How can I lose weight while working?
I've been working from home since march and I've gained a lot of weight. Is there anything small I can do while working to help keep my fitness up?
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Answers ( 1 )
Good news - there are a lot of things you can do, small things, that will help. The slightly less good news is that making the changes last is not so easy. Here's a one-month plan for stabilizing your weight gain and then, slowly, starting to move in the other direction. The key here is to do nothing radical - make small changes, applied over time.
First, without changing anything you are doing, track your calories for a week. I recommend My Fitness Pal, its free, it has a vast database of meals/foods that you can tag so you don't have to add things manually. You can also track any exercise you are getting. But don't worry too much about making changes in the first week, instead, get a baseline. Tracking what you eat is the most important change you can make - keep it up for three more weeks.
After a week, you should be able to see how many calories you're getting on a daily basis, and roughly the split in terms of Carbs/Fats/Protein. In order to stop gaining pounds, you need to consume less calories, and ideally up your exercise. In the second week, set a goal to consume 100 fewer calories per day than your average from the previous week. That's not a lot, but it should be enough to make you think about, say, having a glass of water instead of a second beer/soda/milk/juice, or putting a serving of chips/pretzels/nuts in a bowl instead of scarfing through the entire container.
In the third week, try to get some kind of exercise in. I don't mean "go for a run, hit the gym" kind of thing, if you aren't doing it already, those are big asks. Instead go for a 15 minute walk, every day. Ideally do this before and after your work day. Don't put on workout clothes - I mean, get out of your pajamas, sure - but just slap on whatever you have in terms of non-dress shoes and, instead of scrolling through Twitter/FB/Insta/Reddit/TikTok/etc., get outside.
In week four, lower your calorie consumption another 100. Now, if you're on track, you're consuming 200 less calories per day than you were a month ago, and burning 100 calories per day more. -2100 calories per week (about the amount of the average entree at the Cheesecake Factory) will start to show results. Conventional wisdom is you need to get to -3500 to lose 1 pound, so you're on track to lose 2-3 pounds per month, which IMO healthy and sustainable.
Give that a shot for the month of November, and let us know how it goes in the comments!