet every afternoon, don't restrict yourself from having that- portion it in to your calories. Planning an all-salad-and-chicken-all-the-time diet is all well and good, but if you wind up going over your allotment by eating a candy bar every day, at some point you have to say "okay, I know I'm going to eat 200 calories of chocolate every day at 3:30, I need to trim 200 calories elsewhere to account for it or I will never lose this weight."

Likewise exercise- which is helpful but not mandatory for weight loss- if you can't reliably go to a gym or bring yourself to get up half an hour earlier (and I empathize, because there is no force in the world that will make me an early-morning exerciser), and you want to exercise, you need to figure out some way to incorporate it realistically in to your day. Take a walk around the block with your kiddo when you get home, climb the stairs ten times, park at the farthest end of every parking lot- walking is a much better exercise than most people give it credit for, and if all you're looking to do is up your calorie burn to increase your deficit, not create a chiseled physique, increasing your daily number of steps will do that just as well as fitting in a formal workout.

Go to the gym when you get off of work. Or go before work. Lots of nice Gyms have great dressing areas and you can easily take your change of clothes and be ready to start the day or after work is great.