Working Women and Male Executives need to Fight the Battle of the Bulge as they Cope with the Pandemic

With the pandemic and work from home situation, the biggest change is a drastic drop in large muscle movements in our body. Even earlier though executives and office staff did have a sedentary lifestyle they still had to get up in the morning and may be take their children to the bus stop or walk them to a nearby school.

Then they would have to get ready, walk to their car and at office walk from car park to their desk. During office hours they would have to walk a bit to get a drink of water or coffee and go to the cafeteria for lunch. They would also probably walk from their desk to a colleague’s desk or to the boss’s office. Again when work is done the same movements to get to their car and back home would happen.

Now all of this has stopped and it is just bed room to bathroom to living room and to dining table. In an out of 3-4 rooms and hours and hours in front of the screen. Many have put on weight and in this month in a span of 10 days I got three clients, aged thirty, forty-five and sixty-two who were diagnosed with diabetes. All of them were normal before the pandemic, now due to being locked in and stopping going for a regular walk their blood sugar levels have gone up.

A sedentary job with long hours is dangerous from the health point of view. One cannot say, "there is no time for exercise in my life". I seem to be hearing it from most young people who are throwing themselves into their careers and offering to work up to 9-10 pm, both men and women. This can be very detrimental for your health. Your metabolic rate will go down and this will result in rapid weight gain.

During my counselling work, I have met many in their late 20s and early 30s who have developed Heart disease, Diabetes, Hypertension, etc. and I believe the main factors contributory to this are long working hours, stress at work and unhealthy eating habits. In the olden days, people worked till 5 or 6 pm but today it is 9 or 10 pm and even midnight or 2 am in multinational companies. In those days, health problems arose in 50 or 60 year olds. Today it is in the 20 and 30 year olds. People have to choose between health and wealth.

Hope for those without time to spare
When you are thinking of weight control, you may see it as an hour of working out at a gym or aerobics class which will then cut off about 2 hrs of your day to get there, then get back, shower and get to work. This is OK for those who have the time for it. Here's some good news. We are finding tremendous success from a system where you take a brisk walk for 25-30 mins. daily all 7 days of the week. What we have found is that doing this very regularly can keep you fit and also give you a steady weight loss. (Yes, it has to be all the 7 days because we eat food all 7 days of the week.)

This can be done at any time of the day either early morning, mid-morning, afternoon or evening, preferably before dinner. It can even be done at night after your meal if there is no other option. Only it must be done all 7 days of the week. What I would suggest is that if you are working till 9-10 pm then try to take a 25-30min break at 6 pm and get a brisk walk around your building or in the nearest park and then get back to work. Please let me inform you that you can never lose weight without following a combination of all the following.

• Walk -25-30 mins
• Water- 2.5 -3 litres
• Diet – Eat 3 regular carbohydrate and protein balanced meals daily & cut out fatty food.

Another dangerous habit is eating late at night and retiring to sleep soon after. There should be at least a gap of 2 hours between dinner and bedtime. We must make an effort to have dinner between 7.30 – 8.30pm and break this pattern of eating late as it heavily contributes to obesity. This habit combined with work pressure can lead to developing diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, raised cholesterol and triglyceride levels and finally, heart diseases.