Have you heard of the "freshman 15"? According to popular (and personal) anecdotes, that's the number of pounds a student will put on during the first year of college. Whether the reason is homesickness, stress or unrestricted access to the cafeteria ice cream machine, the horizontal growth spurt is one of the less-desirable outcomes of living away from home.
Lamentably, unemployment often has a similar effect on the waistline. Call it the "job-seeker 17" or the "transition 10," and you'll get the picture. But watch out for assumptions: If your mental image includes a depressed job-seeker seeking solace in a carton of Ben & Jerry's, you may be only half right.
Sometimes weight gain during unemployment is the unexpected result of a positive activity: extra networking. When you're conducting a textbook job search, you're connecting with more people and attending more meetings. And what better way to bond with people than over a meal?
Even job-search support groups are dangerous places for calorie-counters. In an effort to comfort you, job counselors are more likely to put out doughnuts than fruits or vegetables. (In their defense, it's much quicker to pick up a box of pastries than to slice up a dozen apples.) Nor would the traditional cookie celebrations held by successful job-finders seem the same if the treat were a stack of carrot sticks. We associate happiness more readily with sweet things than with healthier foods.
Not that networking and cookie parties are the only culprits. As you might guess, quite a few factors converge during unemployment to wreak havoc on your eating patterns:
Schedule. The structure of your day has a lot to do with your food practices. When you're working, you may be more likely to eat lightly, squeezing breakfast and lunch into a busy schedule. When you're at home for most of the day, long mealtimes can become the norm, along with extra servings of last night's leftovers.
Isolation. Job-seekers may find themselves eating out more often, not just for the networking aspect but also to break the isolation or boredom of being in the house all day. As you undoubtedly know, restaurant meals nearly always contain more calories (and are more expensive) than meals prepared at home.
Eating between meals. Snacking also can be controlled more easily at work. Some jobs simply don't allow it, while others are too fast-paced to accommodate food breaks. Even when it would be no problem to eat on the job, many of us find it easier to avoid constant nibbling at work than we do at home.
Physical activity. It may seem surprising, but even office workers move around more in a day than do people who stay at home. We tend to discount the amount of walking we do inside an office or as part of a daily commute, but we burn more calories in these activities than we do in writing resumes on the home computer.
If any of these factors is true in your situation, you may be in danger of adding a few pounds during this transition. To counter the trend, experiment with these suggestions:
1. Create a daily structure that imitates the workday. This might mean limiting your mealtimes, cutting out snacks or putting your job search on a 9-to-5 schedule. In place of a commute, consider starting and ending the day with a 20-minute walk.
2. If your job was very physical, replace some of the activity you've lost by adding a daily exercise routine.
3. To combat boredom and isolation, take a brown-bag lunch to a park or other community setting.
4. Plan for the food aspect of networking situations. Socially speaking, it's quite acceptable to turn down food at group meetings but less acceptable to forgo eating when it's just two of you in a lunch meeting. In the first setting, accept a beverage but leave the doughnuts on the tray. In the second setting, order something light and easy to eat in front of others, such as a bowl of soup.
While thinking about calories in the midst of a job search may not seem very productive, you'll be glad later that you did. Your interview clothes will fit better, and your confidence and self-esteem will improve. And, as you probably know, confident job-seekers are more likely to be successful job-seekers.
Still, life is short. When you get your job offer, remember that even strict diets have room for the occasional hot fudge sundae.
- Amy Lindgren owns Prototype Career Service, a career consulting firm in St. Paul, Minn. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com or at 1071 W. Seventh St., St. Paul, MN 55102.