Our bedroom is on the back of the house overlooking some fields so, with the addition of some very thick curtains, the only light we tend to see is natural light as it filters between cracks in the curtains in the morning.  Unfortunately for anyone who comes to stay with us, there is a street light just outside the front of our house which shines through the thin curtains of our two front bedrooms.

Why I’ve done this research

I’ve done posts about sleep before.  Sleep is hugely important to our general health and, specifically, to our mental and physical recovery.  Good sleep can make the difference between good and poor gym performance.

Posts I’ve done so far have been about ways to improve sleep, briefly touching on things like the disruption of sleep patterns by too much artificial light late into the night.  However, on a recent Robb Wolf podcast he mentioned that humans are sensitive to light even if their eyes are covered, so a room with light sources can still impact on your sleep, even if you are wearing a sleep mask.

This piqued my interest, so I’ve decided to learn more about artificial light and sleep.

How can we improve our sleep?

Circadian rhythms

Most people think of our reaction to the daylight phase as the circadian rhythm, however this isn’t strictly correct.  Circadian rhythms are actually a much broader category covering any roughly 24-hour cycle in the biochemical, physiological, or behavioural processes of living entities which, according to wikipedia, meet three criteria:

1. the rhythm persists in constant conditions (eg. constant dark);
2. the rhythm maintains the same period over a range of temperatures; and
3. the rhythm can be reset by exposure to external stimulus.

The most relevant impact on the last of those conditions is the way light can affect the sleep circadian rhythm.  The different pattern of light and dark when moving to a different time-zone will eventually trigger us to change our sleep pattern, but we suffer from jet-lag until all the circadian rhythms have adjusted.

Humans contain a “master clock”, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a group of cells found near the hypothalmus.  Light received by the eyes directly affects the SCN and as a result it is the visual cycle of light and dark which primarily drives our systems.  However, we also contain numerous other peripheral oscillators found in places like the oesophagus, lungs, liver and skin which react to other forces, including food consumption, and send their messages back to the SCN.

Light sensitivity without your eyes

So why doesn’t covering your eyes stop your sleep being disrupted?  Despite significant amounts of searching, I’ve not found the answer to this.

However, in a study in which they exposed the skin behind the knee to light pulses (Campbell SS, Murphy PJ. January 1998. “Extraocular circadian phototransduction in humans”. Science 279 (5349): 396–9) they found that there was a systematic relation between the timing of the light pulse and the magnitude and direction of shifts in the human circadian clock responses, measured through body temperature and melatonin concentrations. 

This certainly provides some evidence that we are capable of “extraretinal circadian phototransduction” (reaction to light presented to something other than the eye) through the skin, even if not explaining how this happens.

Why is artificial light particularly problematic?

Search on the internet for artificial lighting and health and you open a world of horror.

Ultraviolet light emitted by fluorescent lamps seems to be the worst offender with a terrifying list of carcinogenic effects being noted as well as being associated with a long list of health problems that are exacerbated by exposure to these sorts of lights (including dyslexia and chronic fatigue symptom). 

Should we be surprised at the health problems of anyone with a job in this modern age then, when so many offices, hospitals and other buildings are constantly light, day and night, by fluorescent lighting?

In addition to the health issues from the UV-B, the wavelength of the light seems to be an important factor in health effects.  A study which looked at the melatonin production in humans exposed to light with different amounts of the shorter wavelength blocked out revealed a strong link in this area (Kayumov et al.  Aug 2007.  “Prevention of melatonin suppression by nocturnal lighting: relevance to cancer”.  European journal of cancer prevention : the official journal of the European Cancer Prevention Organisation (ECP).  16(4):357-62).

Relevant to both me and many readers of this blog was also an observation by a Commander Russell M. Jaffe, M.D., Ph.D, U.S.P.H.S., Senior Staff Physician at the U.S. National Institutes of Health in 1978, which seemed to suggest that frequencies in the 0.1-100 MHz range appeared to weaken muscle strength and proper shielding restored both tone and strength.  Unfortunately I can’t find any detailed reference to this research.

