Diabetes Habits for Long Working Hours

Long working hours make diabetes harder in three specific ways: you sit for most of them, you eat at unpredictable times, and dinner lands late.

Sitting is its own problem, separate from exercise. Standing up and moving briefly every half hour through a working day is worth doing even on days you also exercise. Aim for the weekly 150 minutes of moderate activity as well, but do not treat one as a substitute for the other.

Changes that fit a real working day

• Take calls standing or walking. The cheapest movement in an office day.
• Have a default lunch you can get reliably, rather than deciding when you are already hungry and short of time.
• Keep something at your desk that treats a low if you take insulin or a sulfonylurea — glucose tablets or a small juice, not chocolate.
• Ten minutes after lunch, outside or in the corridor. This is the highest-value ten minutes in your day.
• Eat something at 5 pm so that a 10 pm dinner is not eaten on an empty stomach at speed.

Late dinners deserve attention. Eating late, quickly, and then sleeping tends to read higher than the same food eaten earlier. If your work makes an early dinner impossible, make the late one smaller and put the walk after it.

See also fitting activity into a working day.