How to Stay Healthy at Work

By Joe Baxter

Depending on where you work and what you do, your physical activity for the eight-hour day will vary. If you’ve got a job in which you sit at a desk or at a computer much of the day, you can gain weight quickly if you aren’t careful with what you eat. If you’re physically active at work, you can still practice eating well to properly nourish and maintain that high level of physical activity. Here are a few health tips to consider to feel good about your body and to reduce the chances of medical complications.

• Pack a lunch. It’s pretty easy to hit the burger shop or fast food joint while on lunch break, but don’t do it. You’re not doing your body any favors by ingesting lumps of trans fats and carbs, then proceeding to sit in a desk chair all day. Pack a sandwich, or eat leftovers from the night before. It isn’t glamorous, but you will be saving yourself some extra calories. Bring a Ziploc bag of carrots or apples, and treat these as your snacks. Refrain from potato chips, candy, or soda, because these will go straight to your thighs.


• Snack once on each side of lunch. If your workplace has a vending machine, the temptation can be difficult to resist. Beef jerky, trail mix, nonfruit fruit snacks, and cookies are not great snacking options. You’ll get hungry throughout the working day, and this is inevitable, so be conscious of what goes into your body. It’s tough to settle for a simple bag of carrots so maybe celery and peanut butter strikes your fancy a bit more. Eating lots of unhealthy snacks is just like charging lots of little purchases on your credit card — they add up. Limit yourself to two snacks and keep them healthy.


• Drink water. Soda is nothing but water and high fructose corn syrup. You can throw down 200 calories with one bottle of soda. Two of these down and you’ve already had 20 percent of your daily calorie limit. Gatorade or Vitamin water are no better either, if you aren’t doing something active to burn those off. I’ll go out on a limb and say 100 percent of workplaces have water sources available for when you get thirsty, either in the form of a water cooler or drinking fountain. It’s amazing as to how many calories you don’t drink by refraining to drink juice or soda.

A few simple strategies to limit caloric intake in the workplace go a long way to dictating how good your body looks. Work is fatiguing no matter what type of job you have. At the end of the day the last thing a lot of people feel like doing is hitting the gym or going on a run. Most like to wind down and chill out for a bit before doing anything constructive. On those days in which you really don’t feel like doing anything after work, try to make up for it by eating healthy at work.

Now that he's retired from the field of medical research, Joe Baxter has picked up freelance writing. He particularly enjoys writing about medical journals. Apart from writing, he spends the rest of his free time traveling abroad and working in his woodshop.