Hey there, fellow food enthusiasts! We all know holidays are meant for indulging, and I’m not here to rain on your parade.

In fact, I have some fantastic tips to help you enjoy your favorite foods guilt-free and keep that waistline in check. So, let’s dive right in!

1. Don’t skip breakfast – just delay it

We all know that feeling of arriving at a party starving and ready to devour everything in sight. To avoid this, delay your breakfast and opt for a hearty salad with plenty of oil and a protein source, or a simple chicken and veggie stir-fry.

If you prefer something quick, go for a thick and creamy protein shake. Vegans fear not! You can try a chocolate, hemp protein, peanut butter, and banana shake. Yum!

2. Bank some calories the week before

Losing or maintaining weight is all about calories in, calories out. So, here’s the plan: cut back on high-calorie meals and desserts during the week leading up to the holiday.

This way, you can “bank” those calories for your barbecue feast. Amp up your efforts by adding an extra half hour of exercise daily.

You might even find that you’ve shed a pound or two after the holiday!

Also Read: The 5 Bulletproof Strategies to Combat Employee Burnout

3. Choose your drinks wisely to fit in more food

Step away from that sugary punch and consider bringing your own stevia-sweetened alcoholic drinks.

This way, you have control over what goes into your beverages and how many calories you consume.

If you’re into non-alcoholic options, Partake offers tasty non-alcoholic beer with as little as 10-30 calories per drink.

And remember, regular soda is loaded with sugar, so opt for diet soda or zero-calorie seltzer water with a squeeze of lemon or lime to save on calories.

4. Fill a plate (and save some for later)

Here’s a clever trick – fill your plate with all the deliciousness, then remove half of it and save it in a to-go container for later.

This way, you’ll enjoy your favorites while keeping portion sizes in check. Feel free to bring that container to the picnic, and don’t forget to load up on healthier options like quinoa salads and whole-wheat hamburger buns.

If you’re contributing a dish, choose a healthy recipe to share.

5. Fit in some movement.

Don’t forget to incorporate some physical activity into your holiday festivities. Take a walk, join in a game of croquet or badminton, or try your hand at pickleball.

Whether you win or lose, it all burns calories. Consider organizing a patriotic scavenger hunt or a jump rope challenge to get everyone moving.

Remember, participation is key to burning those extra calories.

Bonus tip: Don’t let the scale dictate your happiness

After indulging in salty or carbonaceous treats, it’s common to retain some water weight. Give yourself a couple of days before stepping back on the scale and let your body recalibrate.

So, there you have it five quick tips to help you stay lean and still savor the Fourth of July (or any holiday). Enjoy the festivities, relish the flavors, and have a blast with your loved ones!

Take care, and enjoy!

To your health!

The post 5 Quick Tips to Help Employees Stay Lean appeared first on Corporate Health Coach Los Angeles - LifeUP Corporate Wellness.

Does this sound familiar? You kick off your corporate wellness initiative with a bang. Employees are enthusiastic and affirming.

You feel heartened that your hard work getting the program off the ground is paying off. But as weeks go by, employee enthusiasm begins to wane.

Many of your people begin to lose interest in program offerings.

And before you know it, employees are dropping out, and those who are still participating do it half-heartedly.

So what can you do?

Experienced wellness providers are familiar with these setbacks. And with that in mind, they create workplace wellbeing strategies that are effective and inclusive.

Programs that inspire, motivate, and engage. Visualize having a corporate wellness coach who will help you successfully implement those strategies.

When you work together, you can anticipate far better participation rates – from beginning to end. Here are 7 strategies that will put you on the path to success:

1. Let leaders show the way

Successful programming begins at the top. Yes, it’s vital for leaders to walk the talk. When leadership and management show enthusiasm, you’ll experience far more dynamic results.

Start by establishing a Wellness Committee and getting your wellness champions to begin spreading the message.