Street lighting is usually achieved with low-pressure sodium lamps in the UK and this has a wavelength of about 600nm which I understand is a pretty low wavelength, although I’d appreciate it if anyone reading this can confirm that.  So it seems that the pervasive light pollution could be slowly causing health problems not solely related to circadian rhythm disturbance.

Disrupted circadian rhythms

In addition to all the general health risks of artificial light, disruption of our circadian rhythm and environmental lighting can have a host of other health problems which, in 2007, were still largely unexplored and were certainly not fully understood.  Instead there was growing awareness of altered sleep or light affecting breast cancer, prostate cancer, obesity, depression and type 2 diabetes amongst other things.

A fantastic paper summarises a workshop of scientists, held at that time to consider how best to conduct research on possible connections between lighting and health.  It is well worth reading since it gives a lot of background as well as summarising the position as it was understood in 2007 and the areas of research that were identified for future study.

So where does this leave me?

Well, I’ve learned a lot.  I’m now a bit wary about all artificial light, but especially of things like sitting in my kitchen, lit with a fluorescent tube, for long periods of time.  I’m also now even more appreciative of the benefits of sleeping out in the wilderness on holidays in the National Parks, away from areas of significant light pollution.

More importantly, I’m going to sort out those front bedrooms and put some wood-slat blinds, or something similar, in them to block out all of the light at night.

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: sleep
2. Blog-watch: latest sleep round-up
3. Blog-watch: the impact of stress

When I started out on this series there were several key problems, such as poor hip mobility.  Having had some reasonable successes at the end of 2009 and some fantastic progress during the first half of 2010, fixing the remaining problems while also driving up the strength numbers are now the priorities of the program. 

I’m recording my progress in this series: powerlifting progress.  It is serving as a journal and makes me a bit more accountable to my goals. 

At the moment while I am also dieting for fat loss, since the progress on my fat loss is likely to impact my progress in the gym, I am also using this weekly roundup to record my figure progress as well.

This week

This was going to be a positive write up about what a brilliant week I had had in the gym, despite having started the diet.  Then I did my workout on Friday and I suddenly felt like it was all falling down around my ears.  There are reasons for it, mostly connected to my poor thoracic mobility and spending too much time this week working on a computer without compensating with extra mobility work.

Who am I kidding?  Despite what I said I would do in the mobility department to get this problem fixed, I’ve been really bad at getting round to doing my stretches and strengthening exercises with any regularity.  Well now I have a massive incentive.  The problem is now impacting on all my powerlifting moves.

On the plus side, my diet seems to have started well which I’m really pleased with.

Diet and figure improvement

Here’s a graph of the gentle start I’ve made on my fat loss this week:

Fat loss results 2 Nov 2010

Note that these are not the actual numbers.  I remove a fixed amount from each measurement so that I can get them all into the same area of the graph (eg. I deduct 71cm from all top hip measurements but only 51cm from all my thigh measurements).

You’ll be able to see from this that I measure my weight, waist, upper thigh and then I take three measurements round my hips: top; centre; and lower.  I find that I carry the fat most easily on my hips and that when I lose it, I lose it unevenly across these three places. 

So far I’ve only cut my calorie intake by less than 100 calories because my maintenance diet was already quite low in calories.  However I have taken out all aspects of cheating (as an example, those couple of sausages I had most Saturday mornings or the massive fruit and cream helpings I was getting through each weekend during the summer as a “treat”).  This means that I’ve actually dropped my weekly total calorie intake by about 1,000 calories.

The main difference has been a complete change to my macronutrient ratios.  I am now able to easily burn both fat and carbs for energy so just dropping any remaining carbs wasn’t going to make much difference.  Instead I have slashed my fat intake down from about 300g a day to 150g per day and replaced the calories with protein.  This forces my body to burn its own fat for energy instead.  Turkey breast is brilliant for this so expect recipes for numerous ways to cook turkey breast so that it tastes interesting (without serving it with a sauce) to start appearing over the next few months!

