SENTIMIENTOS Y EMOCIONES DERIVADOS DEL DESEMPLEO

of 8.46 hours (SD=1.27), at a mean of five days/week (SD=0.67). Participants described their jobs as mostly desk-bound; half of the participants said their jobs required them to travel either locally or internationally for short periods of time. Work appeared to influence the participants' daily lives, including their diet and ability to engage in physical activities. It was also apparent food-related activities such as shopping and cooking were still defined by gender roles.

Discussions of meals or dietary habits were often accompanied by mentions of work.

Breakfast, for example, was one such meal. Out of 12 participants, three reported skipping breakfast and one woman said she will eat a later meal at work after sending her children to school. Those who eat breakfast said they would consume light meals at home and mentioned having to rush through this meal to get to work. To many participants, work appeared to take precedent over breakfast. As a 22-year-old male graphic designer said, "it depends, if there is time for breakfast, I'll have breakfast. It won't be like specifically I need breakfast, if there is time then I'll have my breakfast lah." As for lunch and dinner, work often dictated the time, location and access to certain kinds of food. The location of the participants' offices, as well as work-related travel, affected dietary choices. One participant, a 30-year-old male photographer for a low-cost airline company, commuted an hour and a half to work (depending on traffic) at an airport outside of KL. Since the areas surrounding the air site remained undeveloped, the

photographer and his coworkers often traveled at least half an hour to the next town for food.

Though there were eateries at the air site, he said, but most were corporate fast-food joints: "If I can, I want to eat, like, salad every day for lunch but like, at the place where I work, it's not conducive. The only salad you can get is from Starbucks or Coffee Bean, which is like what,

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three leaves and like a whole load of dressing." Participants who traveled out of town for work said what and when they ate was limited to where they were. One 36-year-old male participant, a national media company executive who managed live coverage of the Malaysian soccer league, said his meal times were often inconsistent. During soccer season, he had to fly to various states, oversee crew and equipment logistics, and coordinate match coverage: "So when that thing happens for nine months of the year, that basically disrupts my, my food pattern, intake."

Since work occupied much of the participants' time, the role of procuring and preparing food were often relegated to females. Out of 12 participants, seven were single. Three of the single participants, all males, lived with immediate families; the remaining four, three males and one female, lived alone. For those who were married, the women reported doing most of the grocery shopping and cooking. For those who were single and living with their families, their mothers cooked. The three single males reported cooking at home but two said they tended to eat out rather than cook. When the single participants cooked, they leaned toward quick meals such as instant noodles, eggs, pasta, toasts, fried rice, and canned food. Only one single male

participant, a 42-year-old designer/competitive cyclist who lived alone, described cooking most of his meals from scratch.

All female participants worked; four were married and three had children. The married women cited having children as a driving factor for cooking at home rather than dining out because of the perceived control over the quality of the meal. A 32-year-old journalist, who became a first-time mother in 2012, said she and her husband stopped dining out frequently due to the arrival of their child. As she described the typical meals she would prepare, she asserted: "I like cooking uh, ...but it's more of like, when you do it at home, you, you sort of uh, whatever goes in is more cleaner, I believe, as the oil you use is also cleaner, a better sort of oil that you

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buy." For male participants who lived with their mothers or wives who did not have the time to cook, the whole family tended to eat out because it was more convenient. As the oldest male participant, a 54-year-old ad agency owner, said: "Because actually my wife doesn't cook, so, it's uh, all our meals are out. ...For a while, for quite a number of years, my mother cooked. ...But I realize because I began keeping quite late hours, it wasn't efficient anymore and so I began to eat out, and then my son has left home so there's not many of us so we decided not to bother my mum, so she didn't have to cook everyday for us now."

Aside from diet, participants said the sedentary nature and time spent at work left them little time to engage in physical activities. Eleven participants reported sitting an average of 8.5 hours/work day. All participants walked an average of 4.8 days/week for at least 10 minutes at a time; all except one drove to work. Most of the walking was related to work – attending meetings or walking from the parking lot or a public transport hub to the office. Another form of physical activity that participants said they engaged in were related to household chores such as sweeping, mopping, gardening, and lifting loads of laundry. Only three participants, all males, said they put aside time to exercise, by either cycling, working out in a gym, or walking in a park. For the other participants, finding time to exercise was tough. A 23-year-old, a recent college graduate, said working left "not much hours for yourself, for your own time, to do your own things that you want to do." Another female participant, the 32-year-old mother, said: "I try my best to make time for myself to go into something, but there is always something else which is bugging you, which is like your family actually, you have to do things for your kids, you know, you have to cook, all these things that come in between. Honestly I do not have time, but I do try to make time."

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