As I've mentioned a few times in the past, I have a very physical active job. I work as a custodian at a marine biology lab. I won't mention the place by name but it's in Woods Hole Ma and it is famous. I hate the job and want to quit but with the economy so bad right now I don't dare to. Every day I haul out twenty bags of trash, sweep and mop miles of floor and vacuum acres of carpet. The vacuum I use is a foreign brand called a Euro-clean. We just call it a fanny pack because it looks just like a giant fanny pack and it is worn around the waist the same way. It weighs twelve pounds when empty and anywhere from fifteen to eighteen pounds when full. I wear it for two or three hours every day. I also clean eight multi-stalled bathrooms, sweep four stairwells, clean glass, strip and wax floors and move freight. I am in constant frantic motion all day. When I get home I'm so tired I just want to sit down and not move.
The good thing about the job is that even by the most conservative estimate, I burn a lot of calories at work. The bad thing is the job is so physical I get so hungry and drained that it's hard to keep the calories low enough to lose any weight. On weekends I eat anywhere from a third to a half less than I do on workdays.
Before I was in custodial I worked in housekeeping at the same lab which was just a bad, if not worse than what I do now. Cleaning dorm rooms is not like hotel housekeeping where, at worst, you clean sixteen rooms with a partner. I used to clean thirty rooms. That meant, among other things, I cleaned thirty bathrooms and made sixty beds every day.
My job is 100% sedentary but I have been extremely successful in warding off boredom eating by drowning myself with lots of water.
In the past I suffered massive gains from working in a government office with a delicious bagel cafeteria downstairs, and until I started consciously eating better in Japan I put on a couple pounds from the tasty school lunches (always complete with lots of white rice).
ive had good luck with atkins... what about fat smashers? from what i understand, theres no restrictions on how much of the certain allowed foods you can eat. Unlimited amounts of fruits and veggies, i think? Might be something to look into.
Personally, Atkins has helped me with the bingeing thing.
I sit in front of a computer for 8 to 16 hours a day. LOL! Is there anything more sedentary? I suppose sleeping all day would be more sedentary....
I've had this job for 13+ years. I've been working in front of a computer for 16+ years. The last time I had a job where I didn't sit on my a** all day I was 18.
My office is also right next door to the kitchen, which includes a counter full of goodies and a candy box. You should see the counter from October through December. SO MUCH JUNK FOOD!!!! But I just ignore it all. If I don't eat sugar I don't crave it.
If I weren't into exercise and eating healthy—if I didn't start paying attention to both 20 years ago—I don't know where I would be weight-wise today. I am thankful every day for the choices I made as a young adult.
If physically demanding work keeps you hungry, try eating low-calorie foods you can consume in high volume. Carrying around carrots and the like can be helpful, for example. My workouts can make me ravenous, but I just eat a ton of low-cal veggies and then my stomach feels full and yet I don't eat back much in the way of calories at all.
I also chew gum when I feel the need to eat mindlessly. After 20 minutes or so, the need goes away and I realize I'm not actually hungry after all.
Last edited by Petite Powerhouse; 10-25-2010 at 01:02 PM.
gum and coffee is how I get through work. I also have a sedentary job but they have a snack cupboard right behind me filled with candy, chocolate, chips, cookies, and fruit (but the fruit is usually old and gross because they forget about our department)
I've also found keeping healthy snacks with me helps. I like stuff with oats because if you drink water with it it keeps you really full. Oatmeal is the best diet food ever made. 1 cup of plain oatmeal is under 200 calories. Even the instant packages that you just add water are between 100-200 each.
Thanks for the replies guys but you all have sendentary jobs. Right now I think I'd give anything for a job where i could sit down all day. Then after work I'd have enough energy to exercise where and when and how I wanted.
I guess it's all relative. I'd give anything not to sit and write all day for a living. Then I could go home and sit in front of the computer and write through the night. As it is, my brain is too tired at night for me to work on my fiction. I'm tapped out creatively. I love my job, but it does make doing what I really want to with my life such a struggle.
Having a sedentary job also means I absolutely have to exercise outside of my job, which means I lose even more time when I could be working on my novel.
In the end, you just have to find a way to get where you want to with your life no matter what you do during the day. This is what I tell myself when I am being honest. Everyone has obstacles, but there is always a way. I see and read about people who have managed to achieve their goals despite life's obstacles every day. We can all do the same.