So far it seems to be working (I’ve not made any changes to my exercise or cardio regime at the moment).  I’ll wait and see what it looks like at the end of this week after a protein and carb-heavy re-feed over the course of two hours at the weekend.

Bench

Action plan

• Maintain – technique
• Develop – scapular stability and thoracic mobility

 Progress this week

My form is improving on my overhead presses but is still a bit hit and miss so I’ve taken to doing a back-off set with a low weight and lots of reps after my work set to try and ingrain the correct form.  However, that thoracic mobility needs some serious work (see the squat section below) and until it is sorted there’s no way I’ll be getting back under the bar to try doing some bench pressing.

Squat

Action plan

• Maintain – hip mobility and ab strength
• Develop – glute and lower back strength

Progress this week

I mentioned last week that I was unhappy with my form.  By the end of the week I had spent a mammoth number of hours working at the computer, not just at work but working on the blog as well and I quickly located the problem with my squat.  My thoracic spine had tightened up to the point where I could no longer squat to my new depth without tucking.  Badly.  Well, tucking or leaning over until I was hurting my knees.

After an hour of trying to work on it I swapped to pistols to get my workout done, which I was not best pleased with.  When dieting hard I like to carry on lifting heavy to ensure that my muscles continue to be recruited and don’t disappear.

Thoracic spine mobility (and less computer work) is now the vital key-word to every day of my life and Chris is helping me with this.

Deadlift

Action plan

• Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
• Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength

Progress this week

My glute-ham raises are continuing to improve but until I’ve solved the thoracic spine mobility issue I’m unlikely to get much success on my deadlift.  Really, thoracic mobility is where it’s at this week!

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week forty-seven (fat loss: week nine)
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week forty (fat loss: week two)
3. Powerlifting progress 2010: week forty-three (fat loss: week five)

On the Saturday I finally admitted a temporary defeat and decided to completely re-write the training program from scratch.  I had two main reasons:

1. work-related things at the moment mean that it would be handy to have a bodyweight equipment-free workout that will be effective and which I can bring out whenever I need it – a completely new program like this needs a testing period of a few weeks to make sure it is effective and none of the exercises start to aggravate anything (eg. does it contain more push ups than my elbows can survive?); and
2. I couldn’t face my workouts any more.

A few weeks ago I started struggling to motivate myself to go into the gym and do my workouts.  I would do my first warm up set of squats and feel the enthusiasm drain out of me, or not even get as far as the gym before I felt my heart sink. 

I tried to fire up some fun by reintroducing Farmer’s Bars but that wasn’t enough.  I’ve been doing the same workout pattern, very successfully, for nearly five months and mentally I have just had enough of going into the gym and doing almost the same thing every week with some minor variations to assistance exercises.

On Saturday afternoon I was standing on the threshold of the gym, depressed at the thought of starting and wishing I was doing something else with my life.  It was time to change the program.

Losing the plot entirely

On Sunday I then tried to do day two of the exciting new workout.  There were brand new exercises and exercises I’d not done since 2009.  And there were pull ups.

The previous weekend I’d had a disappointing showing of 7×3 reps and 3×2 reps on my ten sets – at the time I had put this poor performance down to post holiday issues since I routinely lose a lot of lat strength while away on active holidays (a problem I need to solve).  On Sunday I set out to significantly improve yet the ten sets looked like 5×3, 1×2, 4×1 – a massive loss of strength on the previous week.

Needless to say I burst into tears, although in my defence I was suffering from PMT as well.

Is work to blame?

I am, unfortunately for my gym work, a conscientious employee.  I work hard, do my job and, if something goes wrong with the staffing on my projects, I’ll do whatever needs to be done to make sure that we still meet the deadlines.

Recently we’ve had a lot of junior staff unavailable due to training, holidays or secondments.  Suddenly a batch of urgent deadlines came up and there was nowhere for the work to go.  I don’t blame my employer for this – sometimes things just don’t work out the way you intended. 

