SHRM 2011: Helping Employees Lighten Up, Part 2

In giving SHRM attendees four tips to promote healthy living among employees to help them lose weight, I’m sure corporate health strategist Adam Bordes was aware that many attending his session, “Lighten Up: Daily Strategies for a Lighter, Healthier Workplace” will be using these steps themselves – I certainly will.

Bordes’ tips can be divided into four “Fs”:

Food

1. Eat famous foods. But note that if the food is famous for just tasting good — like donuts — that’s not necessarily the best choice. Bordes is talking about food items such as bananas, which are famous for being rich in potassium; and salmon, which is famous for being full of Omega 3s.
2. Eat your nutritional alphabet — that is, vitamins A, B, C, D and K — every day. And get these nutrients through high-density foods that have a high-nutritional content.
3. Eat meals on salad plates.

Fitness

1. Walk your weight-loss goal in miles every month; so if you want to lose 10 pounds, that means walking at least 10 miles a month.
2. Add strength training to your fitness return, because muscle burns more calories than fat.
3. Find an accountability partner who has similar goals but is healthier than you and who is willing to “hurt your feelings for your own good.”

Fat Loss

1. Apply the ELMO principle: Eat less more often.
2. Slow down on drinking soda. Stopping is even better (and that includes diet soda).
3. Drink half of your body weight in ounces every day.

Focus

1. Go viral about your health goals.
2. Find an accountability coach; for example, a personal trainer to show you how to exercise.
3. Enjoy the ride!

Bordes closed his session with four extra steps:

1. Start a $1/per program, where, for example, employees gain $1 for every pound of weight loss they accomplish
2. Offer health savings accounts.
3. Provide fitness classes two to three times per week, and massages one to two times per month.
4. Use his DEPLOY system for one year.

Bordes’ presentation did guilt me into trying to wean myself off one of my infamous “foods”– those little packets of artificial sweetener. I wasn’t affected when he said that despite marketing pitches that some products are made from sugar so they taste like sugar, they are not natural because you don’t see little packets of them growing on trees. Instead, he gave me pause when he listed some of the ingredients and their potential side effects. That was enough for me to reach for the little packets of raw sugar to sweeten my post-session café mocha.

And these weight loss tips are better than ones in the “1 Tip for a Tiny Belly” online ads, which have been determined to be part of a  marketing scheme, says the Federal Trade Commission in a Washington Post article.