Can you exercise before work, even for half an hour? Can you carry some low-calorie veggies around in order to snack on food that won't break your calorie bank when you are hungry? Can you battle your fatigue and go for just a half-hour walk right when you get home? Little things do add up. In fact, given that your job is active, if you can change out high-calorie snacks for low-calorie ones when you are ravenous, that right there should make a big difference even if you don't add in more exercise than you do at work.
Last edited by Petite Powerhouse; 10-25-2010 at 06:43 PM.
Can you exercise before work, even for half an hour? Can you carry some low-calorie veggies around in order to snack on food that won't break your calorie bank when you are hungry? Can you battle your fatigue and go for just a half-hour walk right when you get home? Little things do add up. In fact, given that your job is active, if you can change out high-calorie snacks for low-calorie ones when you are ravenous, that right there should make a big difference even if you don't add in more exercise than you do at work.
Hi and thank you for the reply.
I think I need to clarify a few things. I have a bad tendency to forget that people who read and respond to a recent post might not remember everything I've posted in the past. Your suggestion for me to substitute low calorie snacks for high is a great one and I'd love to to do that if high calorie snacks were my problem. But because a coworker seriously abused breaktimes the breaks in my department were cut from 20 minutes to 10. The rest of us were not abusing our breaks but management decided to punish everyone, because, after all, they couldn't just single her out. So for the last six months I've had a 10 minute break in the morning and a 10 minute break in the afternoon. 10 minutes is barely enough time for me to use the bathroom and gulp down some water. When I had 20 minutes I could do all that, have a light snack and still have time to walk briskly around the block a couple of times. And the nature of my job precludes eating healthy snacks while I'm working. (Cleaning chemicals, yum.)
Because I have to be at work by 7 and won't get another chance to eat until noon my breakfast has to be fairly substantial. The same goes for lunch since my dh and I eat dinner at around 8. I wouldn't mind eating dinner earlier but he doesn't get hungry until then and I like to eat with him. Lately my breakfasts, lunches and dinners have been adding up to around 1800 calories a day which is, apparently too much for me to lose any weight on. If I cut down then it's hard for me to get through the workday because I run out of energy.
I don't exercise before work but I do walk during my lunch hour. After work I walk my dog for an hour on local woods trails, some of which are pretty steep and strenuous. After dinner if I'm not too tired I work out with a kettlebell.
What I'd really love to have is an elliptical machine but I can't afford one and have no place to put one if I did.
Sorry for the long post and I do appreciate your suggestions even if I can't use them.
It is interesting to hear about others jobs. I teach kids English, therefore am contently on the move in the classroom. I don't think I have sat down once during a class yet. I am always dancing and moving and doing this all in heels! The only problem is that I'm not up to full hours so I have a lot of down time at home at the moment...hopefully that will change. At my last job I was teaching on my feet from 7-8 hours a day. It was draining, but I didn't feel the need to kill myself working out after because I knew I burned a lot of calories.
Thanks for the idea but I don't think I could stomach beans at 5 a.m. And if I ate beans for lunch in a serving size that would carry me through the eight hours until dinner the calories would be more than I eat for lunch now.
Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum.... for the first time in my life, I've gained weight and have begun a weight loss program.
I'm a night shift nurse (which I have been for 3 years) but I've also moved to a new city, been trying lots of new restaurants, and have lost the intensity of my workouts. I'm here to get back on track!
I do think my job plays a huge role in my ability to lose/maintain weight.... I've been counting my calories from midnight to midnight, and so far so good.
well at bfast you could sneak them into a bfast burrito. even a small amount would help. i don't think beans have very many cals, you could just have 1/2 cup mixed with something else. not with any added sugar or fat. like you could bring in some lentil or bean soup for lunch. or i do salsa, black beans and basil often. also good in a wrap. with lettuce or spinach. lots of ways to add them in, if you like beans at all. and lentils seem to give less or no gas if that's a problem.
Beans, whether home prepared or canned, average 150 calories per half cup serving.Add a wrap, some veggies, perhaps an egg and a slice of cheese and that adds up to more calories than I eat for lunch now.
Last edited by Magrat; 10-30-2010 at 10:33 AM.
Reason: added text
I looked it up on fitday and if your current weight is 115 and you want to get down to 110 by the end of November you would need to be eating 1,936 calories a day. So maybe right now you are not getting enough calories in since you do so much strenuous work. I would try and up you caloric intake for a week and see if that helps with your weight loss.
Breakfast
Oatmeal
Egg
Yogurt with fruit
Snack
Baggy of almonds
Fiber one bar
Lunch
big Sandwich on whole wheat bread filled with lots of veggies and turkey
side salad with nuts and fruit
My Job Keeps Me Thin; My Job Keeps Me Fat
