A new study published this week has revealed that women who work in a commercial property office for more than 35 hours a week are more likely to gain weight than their part-time counterparts. Researchers put this down to full-time workers being less motivated to cook healthy meals or go to the gym after a hard day at the office.
Additionally, many will forego a proper night’s sleep, sitting up late to put in extracurricular hours outside their commercial property workplace and waking up early to arrive at the office ahead of colleagues.
Of course, with the job market looking the way it does at the moment, many workers feel the need to go the extra mile to impress their boss. Arriving early at the office, skipping lunch breaks to eat at their desk and agreeing to work late without pay are all common tales at the moment with stressed commercial property employees desperate to keep their jobs as more and more Britons are forced to frequent their local job centre.
According to Dr Nicole Au, who led the study, women who spend more than 49 hours per week in their commercial property workplace are much more likely to smoke and drink, as well as experiencing similar weight gain to those in the 35 hours plus per week bracket.
The study was conducted by researchers from the Centre for Health and Economics at Monash commercial property university, Melbourne. It analysed over nine thousand participants, who were all women aged between 45 and 50, over two years to determine how employment status and the number of hours worked per week affects weight.
In the two year period, 55 per cent of the participating women put on weight, with the average commercial property employee gaining 1.5 per cent of her weight at the start of the research.
However, some participants were said to have gone through “extreme amounts of weight gain” – generally office workers who led sedentary lifestyles, which they put down to their long hours in front of a computer.
Dr Au said; “The study highlights the increasing number of women entering the workforce and the effects on their ability to maintain a healthy weight.
“Longer work hours may reduce the time spent preparing home cooked meals, exercising and sleeping which are risk factors for obesity.
“Policies that assist women who work long hours to reduce the time costs of sustaining a healthy diet and their physical activity routine may have positive benefits.”
In certain countries around the world, Japan being a prime example, commercial property workers are often given regular exercise breaks to encourage greater productivity as well as promoting healthy living within the work force. Perhaps, with obesity levels officially at crisis point, it is time for Britain to consider these methods as a means of protecting the commercial property workers of this country.
Do you believe that women, and also men, who spend long hours in their commercial property place of work are more likely to gain small, or even large, amounts of weight? And do you think an exercise programme at work would help in reducing these issues?
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