Slim for Life (17 page)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the cake or cupcakes roll out for a coworker’s birthday. Depending on the size of your office, these festivities can lead to calorie-blowing disaster—you can wind up indulging in birthday cake multiple times a week. After all, you don’t want to be rude right? You don’t want to waste food, right? Wrong! Send a happy birthday e-mail. Explain that you won’t be making it over for the celebration because you’re “saving the extra calories” and can’t handle the temptation. Let them know you love them and hope they have a rad birthday. End of story. I promise they’ll understand. If they don’t, forget them. They aren’t really a friend if they can’t support you in this.

Your only alternative is to campaign to switch the whole office over to a healthier alternative like frozen yogurt or fruit plates. Good luck with that. I tried it personally and didn’t get very far. Why rain on the birthday person’s parade? Just send an e-mail or stop by before the cake to offer your birthday wishes.

Communicate with your coworkers that you’re on a health kick. See who you can get on board. Try to switch the TGIF happy hour ritual for a late-afternoon company basketball game. Or start a walking group before or after work, maybe even during lunch hour. Talk to your HR department about the food provided in morning meetings. Instead of bagels, bacon and cheese omelets, and muffins, plead your “slim” argument and get them to switch over to 100 percent whole-grain Ezekiel muffins, fruit plates, organic Greek yogurt, 100 percent whole-grain toast with scrambled eggs, and nitrate-free turkey bacon. And if HR doesn’t agree to substitute all of these, see
where they will compromise, and at least try to influence them to serve
something
healthy.

Sometimes temptation can’t be avoided, but knowing it’s coming ahead of time allows you to plan an effective strategy and a successful outcome. Here are the key danger zones you’ll likely encounter and tactics for managing them.

1. If you’re forced at some point to eat from a vending machine, choose yogurt, nuts and seeds, granola bars, mini pretzels, or string cheese. AVOID chips, cookies, pastries, candy bars, and soda.

2. At the morning meeting, if you’re lucky and have healthy options, go with fruit, yogurt, half a low-fat bran muffin, oatmeal, dry toast, or eggs. AVOID bacon, pastries, bagels, jams, and cream cheese. If healthy options are never available, eat before you get to work, or bag your own healthy breakfast so you can eat with everyone else.

3. When your coworkers order takeout, choose the healthiest option possible from the menu. (Refer back to the “
Be multiculturally selective” tip
if you need to.) If they’re ordering Chinese, select the paper-wrapped chicken; if it’s Italian, get a salad. (Even pizza joints have some kind of antipasto or salad—but skip the added meats and cheeses.) If they’re ordering from a sandwich place, order a grilled chicken sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and mustard. Got it?

4. Combat a coworker’s candy bowl by putting a fruit bowl on your desk. Try having healthier options in sight and within reach to help defend against temptation.

Just as your mom did when she sent you to school, you should pack and bring your lunch. Bringing healthy snacks to the office is great, but bringing healthy meals makes a huge difference. Spend one night each week cooking food that you can throw into a glass container. Then store it in the office fridge or your mini-fridge (the one you’re going to purchase and stash under your desk if the company allows it). If cooking seems overwhelming or impossible to you, the other option is to bring healthy frozen foods to work. Although I’m not a fan, as most frozen foods are crap and filled with chemicals and preservatives, there are a few options out there that will suffice.

Look for these frozen-food brands: Amy’s Organic, Healthy Choice 100% Natural (while not organic, it’s free of artificial flavors, preservatives, and colors, making it a better option than most), Nature’s Path, Cedar Lane, Trader Joe’s, and 365 Organic.

Remember that scene from the movie
Pretty Woman
where Julia Roberts takes Richard Gere to the park for lunch to “cop a squat”? Grab a park bench or a spot in the grass and enjoy your lunch. The point is to eat away from your desk. One of the worst eating mistakes is to place yourself in an atmosphere where you can be easily distracted from the food in front of you. Remember our “Make it a production” tip on
this page
? Eating in front of your computer is like eating in front of your television—bad.

Although you may think it’s convenient or shows company loyalty to work through your lunch break, don’t do it. Studies show that people who eat when they’re distracted tend to overeat. Instead, stop and focus on the food. Not only will you eat less, you’ll enjoy your food more. Maybe you’ll even get a few moments out of your day to enjoy nature or the company of good friends, or to destress.

Suss out restaurants with healthy takeout menus that are close to your workplace. Keep a notebook listing them and stash it somewhere so that it’s readily available. When it’s time to eat, you and your coworkers are already set up for success, and you can choose a place you’ve already preapproved.

I don’t expect you to be busting out circuits while you’re wearing your power suit, but there are plenty of ways to get in a bit of physical activity even in the midst of a hectic workday.

