9-5 Dieting: How to Avoid Office Pitfalls

9-5 Dieting: How to Avoid Office Pitfalls
by Susan Woodward for MSN Health & Fitness


Know this scenario? You're on a diet plan and your mind is switched to empowered. Then a coworker has an office shindig to celebrate a birthday, or the birth of a baby. You cave… and indulge in a piece of really nasty, but oh so sweet, grocery-store sheet cake.

And that's just one of the dieting traps set to ensnare the working woman.

How are you supposed to make it through a day so removed from the safety of your carefully stocked home refrigerator? How do you avoid the pick-me-up chips and candy in those darn vending machines?

O.K., nothing has the potential to blow your diet like the realities of your 9-5 world. But get a grip – understanding your foe is the key to overcoming it. Let's revisit the simple truths we busy women need to hear again and again to keep control over our eating habits.

Don't not eat

"The thing I notice most about women who work all day is they're in 'go' mode," says Julia Trick, N.D., director of nutrition at The Greenhouse, a destination spa for women in Texas. "They just don't stop to eat."

Food is essential for regulating blood sugar levels. Go without and you're more likely to overeat and/or fall prey to the ubiquity of vending machines and drive-thrus when hunger finally catches up. Plus your job performance will suffer from the strain on your mental capabilities.

The worst meal to skip is breakfast. "Breakfast is absolutely number one," says Dana Carpender, author of several popular books, including 500 Low-Carb Recipes. "And the first thing down your throat has to be protein."

Organize your own snacks

Contrary to popular belief, snacking is not evil. (See blood sugar information in the section above.)

Sugar-free chocolate bars, baked cheese snacks, and seeds and nuts (very filling) make great healthy snacks, offers Carpender. Keep a stash in your drawer for quick fixes.

Use office appliances

Look around your office break room. If it has a fridge and a microwave, your opportunities for sticking to your diet plan just skyrocketed.

Carpender, with her feverish and inventive kitchen energy, suggests bringing to work sugar-free yogurt, string cheese, deviled eggs, quiche, cold shrimp and dip, canned protein shakes, raw vegetables and stuffed celery sticks. A microwave allows for tasty leftovers, or frozen hot wings and fish fillets.

Whatever your diet permits, the point is brown bagging rules!

Advocate for change

Soda machines can be stocked with water and V8 juice; low-fat and low-carb snacks are available for vending machines; and meal delivery companies service offices with specialized foods. Get some fellow workers on your side and you may be able to inspire a small food revolution.

"A lot of change that happens, even in the corporate world, starts at a grassroots level," says Trick.

Just say no

With all this advice, summoning the will power to defeat diet-breaking indulgences at work just got easier.

But if your suggestion for sugar-free cheesecake over sheet cake doesn't fly, and the temptations at the next office soiree are too much, there's a final option open to you.

Says Carpender, "There are certain things you simply have to walk away from."

Susan Woodward lives in Olympia, Washington. She writes on topics that include health and indigenous cultures, and she works with the non-profit international health organization Amazon Promise. Her writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times.