Select committee members and champions from various departments and divisions and all levels of authority.

2. Make things easy

HR leaders tell me their people sometimes say they’re reluctant to participate in health and wellness programs for the following reasons:

• No time
• Little interest
• Not aware of offerings
• Barriers to access.

That’s why it’s vital to communicate, communicate, communicate – and do it effectively. It means going beyond posters, (though these can be effective, too).

Use every form of messaging at your disposal from letters to text messages to promote wellness initiatives, health tips, and your EAP.

Another way to make healthy choices easy for employees is to make healthy options the default, helping to maximize awareness.

Think of replacing pizza with whole-grain tortillas and nutritious fixin’s. Or replacing the candy in the vending machines with trail mix, Pirates Booty, and low-sugar energy bars.

If you’re going to hang posters, make them intriguing and fun.

For instance, two Samford students who wanted to see whether positive messaging would increase staircase usage put up posters that said “Be healthy and take the stairs.” On each step, a small sign showed the number of calories a stair climber would burn.

So post interesting health and nutrition messages in highly trafficked locations.

Think elevators, restrooms, hallways, and coffee stations. Promote messages that encourage employees to simply stretch throughout the day.

3. Get to Know Your Employees

To design and implement a flourishing wellness strategy means learning about your employees’ wants and needs.

This involves sending out employee surveys and forming small focus groups to get feedback and bring barriers to light.

This way, your program will benefit from listening, learning, and gaining targeted insights.

To achieve maximum engagement and participation, you’ll need to take key demographic information into account.

For example, you’ll want to assess any language and/or literacy barriers, whether employees have computer access at home and at work, and any job requirements and restrictions.

You’ll also want to tweak specific aspects of your health and wellness program to give employees with disabilities and health restrictions or remote employees maximum participation opportunities.

4. Brand and promote

Driving high participation and engagement in a wellness program involves four crucial components when it comes to messaging:

• Develop a wellness brand for the program
• Find your program a “home”
• Design media and materials to educate and update employees and give shout-outs for successes
• Personalize messaging

Give your program a logo and catchy name. This way, employees will easily be able to consistently recognize and utilize the program.

Once you’ve designed and developed the program, give it a “home,” such as an internal wellness portal or website where employees can easily access information.

Companies with a vibrant culture of health use technology, team meetings, wellness committees, and targeted communications that enable employees to stay connected and share information.

Use your company newsletter or email blasts to broadcast success stories and testimonials. When you recognize your health champions, other employees want to climb aboard the health train.

Lastly, your employees are more liable to pay attention to your program when they see you’re making an effort to communicate relevant information to them.

Giving them health tips and resources is one way to grab and hold their interest.

5. Keep updating

Having a great wellness program launch is important, but you’ll need to go beyond that enthusiastic kick-off event. Don’t drop the ball after the initial excitement is over.

The secret to maintaining interest and engagement is keeping things fresh. Regularly add new features that make employees excited to participate.

Survey employees to discover the health topics that they would like to cover in the program.

Use Facebook, YouTube videos, and your company web portal to capture employee interest and maintain engagement and participation.

You’ll want to keep programming fresh and fun. Hold team challenges, offer incentives for reaching goals, and include lively and entertaining initiatives.

6. Make sure there’s a payoff

Consider your company’s criteria for offering incentives. Do you want to motivate employees to participate, influence their health outcomes, or some combination of both of these?

Financial incentives can motivate employees to take part in on-site screenings, for example, or sign up for an employer-funded group health plan.

But these won’t necessarily result in long-term behavioral changes.

But if your program infuses fun, humor, respect, and community, you’ll provide employees with an emotional connection which is far more likely than an incentive to pursue the behavioral changes they require to embrace wellness.

7. Personalize things

Flourishing wellness programs feel personal. You’ll want to provide enough screening processes, resources, ideas, and educational materials that employees want to create their own individual health and wellness goals.

