Losing weight is hard; especially if one third of your day is spent chained to your desk. While some days it can seem that it is completely impossible to reach your fitness goals under these conditions, all hope is not lost. In fact, we have successfully coached hundreds of clients to their ideal level of fitness while still working an office job.
Here are the 4 best practices that they all implemented to finally have fitness success:
Control Your Intake
There’s no getting around it; being mindful and controlling your calorie intake is really the gatekeeper to weight loss. Unfortunately, if you work at a desk most of the day instead of completing physical labor, then you’re going to have stay on your toes.
If your goal is to lose weight, then the best thing you can do is start tracking your calorie intake with a free app like MyFitnessPal. Since you won’t be burning many calories at your desk and you’re likely going to be there for a third of your day, being precise is key. Start by tracking your daily intake to get a baseline of what your normal daily intake is.
Once you have a baseline, if you aren’t currently losing at the caloric intake, then it’s time to reduce your daily limit. Start slowly at maybe 200-250 calories and check the scale every week to see if the number starts moving. Be patient, it will probably take 7-10 days before seeing a change of 1-2 pounds. Once achieved, stay at that calorie intake until weight loss stalls for over 3 weeks.
The real key to success with this is to make sure you’re tracking accurately and that might take a little practice. If you find that you can’t seem to stay at the number that you have allotted for yourself, then re-evaluate the foods that you are choosing and try to swap some out for other choices that are high in protein and will keep you full throughout the day.
Move…A Lot
Being chained to a desk can really limit the amount of activity you get, and to be frank, exercising 2 hours a week isn’t going to counteract 40+ hours of sitting. That’s not to say that you need to do a full-blown workout every day, but you should aim to get a minimum of 30 minutes per day.
Start with 2-3 days of resistance training focused on exercises that work a lot of muscles at once and make sure to load them heavy enough to be challenging at 8-12 repetitions. These sessions will not only burn a lot of calories, but also develop strength and help to keep your metabolism elevated throughout the week.
Next, add in mini-workouts: 20-30 minute bursts of walking, jogging, or any recreational activity. This will help to create more opportunities to burn a couple extra calories, but more importantly, develop the habit of regular activity which is the key to long-term success.
Leverage Your Lunch
One of the biggest areas that will make or break your success is your lunch hour. Typically, there is a lot of social pressure to eat out with co-workers, but that can easily put you over your calories for the day. In our experience, almost every single person that has successfully reached their fitness goals while working a desk job learned how to take control of their lunch hour.
The two habits that tend to create the best results are bringing your own nutritious food and getting in a short walk. These two habits actually harness the power of other best practices in this article to really make an impact. That’s why many people’s success hinges on whether or not the lunch hour is maximized.
Lift Weights
While lifting weights is not completely necessary for short term weight loss, it is critical to long-term success. It will ensure that as weight is lost that muscle will be retained; this means that strength is maintained or increased and that there will be a nice amount of “tone” as fat loss occurs. That means that if you want “nice arms” or “toned legs” you need to build or maintain muscle in those areas and lifting weight is the only way to make that happen.
Additionally, lifting weight burns a significant amount of calories and makes the body less susceptible to injury. Sitting most of the day is one of the leading cause of back pain, which affects countless people and creates another barrier to getting the body they want. By training the muscles in the body that support the lower back (core, legs, hips), you can ensure improved resilience and a better quality of life.
If you feel like you still need a little more direction or help getting started reaching your fitness goals, we’d be happy to help. Click the button below to meet with a coach in person and find out how we can help you be successful.
