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Question: I’m graduating this year, and I have a lead on a job that I’m really excited about. My cousin is a business consultant, and he thinks he could help me land a job with the same firm that he works on. That would be a huge thing for my resume, but it would also mean a life of living out of hotel rooms and moving frequently from place to place. I don’t mind that in theory, but I’ve noticed that this lifestyle hasn’t been that good to my cousin. Between all the dinners and drinks with clients and the living out of suitcases, he seems to have gained a bit of weight. I want the job, but not the extra pounds. Any tips?

Answer:

Your possible career sounds like an exciting one, but it’s also easy to see why you’re concerned about its health implications. The hectic lifestyle you describe could easily do a number on your health and your waistline.

Consultants are not, however, the only ones who struggle with work and weight. One survey found that 41% of employees said they’d gained weight while in their current position. Does work make us fat, or does this just reflect the fact that most of us gain weight over time? It may depend on your job, but studies do say that stress causes cravings that can lead to snacking, which means that a rough day of work can make you fatter in a very direct way.

With that said, there may be things unique to your friend’s career to keep an eye on when it comes to weight gain. Diet experts recommend all kinds of measures to stay trim, but the reality is that many of these factors rely on big habits. It’s all interconnected, one retailer behind the popular Fastin Pills told us: your eating and exercising habits can be influenced by or supplemented with everything from medical treatments to sleep patterns. So when you take a job that disrupts your routine with such regularity, you may be setting yourself up for a rough time. Late nights working and long hours on the job can easily turn into quick bites at fast food restaurants, poor sleep cycles, or a “work hard, play hard” mentality–and these things, in turn, can turn into bad habits that inflate your waistline.

So what can you do? If you want this career, our experts suggested looking for way to add structure into your hectic career. Developing a routine for travel days might help, as would coming up with a plan for quick eating on the go. Your living situation matters, too: corporate apartment experts HomeLinkCincinnati told us that extended-stay amenities like ovens and refrigerators make a big difference by allowing workers far afield to still cook their own meals as they would back at home. If you have access to these things, use them; and if you don’t, try to come up with meals you can make without them. It won’t be easy to turn a hectic life as a consultant into a healthy situation, but if you’re proactive about it and are aware of the potential problems, you may be able to enjoy the success without the extra pounds.

“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” — Dolly Parton