No-one could anticipate that one project, originally with a 30 June deadline when three people were around, would have a hiatus with the deadline moving to 26 July and only one week’s notice when all staff were on holiday or sick.  No-one was to know that an annual recurring project, for which I’d diligently trained up two staff members, would come through a week late with only two days left to complete it – two days that coincided with one staff member being ill and the other having just gone on holiday. 

Getting the work-life balance wrong

Thanks to these sorts of issues, my last seven weeks have each been 50-55 hour work-weeks except for week three (holiday) and week five (ill for four days).  Once you take into account time to sleep, eat, travel and shower there isn’t much time left in the day.  On top of that, the stress levels mean that even in those few free moments my brain never really switches off. 

The impact on the rest of my life includes:

• Poor quality sleep, waking up frequently and unable to sleep for the full night;
• Missed workouts;
• Inability to recover from workouts;
• Lost enthusiasm to do anything outside work (including workouts);
• Apparent loss of strength in the gym;
• Mental exhaustion when faced with anything outside of normality or office work;
• Tension and knots in my shoulder, impairing my ability to do effective upper body workouts (as much from the hours spent sitting at my desk as from the stress);
• Cascading stress about everything else I’m not getting done at home (eg. missed/failed workouts, filthy kitchen, no clean clothes left to wear etc).

Fighting the guilt-factor

There are limited solutions to this issue since giving up work or changing to a completely stress-free job is a non-negotiable option right now.

I was amused to read a scenario from Poliquin.  In it he robustly pushes back on a woman who has missed workouts because she “doesn’t have time”.  In reality, most women feel these contradictory pressures and it can be difficult to find time for ourselves. 

I struggle to express to Chris the levels of guilt I feel when I no longer find time to wash clothes, iron shirts, wash the dishes, clean the kitchen and the myriad of other things I do.  The guilt I feel when he does some of them instead to take the pressure off me.

It’s ridiculous to feel guilty – we both know that if I don’t have some time to relax or do personal things like workouts or blog posts I end up in a downwards spiral of depression.  However, it’s a curse of guilt which seems to plague plenty of women.

Get it right!

For the conscientious woman (or man) who wants to remain in robust health, enjoy non-work activities and/or maintain progress in the gym we must consider our work-life balance.  There will be times, like those I’ve just been through, when the pressures are difficult to avoid but when that happens we ought to take action to resolve issues as quickly as possible and not let it become normality.

So far this week I’ve found two hours to try a taster session of Krav Maga and tonight I plan a long soak in the bath.  It’s a long climb back through recovery though and it’s a hard lesson that has impacted excessively on both my health and fitness during the learning process.

Related posts:

1. A day in the life
2. Increasing work capacity
3. Lessons learned: getting work capacity right!

There have been a few things I’ve been doing over the last few weeks to make sure I could manage what needed to be done at work while still managing to do my workouts:

• keeping the diet clean;
• maintaining good hydration;
• varying standing and sitting;
• avoid wearing heels; and
• plenty of rolling and posture-assistance exercises.

Keeping the diet clean

The workplace is shocking for the temptations of cakes, biscuits and sweets.  Our office, like many others, has a series of “cake rules” with various things that give rise to a “cake/sweet charge” such as returning from holiday or birthdays.  With a team of twenty people this means that there is nearly always some sort of cake or biscuit collection available to pick at.  Other offices have free biscuits or cake available to help keep spirits up amongst the workforce.

I’m a fan of doing things that will motivate people at work but I’ve never understood why the foods that are provided need to be the sorts of foods that can cause weight gain, gut irritation (thus impacting on the immune system) or that frequently make people sleepy – it doesn’t seem to fit with the ultimate aim (motivated and happy staff who are more productive).  Brad Pilon had a bit of a rant about this the other week too. 

At least our office also provides a big basket of fruit every day, but something that I’ve found is crucial to survive when I’m very busy at work is to avoid anything that isn’t the cleanest paleo foods.

