The Office Dessert Banquet

There is a diabolical foe to peoples’ nutrition that resides in virtually every office building across the nation, if not the world.

You’re sitting in your cubicle and it’s business as usual with your work occupying the same computer monitor as Facebook, Minesweeper, and Cracked.com.  Suddenly you notice a general movement towards the break room where food is generally stored.  Then someone taps on one of your cubicle walls and points out that someone left a new tray of double fudge brownies in the kitchen.

There are a myriad of reasons why the sudden appearance of delicious food will break down any mental barriers of fortitude that you try to put up.  Sometimes you’re just bored and the food is a nice distraction.  Maybe you think you’re hungry or the fact that it’s free provides an extra incentive.  Either way, throughout the course of most average days, a lot of office workers find enough mountains of free sweets stockpiled in the office kitchen to put Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory to shame.  This is the Office Dessert Banquet.

The Office Dessert Banquet is the constant barrage of sweets left by unassuming or well meaning office colleagues that destroys diets on a daily basis.  It isn’t all gloom and doom, though.  The solution isn’t necessarily to duct tape your mouth shut or quit your job and start working from home in the name of your waistline.  Resisting the office dessert banquet is just a matter of fortitude and training yourself to not answer the call for sweets every time it sounds.  Speaking as someone who got his start in an office where someone literally brought half a wedding cake in for all to enjoy, I’m happy to pass my knowledge onto other nutrition seekers.

1.   Ask yourself: Do you really need the food?

It sounds silly, but take a few seconds before you get up and ask yourself what food you really need.  Is it those increasingly stale M&M cookies or the half-deflated pineapple cake?  In all likelihood the answer is no.  Do you really feel hungry, or are you just using it as an excuse to splurge on some empty calorie chocolate?  The answer is often going to be the latter.  People tend to head for the dessert table almost as an act of going through the motions.  Just thinking about what you’re about to do can make a lot of difference.  You’ll realize that you don’t really need to add several hundred calories of unhealthy junk food to your day.

Don’t worry about people ribbing you by calling you some kind of “health food fanatic” when you opt out of the initial rush for sweets.  You can rib them when their pants no longer fit.  The food being stale also leads to a larger point…

2.  The food probably won’t be fresh anyway

If you’re going to treat yourself, do it with something fresh from the oven or newly made.  If you want to have something sweet during the day, do you really want cookies that could have been sitting out on someone’s counter for days at a time?  If it’s not healthy, let it at least taste good.  That also opens up the venue to healthier options, like stopping at Swirl at 111 Cherry Street in New Canaan on the way home.  Speaking of healthy options…

3.  Load your cubicle up with healthy snacks

If you’re going to snack in the morning or in that awkward early afternoon period when the coffee is wearing off, make it something healthy.  When you eat well, you feel well.  Keep a bag of fresh fruit in the fridge including apples, bananas, oranges, or grapes.  Veggies will also do in a pinch.  Healthy, filling snacks can not only taste good, but kill any lingering hunger.  Consider plain oatmeal with a scoop of apple butter for flavor, or several almonds (both of which are superfoods).  Plain yogurt with some honey or apple butter is also a good idea. 

4.   A bottle of water will work wonders

This one works twofold.  It’s a great way to quench thirst instead of going for the vending machine or Coke cans available in the fridge (and don’t think diet is any better).  Secondly, when you drink water you’ll just feel less hungry.  There will be less incentive to fill your stomach with sugar because you’ve already filled it with fresh, calorie-free water.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a crunchy apple to eat.  Chocolate cake?  I don’t need that stuff anymore.

Michael Carusi is a social media manager and consultant for businesses that want to rock their digital marketing, maximize their revenue, and turn their customers into diehard fans.  He started his business shortly after graduating from American University in 2010 and is still dreaming big.     When he’s not building social media strategies or developing content calendars he’s an avid fitness aficionado and considers the New Canaan YMCA his home away from home.  You can check out his website and blog at michaelcarusi.com where he’s ready and willing to help you get the most out of your social media.