Defence Magazine

It can be quite difficult to get into a routine of bringing your lunch to work, and then finding time to eat it. Often it is easier to buy something; however, eventually you will start to feel the negative effects of buying lunch, whether it's in the hip pocket or in the body.

There are some strategies to employ which may make it easier to eat well at work. Firstly, making your lunch the night before means that you have more time to make something healthy. It's also easier to grab a ready made lunch out of the fridge in the morning, rather than having to face making it, when you're already rushing to get ready on time. Secondly, if you are going to eat from the cafeteria or a take away shop, buy your lunch while you're not hungry. When you're hungry, the body goes into starvation mode and will crave anything that will give it instant energy—anything with high fat or sugar content. If you're hungry when you're deciding what to eat, chances are you'll go for the chips or the creamy pasta over a salad or a sandwich.

When your engine needs an overhaul

So what do you do when you've bought chips for lunch every day for a week and you're starting to feel less than efficient? Let's face it; we put a lot of strain on our bodies without really noticing we're doing it. In an office environment, most of the strain on our systems comes from stress, which can manifest itself in many ways. Stress can cause everything from muscle tension to digestion problems, and everything in between. If you're stressed at work, no doubt you're putting your body under a lot of stress in order to cope. In addition, if you don't take in enough of the essential vitamins and minerals present in healthy food, your body begins to function at a much lower capacity. And eventually, your body starts to complain. The solution? Clean out your system.

What is detox?

'Detox' seems to be the flavour of the month, or year, and all the most important people are doing it. You'll have seen detox programs mentioned in popular magazines and special detox 'packs' sitting on the shelf in the chemist next to the vitamins.

In short, going on a detox diet or program involves restricting certain 'toxic' foods from your diet for a certain period of time, usually two or three weeks, in order to 'give the body a break'. Most programs will direct you to avoid sugar, artificial additives, refined flours, some dairy foods, and most starchy carbohydrates. Some stricter programs advocate removing all wheat products and all dairy products and taking special 'detoxifying' supplements or liquids. There are a number of different products on the market that claim to assist the body to detoxify itself. These products contain herbal ingredients such as St John's Wort, aloe vera, psyllium fibre, and a host of vitamin and mineral supplements. There are also many books available about detox diets, some endorsed by Hollywood stars, some claiming to change the way you look and feel completely.

Putting aside the hype of detox diets, they're all aiming to achieve one thing: to revitalise your body and help it stay healthy, so that it can function at optimum capacity.

Eating for pleasure

Do you find that your eating habits at work differ significantly from those at home? Or perhaps it's the other way around; once you get home after a hard day's work, all you want to do is have a nice meal and forget your stress. Your eating habits could well be classified as 'emotional eating'. According to Dr Edward F Group, author of Do Your Emotions Control Your Weight? "emotional eaters use food as a pacifier and manager of their feelings. What it does is take your mind off the problem for a while—but eventually, after it is all said and done, the problem will still be there..."

So how do you combat this vicious cycle? Dr Group suggests keeping a food journal, so you can track your eating patterns and notice how you're letting your emotions rule you. Many people don't notice the difference between actual physical hunger and emotional need, and so they eat in response to both. Sometimes just recognising the reason you're eating, and if it's emotional, replacing the food with an activity, can make all the difference to your wellbeing.

Isn't it all just unrealistic mumbo jumbo?

Viewers of the British comedy series Absolutely Fabulous may remember a scene where Edina, the flamboyant mother, complains about her weight problem, to which her daughter responds that if she did some exercise and ate less it wouldn't be a problem. "Oh no, it's bound to be a build up of toxins or something, isn't it?" replies the mother. Many people are sceptical of detox diets for this reason; how could toxins build up in the body to the extent that it would cause serious health problems? Surely the body has its own complex filtering systems to rid itself of toxins. The detox is a modern day phenomenon; perhaps people make things more complex than they need to be because they don't want to face up to the fact that simple diet and exercise is all that it takes to maintain good health.

Many of these detox diets claim to repair the damage done over many years by a bad diet, and it seems ludicrous to expect that three weeks of avoiding sugar and artificial additives could possibly make you healthy. It seems to be too simple a solution for a relatively complex problem.

Take it or leave it

There is usually something to be gained from any approach, even if you don't agree with some aspects. Take from it what you think is relevant to you and use it. If that involves making a conscious effort to drink more water, give up that daily chocolate fix or only eat pasta once a week—so be it. Most of us would agree that we generally feel better in ourselves if we eat some vegies with each meal and drink more water. You may feel better in yourself if you stop eating refined sugar or start eating a piece of fruit daily.

One of the new detox programs available at the moment is the Holistic Detox. The book of the same name, written by Dr Joshi, who is both a medical doctor and a doctor of (traditional Indian) ayurvedic medicine, is based around the principles of avoiding 'acidic' foods, in order to balance the body's pH levels. It talks about reprogramming the palate to taste food properly again, as Dr Joshi believes that, by bombarding our food with salt and sugar, we have desensitised our tastebuds. The body has become confused, so when people have cravings, they're craving taste over anything else. Ultimately, Dr Joshi believes that the body generally knows what is good for it, and will crave what it really needs. So, for example, if you're craving some particular taste, it may be that you're missing something your body needs. This is just one example of the hundreds of different approaches out there at the moment that could help 'detoxify' the body.

Back to basics

When it comes to diet at work, the bottom line is that you need to recognise when you're compromising your diet for the sake of your work routine. This could mean skipping lunch because of a long meeting, or using coffee or chocolate as a way of distracting you from the stress of your job.

Everyone has bad days in relation to food, and sometimes you just feel like that big bucket of fried chips and sauce for lunch, instead of the healthy salad you've got in the fridge. It's not as though a few chips will kill you, right? That's right, a few won't do much harm, but a bucket every day for lunch will eventually have a negative effect. The secret is to pinpoint the moment when you start to indulge that little bit too much and have the strength to make a healthy choice. Know your own limits, don't underestimate the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle, and be kind to your body—you only have one!

Defence

Work–Life