That way, you’ll encourage employees as they celebrate early successes and reap meaningful rewards.

These early successes will motivate employees so that they’ll want to achieve more challenging goals.

Promoting success means offering encouragement, tools, and resources, such as health and wellness coaching, fitness challenges, and meaningful rewards.

The upshot?

As a seasoned corporate wellness coach, I can attest that creating effective and inclusive wellbeing strategies will inspire, motivate, and engage your employees. And if you’d like to explore how we could create a successful program together, let’s get in touch.

To your health!

The post 7 Effective Strategies to Boost Wellness Program Engagement and Participation appeared first on Corporate Health Coach Los Angeles - LifeUP Corporate Wellness.

What are the benefits of creating a culture of health in the workplace? No two companies are the same, but employees who work for businesses that value a culture of health are more engaged and productive, happier, and less likely to jump ship.  So, what’s involved in going beyond employee health and wellness programs to build that culture of health?

Why fostering company culture matters

Culture is the “tacit social order of an organization” – unspoken but definitely felt. It shapes words, attitudes, and deeds in profound and enduring ways. Those tacit cultural patterns define what an organization encourages, discourages, accepts, or rejects. A well-adjusted company culture aligns with personal motivations and values. It can generate a massive surge toward shared aspirations and goals and create a thriving organization. Employees at companies with positive cultures are more likely to:

• Say their managers treat them with kindness and respect.
• Feel pumped up by the company’s mission.
• Suffer less stress and experience more engagement.
• Take fewer sick days.
• Embrace their authentic selves.
• Remain loyal to their company. 

In short, a well-adjusted company culture helps people to show up and perform, ultimately impacting profits and growth. As Peter Drucker once famously quipped, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Moving beyond employee health and wellness programs

Companies have lots of ways to foster a culture of health. Using leadership to your full advantage is an effective one. But the lion’s share of what makes a positive workplace culture is the way a company cares about and supports the holistic well-being of its people. When employees are treated well consistently across the full spectrum of health – social, mental, physical, financial, and clinical – they’ll be able to thrive and contribute positively to the organization. But a healthy workforce won’t magically appear, you’ll need to thoughtfully cultivate one. Here are some key elements to foster a healthy corporate culture:

Go over your company values with a fine-tooth comb

The first step is to diligently reflect on your company’s values. A healthy corporate culture is strongly tied to its core principles and beliefs – and it applies from the corporate office on down. Success means employees being able to connect to these values, or else your efforts to build a workplace well-being culture will fail without a doubt.  

Ask employees what they need and want

Use surveys and focus groups to learn what employees expect. Take care to include a representative sample of your people across generational, racial, gender, and sexual orientation lines to gauge a realistic idea of what wellness represents to the whole organization. After you’ve carefully listened, communicate the things you learned to your employees and the steps you intend to take to begin creating a culture of health in the workplace.

Prioritize employee’s mental health

Today’s employees consider mental health to be equally important as physical health. And although the stigma associated with admitting to mental health issues is beginning to wane, it’s still awkward for an employee to ask a manager for a mental health day. Putting a focus consistently on the importance of mental health will speak volumes to employees, as well as let them know frequently what resources are available to them. Begin by calling attention to your Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and its employee support system. Then, if you haven’t already, consider wellness programs your company could offer to reduce stress, encourage mindfulness, or foster resilience.

Make programs visible

There’s no point in having employee health and wellness programs if your employees aren’t aware of them, so for success visibility is key. When you’re launching programs, ask your leadership to throw a kick-off celebration to inform and inspire employees.

Establish a communication strategy to outline your wellness services – calling attention to topics that appeal to your employees, including weight loss, nutrition, physical activity, mental and financial health, stress reduction, smoking cessation, and work-life balance. Take generational communication preferences into account as you develop your collection of communication materials.

