Sitting next to the wrong person at work can greatly impact your waistline new research revealed.

The Irish Sun reports that 60 per cent of workers blame their colleagues for pigging out at work.

Junk food sharing workmates who inundate your desk with cakes and sweets can impact your weight gain and most desk-based employees gain an average ten pounds during the first year of a new job.

The study showed that 14 per cent of office workers feel pressured into eating sweets when other colleagues are indulging themselves.

'Office Feeders' make us fatter!

A whopping 24 per cent said they couldn’t resist the unhealthy snacks that are brought into the office to celebrate birthdays (and Fridays in Her.ie’s case).

Diet and health adviser Janet Taylor said: “The office appears to be a ‘no go area’ for people trying to stick to a healthier diet with boredom levels and temptation to snack on unhealthy foods and pile on the pounds.”

Taylor suggests that workers resist the temptation as best they can:

“Swapping a packet of biscuits for a platter of fresh fruit will help meet your five a day target, and having healthy alternatives, such as carrot sticks or rice cakes, close to hand will help you ward off temptation from the office ‘feeders'," she said.