Cutting 300 Calories a Day at Work for Weight Loss

 

Have you noticed that it is always easy to gain weight but so hard to drop those unwanted pounds? Our daily lives are full of hidden traps when it comes to food and nutrition that can cause us problems, especially when stuck at the workplace. However, here is what you need to know to break that cycle and help with cutting 300 calories a day without noticing.

If you work in an office, then you know how often there is a coffee run to places like Starbucks or other coffeehouses. Those dessert-like coffees can add up the calories quickly with the syrups, sauces and the milk choice such as a vanilla latte at 240 calories per drink. But if the hot chocolate drinks are more what you crave, then keep in mind that they typically range from 400 to 530 calories, which is a third of a woman’s daily calories.

The best way to help yourself is sticking with a plain coffee with or without a creamer to avoid the temptation of an elaborate coffee drink. Sweeten with one packet of real sugar instead of automatically reaching for sugar substitutes. The reason to avoid artificial sweeteners is because their chemicals cause the brain to crave sweets even more. You can also give that plain coffee a dessert like quality by sprinkling a pinch of nutmeg, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice to allspice to jazz up the flavor.

Another easy way of cutting 300 calories a day at work is avoiding the vending machines. The snacks and candies can kill your figure with empty excess calories and risk your metabolic health from unhealthy fats, salt and sugars. For example, a Snickers bar from that vending machine is about 280 calories. An average small one-ounce bag of potato chips is about 155 calories, which can only make some people hungry for more. What I’m saying is that one stop at the vending machine is bad enough, but you often double up with a sweetened beverage or another snack, piling up more calories.

A more effective solution is keeping your office drawer stocked with a few pieces of fresh fruit like a banana or two and healthier snack options. They can be peeled without handling them directly in less than a sanitary workplace. A medium size banana has about a third of the amount of calories that a candy bar at 105 calories has. Yet, it also has fiber unlike the candy as well as potassium, vitamin C, vitamin B6, and magnesium to keep going.

To save yourself from sweetened beverages like sodas, energy drinks, fruit drinks that can easily add 300 calories a day at work, you might drink more water. Something that I highly recommend is incorporating a 5.5 oz. unsweetened can of grapefruit juice at that time of day you are running out of energy. Honestly, it is 60-calories that will help revive you much better than those higher calorie beverages. At the same time, do not drink grapefruit juice if you take a statin medication for cholesterol or a blood thinner because it will interfere with those drugs. A small can with tomato juice or V8 has about 50 calories and also is a better alternative. Though the V8 has about eight grams of sugar, it is far less than the 28 grams of a typical sugary soda.

Your workplace may typically have a break room where someone is designated to buy the box of doughnuts, cookies, muffins or other treats to fuel the staff. Even though the goodies may be free, eating them daily is not in your best interest. A typical doughnut has about 300 calories whereas a yummy blueberry muffin is about 450 calories. Therefore, if you habitually reach for a blueberry muffin mid morning or afternoon snacks you may expect to gain at least one and a half pound a week since you will be consuming about 2,250 extra calories.

Lunch or after work drinking also can wreck a diet if you let it. The best thing to do if you still want to go with the gang is to order a lighter-calorie option such as a light beer or glass of wine over mixed drinks. Slowly sipping it can help. Once your glass is empty, I suggest trying to stretch the time out before ordering another drink by sipping on some water.

These are just a few simple tricks for cutting 300 calories a day from your diet that can help get rid of those few extra pounds being at the workplace.