10 Ways to Boost Your Weight Loss Productivity

How productive are you in your most commonly inhabited environments? For most of us, this is either work or home. By making sure that your surroundings are conducive to healthy decisions and actions, you can boost your weight loss productivity and really entrench healthy habits and a healthy living mindset. Here are some ideas for your office and your home.

Home

Reorganise your pantry. One of the first things I did when I started losing weight was clear all the crap out of my pantry. Believe me, just not having it there makes a huge difference–we’ve all mindlessly chewed our way through a whole pack of biscuits without actually being starving hungry to begin with.

Make treats hard to get. Try to reach a stage where it is possible to have treats in the house without needing to eat them all at once. It’s important not to deprive yourself of everything that you love! Just try making it difficult to access in order to lessen the temptation to eat it–put that pack of biscuits right at the top of your tallest cupboard.

Make your workout clothes accessible. If they are easy to grab and throw on, you can start making that mental adjustment when it comes to exercise, turning it from something you don’t like to something you might actually enjoy.

Get some home workout equipment. Working out at home is easy, cheap and fun. It’s also a great opportunity to practise moves you’re not sure about or feel too self-conscious to attempt in a gym or park. Buy some dumbbells and an exercise mat and stash them in a corner of your living room–by making it easy to do some exercise at home, you’re more likely to give it a go.

Hang up some motivating photos or outfits. Maybe you’ve got a pair of beloved jeans you want to fit into again, or a photo of yourself 10 kilos smaller that’s really motivating you to lose weight. Put those things–things that form part of your motivational toolkit–somewhere prominent, so you’re always being reminded of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Work

Get moving. Visit the toilet that’s one level up from you in your office building, go and stand outside to get some air, take phone calls standing up–every hour or so, if you can, do something that makes you get up from your desk and move around.

Drink glasses of water. Aside from the obvious health benefits of drinking lots of water, refilling a glass several times a day is a good way to get up from your desk regularly–water also helps keep hunger at bay.

Stock up on healthy snacks. Avoid the vending machine temptation and fill a drawer with things like raw nuts so you’ve got something healthy to snack on. Go one step further and pack yourself little portions of nuts so that you don’t end up chowing down on a whole bag!

Fill the work fridge with healthy lunch foods. If you’ve got access to a work fridge, fill it with healthy lunch ingredients–cottage cheese, avocado, lean protein–so you can make yourself a healthy lunch at work.

Ask for a standing desk. These are becoming more common and widely available, and they’re a great solution to the increasingly talked about health risks of sitting down all day. Chat to your boss or HR and see if you can get one–and if you can’t, then try to move around at work as much as you can.

Make your environment conducive to healthy behaviour, and it will naturally follow. It’s productive, it’s practical and it’s easy!

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