Even paleo-approved cake is off the menu when I'm this busy

Maintaining good hydration

It’s really easy, when you’re distracted by a big pile of work, to forget to fetch more water and drink plenty.  However, it is very important to keep hydrated to keep the brain functioning efficiently and to ensure that you will still be capable of good performance at resistance training when you get back home in the evening.

Varying standing and sitting

I really struggle with sitting at a desk all day.  It has some dreadful knock on problems for my hip and thoracic spine mobility which impacts on my ability to do certain exercises in the gym at the end of the day.  Fortunately for me our office has a set of standing desks (although without phones) which provide me with two benefits:

• I can stand up for part of the day, giving me more chance of managing my workout when I get home; and
• the desks are in a different part of the office and don’t have phones so I can get away from everything to get specific pieces of work done without interruption.

If you want to know a bit more about the health benefits of standing up for some of the time when you’re working, Mark Sisson did a great article with plenty of links to research.  He’s also got some good suggestions for setting up standing workstations away from the office too.

Avoiding high heels

This very much goes with the standing and sitting.  Sometimes I like to wear a pair of attractive heels to work, however I find that the busier I get, the less I think about my posture when I am moving about the office.  As a result, I don’t remember to think about where my weight is thrown when I’m walking with heels on and often end up with a sore back, affecting my workouts at the end of the day.  Heels are also a bad idea if you want to work standing up.

The answer for me is to only wear flat-soled shoes when I’m particularly busy at work.

Ideally I'd be barefoot in the office

Rolling and posture-assistance exercises

Despite my best efforts to not wear heels and to get up and move about as much as possible, busy periods at work still result in tightness across my shoulders, thoracic spine and hips.  The best answer for this is plenty of rolling to stop knots from building up in the muscles.

Another useful way to counteract the poor posture that comes from hours of dedicated desk-work is to build into your workout some assistance exercises that strengthen opposing muscles (like the bent over row, which strengthens the muscles that pull your shoulders back from the “desk hunch”) or that help mobilise those muscles that have tightened (like the Romanian deadlift, which helps mobilise the hips).

Bringing it all together

Combining a dedicated desk job and a desire to maintain good posture and improved performance in the gym is always a juggling act, but there are a few things you can do.  Hopefully this article has provided you with ideas based on the areas that I focus my attention on when I’m busy.

Now I just need to work out what I can find on a cycle tour in Scotland this week to pay my “cake debt” when I get back to the office.  Any suggestions for cheap but healthy alternatives?

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned this week: developing mobility drills
2. Lessons learned: Vitamin D post-winter review
3. Lessons learned: side-effects of building muscle

Here are a few final suggestions on general survival, since I am well aware that women in particular often have a reputation for being far too diligent, even when they are doing something that they don’t really enjoy (or they have something, like a workout, that they would much rather be doing).

13.     If you’re really busy, watch the clock or use your calendar
If I can see I have a particularly busy day ahead of me, I find that my electronic calendar at work is my lifeline.  At the start of the day (or at the end of the day before) I make 3 or 4 private ‘meetings’ with myself, each about 5 minutes long.  These are meal and snack breaks.  They can even remind me to drink from my water bottles on a really bad day.  I know that, even with the food on my desk, time will slip away and the first I’ll know of a need to eat is when I’ve ignored the hunger pangs for so long that my body has given up and I’m not hungry any more.  And that is too late to be eating on a training day.

14.     Have a contingency plan
If all else fails, have a back-up plan.  There will always be the worst days when it all goes wrong and you are still stuck in the office until late at night.  My contingency plan is to do two of my four workouts on weekend days and have my shorter workouts planned for mid-week days.  I also have these shorter mid-week sessions planned for Tuesday and Wednesday so if something happens on Tuesday or Wednesday there are still days I can move the workouts on to without running into the weekend.

15.     Don’t punish yourself about it
If the very worst happens and you end up missing out a workout in a week, don’t beat yourself up about it.  The worst happens to all of us when it comes to fitting in workouts.  But don’t use work as an excuse either.  Consider whether there was something you could have done differently to avoid it happening, and if so, do it!  And if you’ve missed a lot of workouts, perhaps it’s time to spice up your workouts again to give yourself a reason to leave work.

