Impacts of changing work from home patterns on health behaviours and obesity: insights from the late COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background: Numerous studies on work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic link it to reduced physical activity, increased alcohol use, and weight gain, mainly under stringent pandemic restrictions. We investigated whether changes in work-from-home levels from pre to late pandemic are associated with health behaviours during the late pandemic, controlling for family and work factors. Methods: Using 8195 participants from the 2022 wave of the Swedish Longitudinal Survey of Health, we used logistic regression to analyze the associations between changes in the amount of remote work from pre-pandemic to late pandemic, and physical inactivity, problem drinking, and obesity. Models were first adjusted for age and sex; then for civil status, having children under the age of 12 years at home, and occupation; and finally for job stress, work-family conflict, and family-work conflict. Results: Individuals who decreased work from home had 17% higher odds of being physically inactive (fully adjusted model OR: 1.17, 95% CI: 1.00–1.37) compared to those who did not change their amount of work from home. Changes in work from home were not statistically significantly associated with problem drinking or obesity. However, there was a tendency for those who decreased work from home to have higher odds of obesity (OR: 1.08, 95% CI: 0.94–1.24), although the association did not reach statistical significance. Conclusions: These findings suggest, although the associations were weak, that work from home could offer opportunities for individuals to be more conscious of their health and to engage in healthier behaviours.

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© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-025-25547-2