Office issues with sweets chocolate and cakes

I am lucky enough to be able to train a lot of professions and it’s also who I target to train, every one of my office based clients all suffer with the dreaded ‘fat Friday’, ‘cake Wednesday’, ‘treat Tuesday’, birthdays, post holidays, basically any day where people can bring in cakes, chocolates, biscuits and any other crap foods.

Now, there are negative consequences for your waist line but also your productivity, but you know that, and you know they are easy to snack on and quickly eat way too much without really thinking about it, you’re typing away and you don’t even notice your hand reach over, grab a little chocolate and carry on typing, absolutely no clue that you actually had 3 not one, you done this 3 times before but only noticed the last grab.

Before you know it you have eaten 500 calories of whatever food someone brought in throughout the day, when you have probably 1500-2000 calories per day to play with (for fat loss) this leaves you struggling for filling, nutritious food so you go over your calories without really knowing you have, you think you’re in a calorie deficit but the teas, the little snack chocolates you don’t realise you are massively over eating, all knocks your calories over your daily/weekly limits and thus stops you losing weight.

To limit this and hopefully to stop it, is actually really simple, as long as you want too stop, and this is without moving desks, if the chocolate treats happen to land on or by your desk then move them, move them to another part of the office, if anyone wants to complain you moved the chocolate away from your desk then who cares, you can explain you’re on a diet or can you can just put them somewhere else and ignore what the other person says and most probably no one will actually pay attention or care they have moved. (Side note: if someone does moan you moved the chocolate then the other person is an idiot and just ignore them, as the common phase goes ‘don’t give a fuck’)

If this isn’t possible, you can put a picture of your goal on desk, like a sunny beach if you are losing weight for a holiday, a picture of your wedding dress, a picture of your kids, whatever reason find a picture that represents that put it there and every time you think ‘oh fuck it, I’ll have one’ look at that picture, remind yourself why you’re on this journey and carry on typing and clicking away.

You can also practise mindful eating(you should anyway!), this is where you weigh up the options, you see the chocolates and think, ‘yeah go on, it’s only one’ –no think to yourself if I have one will that lead to 2,3 or 4, if I try ‘A’ what are the consequences, where will it lead to, what am I likely to do after? Etc.

And my final suggestion is a corker – when you want a chocolate, get up and walk to the floor below/above or a few below/above, use their water fountain to get a class of water drink one there fill up the glass again and walk back to your office, and plan what you will do when you get back to your desk and see the chocolates, ‘I will sit down, have a sip of water and get to work, if I get tempted by the chocolate, I will remind myself of my goal but also the reason/s why I want to achieve my goal.’

This way you increase your NEAT (extra energy used through the day not exercising) which means you should hopefully reach your goals a bit quicker and also become a bit healthier.

I hope this helps with your self control!

Be confident in yourself! You are better than you think!