Your health: Is work making you fat?

fat_work_balaban_madalina_flickrThe Daily Herald Newspaper posed this question on January 26 in its Health and Fitness section: Are you packing on pounds while climbing the corporate ladder?

If so, you’re in good company: in a 2013 Harris Interactive survey of more than 3,000 workers conducted for CareerBuilder, 41 percent of respondents said they’d gained weight in their current jobs. ABC News and Health.com reports.

Workers who spend long hours sitting at a desk (like administrative assistants) and have high stress levels (like engineers and teachers) were more likely to have gained weight.

The truth is, there are lots of reasons your work could be affecting your waistline. “It really has to do with diet, physical activity,and behavior,” says Katherine Tryon, a medical doctor with the Vitality Institute, a global research organization based New York City. Here are some potential factors, and how to steer clear of their consequences.

The most obvious cause of work-related weight gain is the lack of physical activity many employees get from (at least) 9 to 5, and in the CareerBuilder survey, workers pointed to “sitting at my desk most of the day” as the number-one reason for their expanding waistlines.

Though it’s true that research shows people who stand or walk throughout the day burn more calories, which can translate to fewer pounds gained over time, a 2013 British study failed to find a strong link between time spent sitting and obesity. The authors say that while sedentary behavior certainly doesn’t help, there are clearly other factors fueling weight gain as well.

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