Weight Loss Tips for Working Women

Maintaining an ideal body weight can feel like an impossible task, especially if you are a career-focused woman juggling work, home, and your kids’ school. It can be challenging to prioritize your health and fitness while fulfilling work deadlines, attending to social obligations, and meeting personal commitments [1]. Despite being perfect multitaskers, women might not stay in shape due to vending machine dependency on caffeine, bingeing on fast foods, and following a sedentary lifestyle. Such unintentional weight gain might not only make your dresses tighter but can put you at a higher risk of developing chronic medical conditions. Making slight alterations to your lifestyle like simple diet changes and smart workouts will help achieve your fitness goals. However, if diet and physical workouts don’t help with your weight loss goals, you can explore non-surgical treatments to ditch excess ponds and regain health.

Why Working Women Struggle With Weight Gain

Working women tend to gain weight as they prioritize family and professional needs rather than health. Career-driven often don’t pay attention to the food they eat, sleeping hours, and workouts due to their busy work schedule and find it difficult to lose weight. Here are the common reasons why busy women have to struggle with weight gain.

1. Working for Long Hours

A 2012 study by Dr Nicole Au hailing from the Centre for Health and Economics of Melbourne’s Monash University showed that women who spend over 35 hours per week in their office are prone to gain weight [2]. This study researched about 9276 women participants aged between 45 and 50 years for 2 years. The study findings revealed that around 50% of working women gained weight leading to obesity. The major reasons for their weight gain were not having enough time to cook or eat healthy home-cooked meals and perform workouts.

2. Sedentary Lifestyle

If your daily work routine demands you to sit for longer periods with no physical activity, then you might accumulate body weight [3]. Women having desk jobs with extended hours of screen time can also contribute to weight gain. The 2012 study by Monash University also showed that women who worked for 49-plus hours were more likely to maintain a sedentary lifestyle with habits like drinking alcohol or smoking [4]. About 65% of working women participants consumed alcohol at high-risk levels after spending over 49 hours on work while about 36% didn’t perform any exercise.

3. Stress and Emotional Disturbances

Facing chronic stress and other emotional factors might lead to an imbalance in hormones, specifically cortisol, which can cause weight gain [5]. High-stress levels can lead to cravings and emotional eating, making you long for comfort foods loaded with calories [6]. Eating unhealthy foods will also cause rapid weight gain among working women.

4. Hormone Imbalances

While working on a deadline, you might tend to work for longer hours and sacrifice sleeping hours, which might cause a disruption in hormone levels. Fluctuations in hormones can lead to conditions like PCOS [7], menopause, and hypothyroidism will also cause weight gain by triggering metabolic dysfunction [8]. These hormonal conditions can alter the way your body handles calories and stores them, thereby increasing your body weight.

5. Poor Eating Habits

Spending long hours in the office might prevent you from preparing healthy meals at home and make you rely on processed foods, fast foods, and snacks to fulfill your hunger pangs [9]. You might skip meals and binge on fried and sugary foods causing a negative impact on your body weight [10].

6. Insufficient Sleep

Not getting quality sleep can cause weight gain by disrupting hormones and increasing appetite. Long working hours might affect your sleep cycle and affect metabolic activities leading to weight gain [11].

7. No or Minimal Physical Activity

Working for longer hours in the workplace and losing your sleep can make you feel very tired. So, you might not have enough energy to perform exercises thereby preventing calorie expenditure and leading to weight gain.

8. Depression

A tight work schedule like project presentations, closing business deals, or client meetings can be depressing. If you have depression, it might affect your energy levels, eating habits, and sleep patterns. You might feel demotivated, and unproductive, and this puts you at a higher risk of becoming obese due to depression [12].

Common Challenges: Time, Stress, and Hormones

It is common for working women to face several challenges while juggling roles related to their family, personal life, and career. The three culprits mentioned below can be a major reason behind the unexpected weight gain among working women.

• Time Constraints: Your busy working schedules might prevent you from sleeping, exercising, having breakfast, and planning healthy homemade meals [13]. You might tend to switch it with processed foods, takeouts, sipping more caffeinated drinks, and skipping workout time. Such time-crunch activities will increase your calorie intake and slow down your metabolic activities.
• Stress: Constant multitasking due to responsibilities related to taking care of kids, financial crisis, and fulfilling work deadlines might increase cortisol [14], the stress hormone levels, which might cause belly fat accumulation [15]. Chronic stress will make you crave carbs and sugar-loaded goodies due to emotional eating.
• Imbalance in Hormones: Your hormone levels have a pivotal role in regulating and maintaining ideal body weight. If you are above 30 years of age, you might face fluctuations in thyroid, estrogen, and progesterone levels due to work stress. These hormones will influence your energy levels, fat distribution, and appetite, which can cause weight gain.

Smart Weight Loss Tips That Actually Work With a Busy Routine

• Plan your everyday meals by creating a weekly food chart. Spend an hour or two prepping meals or cooking in batches to store in air-tight boxes in the freezer.
• Stay hydrated by drinking water at regular intervals to prevent cravings and improve fat metabolism. You can keep a bottle filled with water at your work desk and refill it regularly.
• Have a small snack box handy filled with cut fruits, nuts, seeds, or protein bars to prevent unhealthy snacking.
• If you don’t have time to prepare a home-cooked meal, fill your lunch box with Greek yogurt and fruits, overnight oats, or a couple of boiled eggs to load up protein to curb cravings.
• If you have a desk job, break the sedentary lifestyle by walking to refill your water bottle, taking the stairs to your work floor, stretching your body each hour, and standing when attending calls.

