Water Bottle: Most offices these days have water coolers where you can get yourself
a glass of cool refreshing water whenever you want. The problem is, that sometimes
you get so busy that you can go hours without filling your empty glass.
Drinking water is far too important to your overall health and weight loss
aspirations to leave to chance and having a decent sized bottle of water at
your desk all the time will help insure you're getting enough.
The other great benefit of using a large bottle instead of glasses or cups
of water is that you can easily track how much you've consumed during your
day. Having plenty of water within your reach at all times will keep you well
hydrated and help you avoid the office munchies by keeping your stomach nice
and full.
Fruit: Each couple of days, bring a bag of fresh fruit to the office and store it
at your desk. Try to be adventurous; don't just stick with the common fare
of apples and mandarins. Berries, grapes, mangos and kiwi fruit will keep for
several days, more if you have access to an office refrigerator, and provide
variety to whet your appetite for something other than chocolate biscuits.
If you have a blender, take it to work with you and create a wonderful smoothie
or fruit cocktail made with banana, pear, apple, pineapple, strawberries, orange
juice and ice. Store it in the office fridge and it will stay good for a whole
day or more.
Nutritious Snack or Protein bars: You can also use these as meal replacements, but be careful to read the labels.
Many "nutritional bars" are nothing more than candy bars in deceptive
packaging. Stay well away from those with high levels of sugar and fat.
Vegetables: Bring a couple of small ziplocked bags of sliced carrot, celery sticks or
your favorite veggies.
Low-fat cottage cheese/low sugar yogurt: Small containers of these on hand will provide nutritional meal options.
Ricecakes: A bag of low-sodium ricecakes tucked away can satisfy a need to eat something
crunchy. Just stay away from the ones loaded with flavored sugar coating.
Toothbrush/Mouthwash: Apparently, this is an age old competitive bodybuilding trick.
During pre-contest
dieting, some bodybuilders attempt to deflect the temptation to eat blacklisted
foods within reach by brushing their teeth. As you can imagine, the last thing
they would want to do after brushing with minty toothpaste or gargling with
mouthwash would be to eat a piece of chocolate or lollies. Not bad for keeping
your breath fresh, too.
Utensils: Make sure you have a serving or two of utensils at your desk, along with something
to cut your food if needed.
Thermal-Lunch-bags: If you don't have a fridge or cooking facilities at work, take an insulated
lunch-bag or thermal to work.
The lunch-bag will keep your fruit, sandwiches
and other nutritional snacks safe and fresh until your ready to eat and a thermal
is perfect for taking healthy vegetable soups to work for that perfect winter
snack.
The first step to staying on track with your eating program, particularly
at work, is planning ahead. You don't have the power to control what your co-workers
bring into the office, but you can help ward off temptation by stocking up
on a few items of your own.
Remember, the point is to not make your own desk resemble a supermarket aisle,
but to have enough options on hand in order to substitute for the really bad
stuff should the need arise.
Good luck and thanks for visiting weightloss.com.au.
© Copyright Ultimate Weightloss.
Reproduction of this article is permitted free of charge provided that it is reproduced unchanged and in its entirety, it is accompanied by a website link back to www.weightloss.com.au and is properly credited to Weightloss.com.au.