Think about channels that go beyond posters in the hallways. Leverage every channel your multi-generational employees communicate with, whether that’s email, text, Facebook, LinkedIn, and print notifications – whatever will encourage and motivate your people.

Model wholesome habits

A robust culture of health begins at the top. Yes, it’s vital to walk the talk. Employees need to see senior leaders and managers focusing on their own health habits. That way, your people will be more motivated to devote attention to their own wellness habits. It will signal to your workforce that well-being is a vital part of the culture – not just a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have. 

Here are a few ideas to consider implementing:

• Address health and wellness in town hall meetings.
• Ask managers to schedule time in their calendars for fitness or meditation sessions or participate in company fitness groups.
• Encourage managers to take time off for self-care and to share their plans with their teams.
• Devote a few minutes during weekly team meetings: promote current and upcoming fitness and mindfulness activities, encourage extra steps (think taking the stairs!) or stretch during the day, and call attention to EAP resources. 

Support employees’ passions outside of work

The pandemic gave people the opportunity to reflect on what really mattered in life. Often that meant devoting more quality time to family, pursuing personal interests, or volunteering in the community. Now they’re asking employers to give them the flexibility to fit these significant activities in. 

Here are two ways to begin:

• Create opportunities for employees to share about their families, volunteer work, or interests.
• Gauge employee interest in forming employee resource groups that can bolster coworker bonds and provide an opportunity to build high-trust relationships and a sense of belonging. 

Champion community service

Research shows that employees who participate in volunteer activities are more likely to be engaged at work. Of the 51% of cross-industry companies that Boston College surveyed that measure the connection between community service and engagement, 96% reported a positive correlation. If you don’t currently offer paid time off for volunteer work, considering the return, you may want to implement it. You may also want to integrate volunteer opportunities that align with your organization’s mission and partner with a local non-profit. And today, there are plenty of ways for employees to get involved with virtual community service.

Optimize your work environment for healthier habits

Did you know that employees who have high well-being incur 41% fewer health-related costs than their lower well-being counterparts and a 35% lower turnover rate? It’s hard to achieve employee well-being if you don’t support it in the physical workplace. Is your organization sending employees mixed messages? Think doughnuts at meetings or ergonomically compromised workspaces – at work or in a virtual office. Here are some ideas:

• Offer nutritious options in the cafeteria and vending machines.
• Provide healthy meal kit delivery for remote employees.
• Start a smoking cessation program. 
• Put a sign that says “Use THESE” next to the stairs,
• Scatter fruit baskets around the office.
• Bring healthy cooking demos in.
• Get a baseball team going.
• Hold morning yoga or tai-chi classes outside.
• Engage a health and wellness coach. 

The options for signaling your company is committed to wellness are truly endless.

Provide a variety of opportunities to boost physical activity each day

Targeted movement throughout the day can help improve mood, increase focus, and reduce stress. But employees are looking for your permission to leave their desks and move about. Here are some ways to encourage this:

• End meetings 10 minutes early.
• Block calendars for a noontime walk.
• Have walking or standing meetings.
• Start a movement challenge.
• Put posters on elevators with a calorie-burning count for stair climbing.
• Hand out resistance and booty bands.
• Install some standing desks.

Really, the sky’s the limit. But remember that your leaders should set the tone with their own healthy behaviors.

Since covid began, people are more aware that movement needn’t mean a one-hour boot camp. And employees shouldn’t have to devote gym time before the workday begins or after it ends. Forward-thinking employers who have developed a culture of health understand that providing time for exercise each day can boost mood and productivity.

Recruit wellbeing champions

To really instill a well-being culture, it pays to recruit ambassadors. Scout out your workforce health advocates and ask them to serve as champions. Social pressure can act as a positive force for beginning or developing healthy habits. Ask your champions to actively participate in well-being pursuits and share on your company’s social media channels. You can also encourage champions to organize special events and promote them to your workforce. Here are some event examples your ambassadors could initiate: 

• Start a fitness challenge. 
• Host a health screening fair.
• Schedule breathing or mindfulness workshops.
• Invite a wellness coach to lead an exercise program or demonstrate how to work out using home equipment.
• Celebrate World Fitness Day.
• Create a smoothie bar in the cafeteria once a week.
• Invite a registered chef and dietician to lead a hands-on cooking class. 

