5 Tips to Stop Snacking When Working from Home
Either by necessity or choice, many people who work from home find themselves fighting off pesky food cravings more than their office-bound counterparts. The reason is simple: there's simply more food available. That, and the colliding of our professional and personal worlds can cause understandable stress, which can also encourage more anxiety-driven trips to the pantry.
Plus, your family or roommates or pets, who are usually out-of-sight and comparatively out of mind when you work away from your home--are all in close, needy proximity when you set up your home office.
Even without people and pets dividing your attention, there are the influx of household chores and responsibilities that crowd around your home workspace and make it difficult to focus on your work, as well as your fitness goals.
Feeling overwhelmed by a looming deadline and the leaning tower of laundry? Snack time.
Did your kids start fighting about who gets to be the top hat in Monopoly at the same time you get a last-minute email asking if you can jump on a conference call? Snack time.
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the news pervading social media, radio, and television and can't seem to focus on basic correspondence? Snack time.
It's so easy to snack when we feel stressed out, but it's almost as easy to try these other tips to stop snacking when working from home.
Keep reading to keep your focus, and shed the pounds.
5 Tips to Stop Snacking When You're Working From Home
1. Pack Your Lunch
As far as workday snacks go, act as if you were going to a workplace. Prepare your snacks and lunch as usual, either the morning of or the night before. A little meal planning can go a long way to keep your weight in check and your snacking and eating healthy. This structure will weed out all (or at least most) of the unnecessary nibbling throughout the day.
Need help with healthy meal planning? Check out our Nutrition Guides and Meal Plans. In addition to dozens of recipes, our guides offer comprehensive nutritional guidance to help you keep your goals on track and your snacking in-line.
2. Drink Lots of Water
It's a well-known fact that thirst is often confused with hunger, so if you're feeling snacky a mere 30 minutes after eating lunch, try drinking some water instead. A big glass of water.
Learn more: With a Twist: 5 Calorie Free (or Close!) Additions to Water.
How much water should you be drinking every day? Take your weight in pounds and divide it by two. That number is the amount of water in ounces you should drink every day. For example: If you're 160 lbs, the equation would be 160/2=80. So, you'd need to drink 80 ounces of water a day, minimum. More if you live at high altitude, are pregnant or nursing, live in a hot climate and are active.
3. WORKOUT!
People who workout in the morning have been shown to be more likely to eat more healthfully and moderately throughout the day. The reasons for this phenomenon are many-fold. First, when people start the day doing something good for themselves, they're more likely to continue making positive, empowered decisions, like forgoing the call of a mid-day Fudgical for a couple of homemade chocolate coconut protein ball instead.
Working out also balances your body's production of ghrelin and leptin, which control hunger and satiety, helping you better control your appetite. Get started with us! Sweatflix has thousands of home workouts that you can do anytime, in any space. You don’t need equipment. Check out our Sweatflix No Equipment Playlist.
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4. Take a Walk
Walking might be the last thing you feel like your peckish and peeved off, but a short 10-minute walk can do a world of good to reset your perspective and keep your hands out of the cookie jar.
During your walk, think about what's really upsetting you to the point that you want to drown your sorrows in chocolate Quik. When you get back from your walk, take a drink of water and get back to work with your refreshed perspective.
5. Take Breaks
In an office or more traditional workplace, coffee breaks and lunch breaks are scheduled, but when we work for home, we often push-on through these crucial rest times and find ourselves overworked, hungry and stressed out. The result? Overeating, stress eating, and guilt--guilt that can be so overwhelming it distracts you from being productive.
So, make time to take breaks. Get up and fold a load of laundry while listening to a podcast you've been meaning to get acquainted with.
Or, flake out entirely and lay on the floor for a little quiet meditation.
Or read a book and sip on an invigorating and calming herbal tea, like peppermint.
Or if you didn't work out in the morning, you can even squeeze in a quick, sweaty and satisfying workout, like the 1000s you'll find in Sweatflix.
We recommend starting with our Stay Safe Series, which requires no equipment, or our Sweatflix Live series, which uses select pieces of our best selling hardest-hitting fitness equipment. Both of these series are just 24-minutes, so you can easily fit them into your breaks.
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The best tips to stop snacking when working from home are ultimately the ones that will work with you and your schedule. Regardless, remember to draw on these strategies whenever you’re feeling extra-snacky and know you need to reign in refrigerator roaming.