How to Make it Work...At Work!

Waldorf Salad, Strawberries, and Blueberries!

Well, ladies and gents, I have some bad news. According to a new study your JOB can make you fat (and unfortunately i mean your body, not your wallet). According to this study, the top 10 fattest professions are:

1.       Travel agent
2.       Attorney/Judge <-- soon enough this will be me...OY!
3.       Social worker
4.       Teacher
5.       Artist/designer/architect
6.       Administrative assistant
7.       Physician
8.       Protective services (police, firefighter)
9.       Marketing/public relations professional
10.     Information technology professional

My response to this study is as follows: NOT IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT. There are several challenges to eating healthy at the office. First is lunch break. Most of the positions above don't get one. This often to leads to people grabbing something quick at a cafeteria or a restaurant near by. Eating restaurant food for lunch can be the down fall to any healthy eating plan. When you eat out, you can't control the portion size or the ingredients as easily as when you cook at home. Eating such a huge meal for lunch can be a major set back IF you plan to eat an equally large meal for dinner. My number one piece of advice for living a healthy lifestyle is to bring your lunch to work. 

This leads to challenge number two: not having enough time to go to the grocery store to get something to make AND not having enough time to make whatever it is you buy. I have a few solutions for this. First, do all your shopping on Sunday. Get whatever it is you need for the whole week if you can. This takes a little extra time to plan ahead, but it ends up saving you time as the week goes on. Then, prepare as much as possible as soon as you get your things home from the store. On sunday nights, my fridge looks like one of the fridges at My Fit Foods or Snap Kitchen...all stocked up and ready to go. 

The third challenge is work place snacking. My office has a FANTASTIC snack cabinet, and in the 3 weeks I've been interning I haven't opened it once. It's a slippery slope, and once I start there's no stopping me. One thing my office does that helps me is charge 50 cents per snack. If there was just an open kitchen I would really be in trouble. Even though 50 cents is cheaper than most vending machines, having to take out my wallet or dig for change actually does prevent me from snacking! 

The fourth challenge to staying healthy at work is making sure to bring snacks with you. When you pack your lunch, throw in an extra bag of baby carrots. Slice a cucumber. Bring a reduced fat cheese stick. measure out 1/4 cup of almonds, cashews, or pistachios. Just ask the other intern in my office. I am a huge advocate for munching on vegetables all day long! 

Finally, the fifth challenge to staying healthy at work is coming up with good ideas of what to bring! I think the best invention are the ziplock containers that have the little sections in them. I call them homemade lunchables. See all the pictures below for some healthy lunch ideas, and please feel free to post in the comments section any others you might want to share! 

1/2 cup chicken salad, roasted brussels sprouts, pickled snow pea and radish salad.

Southwestern Quinoa (it's pronounced Keen-Wah)

Salad

1/2 turkey stuffed bell pepper (MADE BY EVAN!), cucumber and hearts of palm salad, brussels sprouts

Turkey roll ups (try rolling up a baby kosher dill in the middle!), strawberries, cantaloupe

XO,

Erica 

P.S. In the backgrounds of many of these pictures you will notice various law books propped open. I will try and stop getting items other than food in the pics, but the books kind of come with the territory!