Do Factors in The Office Really Make You Gain Weight?

There have been various studies that try to prove that stress in the workplace is bad for your wellness, especially in terms of weight gain. However, these studies have often shown mixed or weak results. Still, according to a study conducted among Danish health care workers, lifestyle variables may be the key intermediate factors between your psychosocial work environment and your wellbeing.

The researchers set out to discover how psychosocial factors outside the classical work stress models could potentially predict a change in your body mass index (BMI). The group was made up of 3982 women and 152 men, and followed-up over three years. The team predicted how BMI would change based on baseline psychosocial work factors, such as work pace, workload, quality of leadership, influence at work, meaning of work, predictability, commitment, role clarity, and role conflicts, and five covariates of age, cohabitation, physical work demands, type of work position and seniority.

The results were that women with high role conflicts often gained weight, whereas if there was high role clarity this could predict both weight gain and weight loss. Weight gain is also more likely if you’re a woman who lives alone, but the risk of this is less likely as you age. If there is a high quality of leadership, this tends to lead to weight loss in men. However, with the exception of quality of leadership, age, and cohabitation, these associations were generally weak. Therefore, though this study of a single occupational group suggested a few new risk factors for weight change outside the traditional work stress models, still more research is needed before this can be proven.