Combating Obesity in the Work Place

February 18, 2010 @ 10:32 am

Most Americans spend a ton of time at work; perhaps one could say we spend more time at the office than they do at home (not counting sleeping).  There've been weeks where I spent more time with the people I didn't like but was forced to be with than the people I love and would choose to be with. But workaholism aside, what this means for Americans is that the work place is a prime place to encourage healthy living and combat the Obesity Epidemic. But few work places do.

Whole Foods - the health-oriented grocery store chain - has decided to do something about it. They've begun offering extra employee discounts to those people are fit and nicotine free. If you don't smoke, have good blood pressure, have low cholesterol and a normal-weight BMI, then you qualify for a 30% discount off your grocery shopping at Whole Foods (the normal employee discount is 20%). There are gradations between 20% and 30% but in all cases you cannot be obese (BMI of 30+).

Here's the letter they recently distributed to their employees (click each page to zoom in full-sized):


Here's the thing - while I'm a big advocate of using insurance or financial incentives to promote healthy living amongst your employees, I think Whole Foods is going about this incorrectly. What they are basically doing is creating an instant reward for thin employees while instantly excluding their larger employees. It doesn't create a motivation for their employees to lose weight, it creates a punishment for being fat. Moreover, the program places a heavy emphasis on the very-faulty BMI metric. That, as those of who are trying to lose know, is a messed-up science that doesn't take body composition or other factors into account. A shorter person could be all muscle with just 8% body fat and still be "overweight" according to the BMI.

A much better program would have been to encourage the journey of healthy living and weight loss. A workplace should be giving rewards for the process of living more healthy. For a smoker, it should give a benefit for quitting. For an obese person, it should create a sliding scale for weight loss progress - based on percentage, body fat, or something more scientifically sound than BMI. 

Imagine this as a program.

Dear colleagues,

Our employees are our most important asset. Without you, there's no way we can continue to make world-class widgets that all widget lovers enjoy. Like you would with any high-value treasure, we want to ensure our employees are well-cared for and kept in the best possible conditions to foster growth and continued success for all of us. To do that, our wages are competitive and based on merit; our health insurance program covers virtually everyone in our building and is quite generous. But we also know it's a little expensive - and we want to help bring that down in cost through a program of healthier living across the whole organization.

Beginning now, all employees are eligible to participate in the Healthy Living Premium Reduction Program. All you need do is commit to a measurable, attainable health goal and work to achieve that goal over a predetermined period of time. If you stick with the goal and achieve it, your Healthy Living Premium Reduction will be permanent as long as you maintain the new habit. We know that dangling an imaginary carrot far off in the future isn't a a great motivator - so instead we want to encourage you to live more healthfully along the way - through incremental rewards.  Once you reach your goals, you'll retain your rewards as long as you stick with your new lifestyle change.

If you're a smoker, commit to quitting in 4-6 months and stay nicotine free for the rest of your employment. If you're overweight, commit to losing weight at a certain healthy rate and as you continue to lose, your premium will continue to fall.  If you're already at a healthy weight, commit to working out, getting stronger, participating in community fitness events, or a number of other ideas.

This isn't everything you can do - I encourage you to speak with HR to sign up for the program. It's not mandatory. It's not publicly shared. It's just a way to encourage a healthier lifestyles across our company.

In other words, our companies should be rewarding the process, not the results.  Whole Foods' program is a nice gesture, but it's not really an incentive. For the obese, it will take a long time - as much as a couple of years - to get healthier and closer to Whole Foods' benchmarks - a long time that will outlast most people's average employment (especially store workers), and with nothing to motivate them along the way.

Should businesses be actively participating in promoting healthy lifestyles? Absolutely. And I want to continue to explore some of those methods on this blog as time goes on. Whole Foods' is a nice gesture, but poorly executed. I hope their intent is the model for other companies, but I also hope their program does not become a template.    

0 comments | Topics: BMI, body fat percentage, business, incentives

Some Thoughts on Today's Weigh-In

January 27, 2010 @ 12:24 pm

Today I weighed in at 299.5 pounds.  That's under 300 (yay!) but a half pound up from Sunday morning (boo!). And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed in it.  It's fabulous to be under 300 after just a couple of weeks. In the past that used to take a month or more IF I ever got below 300. But I'm skirting the edge, there, and I'm hesitant to take too much pleasure in it without waiting for additional, confirmatory results as they say in science class.  At just a half-pound off from the Big Bad 3, I could easily end up back above the mark next week.

What was it, I think to myself. Was it going out for Brunch on Sunday (despite walking in excess of 2 miles all over the place immediately after)? Was it eating that whole personal pizza I made a couple days ago when I should have just half? Was it the 2 (3?) glasses of wine I drank last night? Is my body reacting negatively to the supplements I've been taking (nothing big, either, just omega-3 and some green tea)? Or is it just ... a slow week?

I learned from The Biggest Loser a couple weeks ago that the second week is awful for weight loss. I thought "hrm, really?" and then wham! Here we are with a 1.5lb loss. Yeah, I guess that could be true.

But there are glimmers of hope in today's weigh-in, too.  Because I AM below 300. I. Am. Below. 300. Take it, own it, embrace it. A little loss is still a loss. But perhaps more importantly, my body fat percentage was a full 8/10ths of a percent lower than last week. 39.5% - versus 40.3% last week. Now that's significant! It's a big drop in body fat, bigger than any previous week-to-week change in this journey. Which means, assuming the measurer thingy on my scale isn't just wildly off, that something is going on inside my body and gearing up for weight loss. Perhaps I did actually lose a good amount of fat this week, but I also gained muscle.

Let's look at it this way. Last week you could say I was lugging around 121.3 pounds of pure, globby, bouncy-castle FAT. This week, I'm lugging around 118.3 pounds of fat.  That's actually 3 pounds of fat loss (I'm probably taking some liberties here with the maths and science, but it works for me). I actually feel better about that. It's a full 1% of my body weight. And it means I've gained some muscle.

So I feel good and bad about the weigh-in. But that just goes to show you why you can't rely solely on weight as an indicator of health or progress.

0 comments | Topics: The Biggest Loser, body fat percentage, evalutation, progress