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| Fat City
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| A recent Finnish study involving Helsinki City workers may have far-reaching implications in the battle of the bulge. Trouble on the job—work fatigue, overtime, blurring lines between home and office—may be contributing to your own personal problem with inflation.
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The spare tire you’re carrying around your rapidly expanding mid-section represents a lot of work—not all of it involving the effort it takes to walk from the sofa to the refrigerator.
Weight gain, according to new research conducted by the University of Helsinki department of public health, may be an occupational hazard, especially if you’re required to spend exhausting extra hours working overtime.
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Is your job making you fat?
Could be, says Tea Lallukka, who has a Masters degree in nutrition and is part of the research team. There may be a relationship between the fatigue associated with long hours on the job, working overtime and dissatisfaction with work-home overlap—and your risk of becoming obese.
After evaluating the health of 7,000 women and 1,800 men employed by the city of Helsinki, Lallukka and her group were able to identify those with a higher risk for increased weight gain over time.
Study participants ranged in age from 40 to 60 and were quizzed about how many hours they had worked and about their weight gain in the last year—one-quarter of the women and almost 20 per cent of the men answered affirmatively.
They were also asked to chart their level of agreement to the following statements:
- I feel totally worn out after a day of work.
- I feel tired in the morning when I have to get up and go to work.
- I have to work too hard.
- I feel like I’m totally exhausted.
- My work is definitely too stressful.
- I worry about my work even when I’m off duty.
If you find yourself agreeing with four or more statements then you may suffer from work exhaustion.
Work-generated fatigue and working more than 40 hours per week appeared to be the major culprit pre-disposing both men and women to some weight gain.
“We (also) analyzed major weight gain (5kg/ 10pounds a year). Most of the weight gain during the previous year is under 5 kg, but I think it is important too, since working conditions may remain the same and the tendency to gain weight every year is very common. I mean that even one kg per year is important if we look at the outcome, say, in 10 years, which may equal 10 kg!. Then we are maybe talking about a growing problem of obesity and
related diseases,” says Lallukka.
The Helsinki research is particularly important when combined with the recent results of a study conducted by the Families and Work Institute in New York City. More than one-third of the study participants say they are chronically overworked and many report being stressed, unhealthy, depressed, angry, resentful and mistake-prone.
Forget About It:
Try working at relaxing for a change:
- Quit multi-tasking. It’s a drain on your energy and frequently means you’re not doing justice to any one thing.
- Insist on proper rest. Take breaks. Allow yourself time to recover from the stresses and strains and brutal competitiveness of modern work life.
- Prioritize. Make your health and your family your number one consideration. Draw a line in the sand between work and home.
- Focus. At work, devote yourself to what’s important—endless hours are wasted on concerns that have little value. Be more discerning.
- Set reasonable goals. Inject a little realism into what you expect from yourself and others.
- Take vacations. Use the time that’s available to you for recovery. And when you’re sick, stay home.
- Exercise and eat right. Both have a remarkable effect on your ability to manage and dissipate stress—being overweight and out-of-shape just erodes your energy levels and increases your sense of powerlessness.
- Develop a sound perspective. It’s your job; it’s not your life. They’re your colleagues, not your family. Know the difference.
“Since our study is not a follow-up we can’t conclude any causal relationships, only associations. We can only hypothesize the reasons for the found associations. It is possible that those who work late are too tired to engage in healthy lifestyle e.g. physical activity, healthy diet, and instead eat a lot of snack food, pizza and candy,” remarks Lallukka.
“I think working conditions should be better taken into account in occupational health care, and in planning work-site, health-promotion programs. If work takes all your energy, it may not help to know the basics of healthy lifestyle, if you’re too exhausted to pay attention to your health behaviors.”
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