What Does Obesity And Working From Home Have In Common?
- By Yoshi Kundagawa
- Published 08/10/2007
- Holistics
- Unrated
Yoshi Kundagawa
Yoshi Kundagawa is a freelance journalist. He writes about entrepreneurs and working from home. You can read his articles about working from home, at his blog:
http://didyousmellthat.com/exercise/5-reasons-why-women-live-longer-than-men
Working from home is an absolutely wonderful and convenient experience and I’d recommend it to anyone any day. I have been working from home for a number of years and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Suits and ties and alarm clocks tend to be some of the only things in life I really fear. Spending my days crunching numbers in an office isn’t my idea of fun. I left the office to work from home when I found it was more profitable and infinitely more comfortable to work in my Bermudas with a soft drink precariously perched on the edge of the desk and a bag of chips on the file cabinet.
Therein lays the problem.
It is easy to be comfortable at home. Things which might not be tolerated in an office are fine when that office is your den or your spare room. Eating while you work so you can keep working becomes a way of life for those of us who have a great deal of work to accomplish from home. It’s not necessary to take a breather because we don’t have to do the hour long lunch, so we work through it. Hunger pangs set in and we tend to grab the first thing that we see in the cabinet that will sustain us until a real meal.
The first thing we see probably isn’t the best thing to be eating. Normally it is something rich in calories and something that finds its way to our inordinately accommodating hips nearly immediately. In my case, I got a wake up call. One morning shortly after realizing I had gained about twenty pounds in the past five years, I found myself feeling somewhat less than chipper. I had a chest pain that felt sizable. Coming from a family who has some heart history already, I wasn’t about to wait and see what was up. I called someone and went to the doctor to find out what the problem was. He smiled as he finished the exam and told me I had indigestion. I laughed feeling a little embarrassed. But when I truly thought about it, it wasn’t all that amusing. The fact that I even thought I was having heart problems told me that I knew I wasn’t doing the right things for my weight or my health.
Working from home is a pleasure and it’s a curse. Those of us who do work from home need to make sure that it stays a pleasure and isn’t the reason for our excessive weight gain and other accompanying health problems.
After my heart scare, I decided that some new rules need to be in order for my office.
The soft drink stayed but it was regulated to lunch time or breaks. I rose from work at specific times and made certain that I climbed a few steps and walked during those breaks. I took a regular lunch break and in fact, I began to eat a regular lunch. The pounds began to fall back off.
In short, I began to treat my job, like a job. To take regular breaks to exercise both my body and my mind, to get out of my computer chair and visit with my family, which was my reason for taking the job to begin with.
Therein lays the problem.
It is easy to be comfortable at home. Things which might not be tolerated in an office are fine when that office is your den or your spare room. Eating while you work so you can keep working becomes a way of life for those of us who have a great deal of work to accomplish from home. It’s not necessary to take a breather because we don’t have to do the hour long lunch, so we work through it. Hunger pangs set in and we tend to grab the first thing that we see in the cabinet that will sustain us until a real meal.
The first thing we see probably isn’t the best thing to be eating. Normally it is something rich in calories and something that finds its way to our inordinately accommodating hips nearly immediately. In my case, I got a wake up call. One morning shortly after realizing I had gained about twenty pounds in the past five years, I found myself feeling somewhat less than chipper. I had a chest pain that felt sizable. Coming from a family who has some heart history already, I wasn’t about to wait and see what was up. I called someone and went to the doctor to find out what the problem was. He smiled as he finished the exam and told me I had indigestion. I laughed feeling a little embarrassed. But when I truly thought about it, it wasn’t all that amusing. The fact that I even thought I was having heart problems told me that I knew I wasn’t doing the right things for my weight or my health.
Working from home is a pleasure and it’s a curse. Those of us who do work from home need to make sure that it stays a pleasure and isn’t the reason for our excessive weight gain and other accompanying health problems.
After my heart scare, I decided that some new rules need to be in order for my office.
The soft drink stayed but it was regulated to lunch time or breaks. I rose from work at specific times and made certain that I climbed a few steps and walked during those breaks. I took a regular lunch break and in fact, I began to eat a regular lunch. The pounds began to fall back off.
In short, I began to treat my job, like a job. To take regular breaks to exercise both my body and my mind, to get out of my computer chair and visit with my family, which was my reason for taking the job to begin with.