Competition is a great incentive when it comes to workouts. I can’t begin to tell you how many people have come up to me and told me they started a weight-loss competition at their office, and that they’d already lost x amount of pounds themselves and so had others. This is a great thing to initiate
at work because it builds motivation, support, and camaraderie among coworkers. Get as many people on board as possible, and break the office up into weight-loss
teams. Then try to structure team workouts with coworkers around the competition, like a yoga class before the morning meeting or a running group after work. Fostering such competition will not only champion your healthy lifestyle stand at the office, it will create a happier, healthier environment for all involved.

Stand up and walk for the duration of your phone calls. If you’re in a small cube, step side to side, do small knee lifts, or stretch while you talk. You’ll burn 2 to 4 calories a minute. It adds up, really: you can burn 60 to 120 calories on a 30-minute phone call.

Sorry, I know the advice that I’m about to impart isn’t necessarily advice you want to hear or adhere to, but it’s important that you do it. I always felt ridiculous following it, but I did it anyway because I cared about the size of my ass more than I cared about what people at work thought of me. The advice is: do body-weight exercises at your desk. Try doing push-ups on the edge of the desk, squats (touch
your bum to the seat of your chair for every rep), calf raises, lunges, and dips on your chair. I knocked out a set of these every hour or so. Take care of you—there’s nothing silly about that.

Sit on a stability ball instead of a chair to strengthen your abs and back and to improve posture. Sitting on a ball challenges your core all day long. Do ball bounces and seated ball jacks to increase circulation and to turn on your brain. Finally, use the ball to get in a few crunches, squats, and push-ups during a break before you head home.

Designate one of your file cabinets, or even just a corner of your cube, as an exercise locker. Seriously. I want you to store a pair of athletic shoes so you can use your breaks to take a quick, brisk walk or go for an even longer one during lunch. Stash a resistance tube so you can create a minicircuit of resistance training in your cube or office; let it double as a stretching tool to relieve muscles tired from sitting. Squeeze in a quick set between phone calls or meetings. Store some hand weights, too. Your back and upper body will thank you for it.

Set an alarm on your watch, phone, or computer to remind you to get up and move every hour.

Get active on your coffee break. Change into walking shoes and zoom past the coffee machine and the coffee klatch in the lunchroom. (Of course, you can always invite them to join you.) Then log in a half mile or a full mile (inside or outside the building); it takes 10 minutes to walk a half mile, about 20 for a full. How long you walk depends on how much time you have for your break. On
your way back in, grab your coffee and trot back to your workstation. It’s a win-win in my opinion: some exercise and a quick caffeine fix.

This next section applies—as you may have guessed—to all things travel-related. Whether you’re hauling yourself from place to place for work or are off having a luxurious vacation, any time you’re
on the road, you lose a little of the control and support that you now have at home. Try these tricks to stay on track.

Use your hotel room’s minibar to stock healthy food from a local grocery store. I always do this when I travel to remote locations that have nothing but fast-food joints and gas stations on every corner. It may not be the most convenient thing to do, but it’ll save your ass—literally.

You know those little motels and hotels that don’t have room service but always serve complimentary juice, Danish, and coffee in the morning? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in places like this while traveling for work and felt like I had no options. Well, I came up with a solution! Bring oatmeal packets with you. Nature’s Path Hemp Plus is my personal favorite. Then use the coffee maker in your room to make the hot water for it. Or pack a BPA-free
BlenderBottle with a wire mixer ball—it’s light and compact. Use it to make a protein shake, or let it do double duty to hold water so you stay hydrated.

Grab your favorite snacks that pack well and bring them with you. I always bring protein powder and oatmeal packets, as I mentioned, but I also take 22 Days protein bars, Kind bars, Justin’s peanut butter packets, whole-grain crackers, dry roasted nuts, organic turkey or beef jerky, freeze-dried fruit (different from dried fruit, it’s lower in calories and has less sugar). This should cover you in a pinch and help you navigate the airport when healthy options are scarce and you can’t get a real meal. Plus, all these items are approved for carry-on. Meals on planes are nonexistent these days in coach—but you can toss these snacks in your bag and rest easy.

Have you heard the term
food desert
? It means a place where there are no healthy food options for ten-plus miles in every direction, and there’s just a wasteland of gas stations and fast-food joints. Occasionally, you’ll have to travel to one, and sometimes when you’re
on the road, you’ll find only gas stations and convenience stores. Should this be the case, here are the go- to options you can almost always find at any mini-mart, even in no-man’s-land: hard-boiled eggs, cheese sticks, yogurt, popchips, protein bars, nuts, fruit, and the healthiest cereal option available.

God help me for having to write this, but if you’re forced to go to a
fast-food place, under duress or threat of bodily harm by a desperate friend (let me pretend, please, that there would be no other reason for you to find yourself there), look for a Starbucks, Chipotle, Baja Fresh, El Pollo Loco, Au Bon Pain, or Subway. These places at least have sandwiches that don’t contain thousands of calories, and they provide healthier options like grilled fish tacos and salads. (Just remember to get all condiments and dressings on the side!) When I’m in this position, I’ll get the six-inch veggie from Subway, no cheese or mayo, and add in avocado. (And I have them scrape the excess bread from inside the sandwich roll.)