Short Workouts with Big Impact – No Gym Needed

Working women can perform 15-second HIIT workouts like jumping jacks, plank holds, bodyweight squats, and knee push-ups for 10 to 15 minutes.

• Take a break from your work and perform chair workouts like neck and shoulder rolls, chair tricep dips, wall push-ups, calf raises, and seated leg raises for 5 minutes.
• Take a brisk walk while attending calls or after lunch along with arm swings to enhance metabolism and lift mood.
• On weekends, groove up to your favorite music and dance till you drop to de-stress and burn calories at the same time.

Non-Surgical Weight Loss Treatments That Save Time and Deliver Results

Career-focused women have very little time to take care of their professional responsibilities and family demands, which is why they tend to gain weight. This is why non-surgical weight loss treatments are considered an effective choice for busy women battling weight gain. These non-invasive weight loss procedures are quick, safe, and effective, making them a boon for ladies with the busiest working schedules.

1. EvolveX Treatment: This unique approach based on EvolveX slimming technology helps working women lose weight, and get rid of cellulite and excess body fat within a few minutes per session. The dual action of Radiofrequency, as well as Electromagnetic stimulation, makes this procedure very effective and safe to lose weight. EvolveX procedure is non-surgical and follows a multifaceted process for defining your muscles, promoting fat loss, and eliminating cellulite and fat pockets for a contoured body.
2. Lipogel Treatment: This procedure is the modern version of traditional liposuction that is capable of melting fat deposits in your body due to a sedentary lifestyle. Working women can take lipo gel injections to decrease the fat cells in the body and eliminate it safely. It is minimally invasive procedure performed using micro-injections with deoxycholic acid and phosphatidylcholine to eliminate fat. This 20-minute treatment for weight loss helps working women get back to their routine without any downtime.
3. Cryomatic Procedure: Cryomatic is a 3-minute weight loss procedure for working women that helps in weight loss backed by revolutionary technology. It works with acute cold air passed through a special chamber with temperature controlled from -140°C to -190°C for freezing fat to achieve weight loss.
4. CoolSculpting: This non-surgical procedure called Cryolipolysis helps in achieving a contoured physique with no downtime. It is a convenient, safe, and quick procedure, making it ideal for busy women who wish to ditch extra weight. It is performed with an applicator device that freezes fat cells in the waist, belly, upper arms, flanks, chin, and more.

Why Kolors is Ideal for Busy Working Women

At Kolors Healthcare, we design and develop innovative, flexible non-surgical weight loss solutions to deliver safe, and fast results tailored to meet the schedules of busy working women. We offer an array of non-invasive body contouring, inch loss, and weight loss treatments with no downtime and needs a few minutes of your break time. We plan your personalized weight loss programs smartly to meet your targeted fat loss area, hormone levels, metabolic rate, and working hours to keep you stress-free and achieve quicker results.

Citation Links

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2. Dr Nicole Au, Monash University: 00008C – https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/working-women-more-likely-to-gain-weight
3. Agrawal P, Gupta K, Mishra V, Agrawal S. Effects of sedentary lifestyle and dietary habits on body mass index change among adult women in India: findings from a follow-up study. Ecol Food Nutr. 2013;52(5):387-406. doi: 10.1080/03670244.2012.719346. PMID: 23927045; PMCID: PMC5562270. – https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5562270/
4. Independent Online – https://iol.co.za/lifestyle/2012-07-20-a-day-in-the-office-piles-on-the-pounds/
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6. Harvard Medical School – https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-stress-causes-people-to-overeat
7. Stephanie Watson, Reviewed by Kecia Gaither, MD, MPH – https://www.webmd.com/women/polycystic-ovary-syndrome-pcos-and-weight-gain
8. Miguel A. Sanchez-Garrido: Instituto Maimónides de Investigación Biomédica de Cordoba (IMIBIC), Spain – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221287782030003X
9. Park S, Sung E. ‘You gotta have something to chew on’: perceptions of stress-induced eating and weight gain among office workers in South Korea. Public Health Nutr. 2021 Feb;24(3):499-511. doi: 10.1017/S1368980020000890. Epub 2020 Jun 19. PMID: 32624055; PMCID: PMC7844607. – https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7844607/
10. Noha M. Almoraie, Rula Saqaan, Razan Alharthi, Department of Food and Nutrition, Faculty of Human Sciences and Design, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027153172100021X
11. Xiao Tan, Colin D. Chapman, Jonathan Cedernaes, Christian Benedict: Department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University, SE-751 24 Uppsala, Sweden – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079217300916
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13. Pelletier JE, Laska MN. Balancing healthy meals and busy lives: associations between work, school, and family responsibilities and perceived time constraints among young adults. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2012 Nov-Dec;44(6):481-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2012.04.001. Epub 2012 Sep 25. PMID: 23017891; PMCID: PMC3496024. – https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3496024/
14. Moyer AE, Rodin J, Grilo CM, Cummings N, Larson LM, Rebuffé-Scrive M. Stress-induced cortisol response and fat distribution in women. Obes Res. 1994 May;2(3):255-62. doi: 10.1002/j.1550-8528.1994.tb00055.x. PMID: 16353426. – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16353426/
15. Donoho CJ, Weigensberg MJ, Emken BA, Hsu JW, Spruijt-Metz D. Stress and abdominal fat: preliminary evidence of moderation by the cortisol awakening response in Hispanic peripubertal girls. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2011 May;19(5):946-52. doi: 10.1038/oby.2010.287. Epub 2010 Dec 2. PMID: 21127479; PMCID: PMC3107005. – https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3107005/