I’m sure you’ve developed your own methods to cope with work.  What do you suggest?

Related posts:

1. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 3 (clothing)
2. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 2 (workouts)
3. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 1 (food and drink)

For my office I am required to dress in “smart casual”.  What this really means is “reasonably smart, with a suit when meeting clients, but otherwise you can get away with a smart pair of trousers or a skirt paired with a smart jumper instead of a matching jacket”.  I find office clothing can be a nightmare since I don’t really properly fit anything that is available commercially and I am unwilling to pay large sums of money for something I will only wear at work.  Here’s how I deal with the problems.

9.     Take your shoes off
Do you find that smart office shoes are often tighter fitting than you would like?  I do all my workouts in bare feet or socks and spend my home life padding about in slippers, so I thoroughly dislike shoes squashing my feet back to “shoe-shape” again.  Slip your shoes off beneath your desk and press your feet flat into the floor (or a foot rest, if you need one).  Unless you suffer from cheesy feet, people won’t realise.  Just don’t forget to put your shoes back on to go anywhere!

10.     Alternate your heel heights
I know.  Wearing heels is bad for you.  I’m sure I’m not alone though in wanting to enjoy that womanly swing of the hips and tight firming of the calves that they can add.  Especially if I’ve decided to wear a knee-length skirt for the day.  I get round the problem by slipping my heels off whenever possible (standing by the water machine to fill all those sports bottles, sat at my desk, and even in the cubicle where I do my hip flexor stretches and scapular wall-slides).  And I always wear flat shoes the day after I have worn heels to stretch my calf muscles out again.

11.     Try before you buy
Work shirts are a nightmare if you’ve been working out hard and have the figure to prove it.  Unless you want to pay out a lot of money on tailored shirts you may well find they are either too tight across the shoulders or too baggy at the waist.  I’ve learnt to always concentrate on the shoulder fitting and make do with the waist fitting (if it’s really baggy then I won’t buy it).  Here’s the actions I work through in the changing room:-  Do a horizontal pushing action away from you (as if you were doing a bench press, but standing up). 
-  From there, take your arms up and out in a wide arc.
-  Finally, push your fists back together in front of you whilst letting the shoulder blades drift outwards, making your back as wide as possible. If the shirt restricts the movement anywhere or rubs, especially in the armpits, ditch it.

12.     Choose a skirt over trousers
If you can’t easily do a squat to parallel in the changing room when buying your trousers then it is likely that the seat of the trousers will cause your pelvis to tuck under when sat for long periods of time (to avoid the seam putting pressure on your clitoris for a long time).  Whilst you can try to counteract this, you can’t spend every moment you are at work thinking about the angle of your pelvis and after a while it can really hurt anyway.  A skirt has been my solution, since I just don’t look smart in looser ‘smart’ trousers and my work requirement is that I look smart.  Of course, if you are able to find suitable trousers, then go ahead.

In part four there will be some final life-survival tips for getting by in the office and making sure you can still fit in that workout.

Related posts:

1. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 2 (workouts)
2. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 1 (food and drink)
3. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 4 (general survival)

5.     Keep a tennis ball in your desk drawer
Have you come across the idea of self-massage using a tennis ball?  Even better, have you come across the idea of massaging the plantar fascia in order to loosen up the entire posterior chain? Sitting in an office chair for hours at a time does terrible things for your posterior chain, especially for the glutes and the hamstrings.  But sat at your desk you can roll the soles of your feet on a tennis ball at regular intervals and nobody needs to know.  Hey presto!  Looser posterior chain muscles for a better squat depth that evening.

