How To Burn Fat At Work!

What’s the predominant excuse you aren’t losing weight?

You work too much??

Contrary to popular belief, there are numerous ways to burn more calories and incorporate physical activity into your day job.  One of the biggest contributors to health problems is lack of movement.  Lack of movement slows down important chemical reactions throughout the body.  These chemical reactions affect your metabolism, circulation, and brain function.  Lack of physical movement also affects the amount of calories your body stores.  If you eat something, your body will convert the food into energy.  The catch is, if you don’t give your body a reason to use this new energy, it decides to store it primarily in fat cells.  Your fat cells swell like balloons… better example = overgrown closets.  We all know that when our closets overflow into the bedroom, it’s never easy to find a matching pair of socks or make it to the bathroom in the middle of the night without tripping over some shoes!  Bottom line, in a messy room, it is difficult to move around.  Imagine all of that going on inside your own body!  So what do you do?  Well, keep your room clean!  In other words, make sure that you are using the energy you are putting into your body to prevent overgrown fat cells.  Don’t think because you work all day, you can’t burn calories and lose weight.  You can increase movement and the amount of you burn if you try the following:

Make the most of your commute = if you can’t walk or bike, try to park farther away adding (+) 20-40 yards to the front door, multiply (x) by 2 because you have to get back to your car, multiply (x) again by 340 days (considering a week or two of vacation plus sick days you’ll be out of the office) and you get (=) 13,600-27,200 extra yards/year.  That’s a lot of football fields!

Take the stairs = one of the best ways to add incidental exercise.  Climbing stairs can be one of the most efficient forms of physical movement you can do.  Depending on the height of your work building, taking the stairs every time could add up to 20-30 flights/day or 6,800-10,200 flights/year!  Who needs a gym?!  It can also save you an average of 10-15 minutes out of your workday according to some medical association journals.  Some journals found that at a hospital, it took a doctor an average of 13 seconds to climb 1 floor via the stairwell.  Whereas, start to finish, it took an average of 37 seconds by elevator considering wait time.

Stand up = Standing stimulates muscles and increases heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), and the amount of calories you burn.  You can stand while taking a call, texting, emailing, and even eating.

Stretch = stretching relieves tension throughout the body thus improving circulation and decreasing stress.  Take the time to rotate your ankles, flex your quads, and extend and twist your torso.

Use a smaller drinking cup = not only is water one of the 4 essential nutrients, having a 1-2 ounce cup will require more trips to the water fountain thus increasing your movement throughout the day.  Coffee or tea drinker?  Use a smaller cup!

Deliver hand-written notes instead of e-mailing = have some fun and increase movement and interaction with your colleagues by personally delivering notes throughout your office.

Find an exercise buddy = surely there is a coworker in your office that would be interested in increasing the amount of calories he or she burns during the day.  Motivate each other through physical challenges such as step counts, amount of visits to the gym a week, or total weight lost at the end of the month.

Sit on a fitness ball = you can swap your desk chair for a fitness ball forcing you to stimulate your core and improve your posture.

Store small exercise equipment at your desk = resistance bands and hand weights can easily be stored in a desk drawer and can help create an awesome workout without requiring a lot of space.  Contact The Lab to get some cool ideas!

Chew gum = chewing is considered non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). Sorry parents, but so is playing video games!  Twitching your legs is another form of NEAT.

Eat these common foods as snacks = the following foods burn more calories than they contain: celery, apricots, oranges, carrots, hot chili peppers, cauliflower, watermelon, grapefruit, tomatoes, apples, and strawberries.