A study conducted in Australia has shown that there might be a link between your job and waistline.
According to this study, people who have jobs that require critical thinking and daily decision making are in greater risk of having expanded waistlines. On the other hand, those who exercise control by applying their skills at work; better known as skill discretion, are in lesser risk and were found to have smaller waistlines.
Skill Discretion includes development of new skills, task variety, creativity and learning new things.
As published in the journal of Social Science and Medicine, the study explained the two aspects of job control which affects not only the mental aspects but as well as the physical characteristics. These are decision making and application of skills.
"Many people point to 'eating too much and not moving enough' as a cause of obesity," says lead author Mr. Christopher Bean.
"While this might explain how weight gain often happens, it does not acknowledge things such as environmental, psychological, social or cultural factors- these are some of the important reasons why obesity happens," adds Bean.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Adelaide, Central Queensland University and the University of South Australia. They gathered data from 450 middle- aged participants who worked in white-collar positions, or those working in administrative setting and jobs requiring manual labor also known as blue-collar jobs.
Contrary to common practice, the researchers gathered the participants' clinic- measured height, weight and waist circumference as well as their computer-assisted telephone interview data to confirm the psychosocial qualities of their jobs.
The study concluded that "skill discretion and decision authority should be treated separately since combining these theoretically distinct components may conceal their differential associations with measures of obesity, masking their individual importance. Psychosocial work factors displayed stronger associations and explained greater variance in waist circumference compared with BMI."