6.    Learn some hip flexor stretches
I have a pair of hip flexor stretches that I do every morning and evening, one for the outside of my hip, the other for that point just by your groin that can be a beast to stretch out if you’re doing sumo deadlifts after a day in a chair. Every time I go to the toilet (see point 2, in my previous post), I lock myself in the cubicle and before I come out I perform each stretch on each side if the floor is clean, and just the standing stretch on each side if I don’t trust kneeling on the floor.  I’ve found that if you get creative with the cubicle logistics, there’s just about enough space.  Suddenly I was doing 6 or even 8 sets of stretches for my hip flexors every day, and it really started showing in my squats.

7.     Squat whenever possible
How many items in the office are lower than hand height?  How many things do you bend down to do?  Some examples that I have in my office: the water filter tap, the hot drinks machine dispenser point, where I keep my bag during the day. Don’t just bend down to get at these things, concentrate on getting into a good quality squat at the same time and drive up through your heels to stand up again.  Your hip flexors and core will thank you next time you’re at the gym.

8.     Practice thoracic spine stretches
Have you come across the scapular wall-slide?  Why not add that to your mini-stretch collection in the cubicle (see point 6)?  It’ll add one minute onto your visit to do 5 repetitions and nobody will ever know.  Except your body, which will thank you.

Those are the exercises I’ve come up with.  What exercises and stretches have you found you can do to keep limbered up without attracting comments?

Related posts:

1. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 3 (clothing)
2. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 1 (food and drink)
3. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 4 (general survival)

Over the next four posts I’m going to share with you 15 methods I’ve developed to ensure that even by the end of a long and difficult day, I can still manage a session of moving heavy weights about at the end of it.  And let’s face it, nearly all of us spend more time sat in a chair than is good for us.

1. Use a couple of sports bottles for water
   I’m a fanatic when it comes to sports bottles.  I used to use a plastic cup and endlessly refill it from a big plastic bottle.  The problem?  You have two items to carry if you want to take a drink to an internal meeting and then there’s always the risk of knocking the cup over and spending 15 minutes mopping up the desk. The benefits of sports bottles for work are indisputable.  You can have 1.5 litres of water on your desk in two sports bottles without attracting comments from everyone “That’s an enormous bottle of water.  Do you really drink all that in a day?”  If you need to dash to an internal meeting you can grab the bottle and you’ve got it with you.  And I find I can drink a huge quantity of water with ease.
2. Drink more than you think you need
   I drink for two purposes.  The first is the obvious reason that I need the water.  If you don’t keep well-hydrated then you will struggle with exercise later on in the day. However, I’ve also found that by drinking a lot of water during the day at work (I would usually get through 4 litres while at the office) I am forced to get up from my desk.  I have to go to the toilet.  Not so often that it disrupts meetings, but at least 4 times in a day.  So if nothing else, I get the exercise and get away from my desk for a moment.
3. Keep your food on your desk
   You would think that after point 2, I would be advocating keeping your lunch as far away from you as possible to give yourself the walk, but I find that if I keep my lunch in the fridge at work and I’m busy, I forget to fetch it and eat it until it is too late.  And if I let myself go hungry for too long, I end up unable to squeeze out any hard reps in the gym that evening. So these days I keep all my food on my desk in easy reach.  No matter how busy I am I can stretch over, open up a lunchbox, and start snacking.  I’ve even changed my lunch so that it is all in finger-food pieces, removing the need for cutlery (I’d hate to do one of those germ-tests on my keyboard).  I eat eggs at lunchtime and a tuna dish mid-afternoon and so far I haven’t got ill, so I wouldn’t worry too much about keeping stuff out of the fridge for a half day unless you work in a tropical environment.
4. Pack your lunch and snacks into multiple pots
   This is another handy way to ensure you spread your meals evenly across the day.  Have them packaged up as separate meals.  I have a portion of my very delicious tuna coleslaw split into two small pots and eat one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon. It makes it as easy as possible for me to get my nutrition in without involving my brain, which is otherwise occupied during a working day.

That’s it for my food and drink tips.  Part two is mini office workouts!

Related posts:

1. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 4 (general survival)
2. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 2 (workouts)
3. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 3 (clothing)