You get the picture.

Final Thoughts

I’d like to tell you that transforming company culture can happen overnight, but that’s just wishful thinking. It will require extensive thought, planning, and time to integrate all the elements. Instilling a culture of health also requires continuous monitoring of the pulse of your employees and tweaking wellness initiatives to confirm and solidify your commitment to workforce wellbeing and ensure you maximize investment and outcomes.  But as your workforce starts to engage regularly with your health-focused programs, they will experience improvements in their daily lives. And a healthy employee means a healthier bottom line, as employees incur fewer medical costs, become more productive, reduce absenteeism rates, and stay with the company. It doesn’t get better than that. Ready to get started building your culture of health? 

The post Think beyond the “wellness program” to create a culture of health appeared first on Corporate Health Coach Los Angeles - LifeUP Corporate Wellness.

Did you know that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that six out of ten adults live with a chronic medical condition? This type of statistic is why you might consider focusing on promoting wellness in the workplace because effective corporate wellness programs don’t just make employees healthier and more productive, they will positively impact a company’s bottom line over time. For most companies, addressing chronic disease will yield the best results, considering 86% of all medical dollars are spent on chronic conditions. But where do you start?

Step 1: Getting a Baseline

The first critical step toward creating health and wellbeing programs for employees is to obtain information about your current workforce’s health – and your organization’s willingness to improve health outcomes based on this information. This will enable your company to design and implement programs that benefit both employers and employees. Here are some steps you can take to obtain this information: 

Step 2: Find your top return health areas

Now it’s time to dig into the insurance data, clinical screenings, and biometric assessments you’ve collected to closely scrutinize your findings. You’ll want to focus your efforts on the areas that align with the company’s overall health strategy and provide the highest return. Concentrate on addressing the most prevalent health risks and chronic conditions in your population. This will provide you with the highest ROH – return on the health of your employees over the long term. Over time, ROH will naturally lead to a positive ROI (return on investment). 

What will give you the highest ROH by directly targeting the most pervasive chronic conditions and costs among your people? Simple. Disease management and risk prevention. Let’s take the leading chronic conditions among individuals aged 18-64:

• hypertension (30%)
• cholesterol disorders (20%)
• respiratory diseases (19%)
• and diabetes (12%)

Obesity is both a chronic condition and a risk factor and tops the list at just under 42% of US adults. Obesity is responsible for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic conditions. It is related to a dozen types of cancer, and the incidence of obesity-related cancers among young adults is rising rapidly. These chronic conditions are among the most prevalent causes of premature death and are almost always preventable. Chances are that your employee population will roughly mirror the statistics above. There’s also a good chance that the conditions are going undiagnosed among your working population. So how do you target these and the behaviors that lead to them? 

1. Dig into data such as health claims and biometric reports to identify the top chronic conditions.
2. Conduct health screenings and incentivize employees to get regular check-ups with their primary care providers. 

Then focus your company’s well-being initiatives around developing vital healthy habits – like eating better, moving more, drinking less alcohol, kicking the cigarette habit, and lowering stress levels – and reward employees for achieving measurable, controlled outcomes.

Final points to consider

Targeted, comprehensive health and well-being programs for employees clearly provide an identified return on investment. To give an example, the Rand Wellness Program Study analyzed 10-year data from a Fortune 100 company’s wellness program. Tellingly, managing chronic conditions generated a $136 savings per employee per month, and reduced hospital admissions by 30%. And lifestyle management generated a $6 savings per employee monthly – and these figures don’t include productivity gains, reduction in absenteeism and presenteeism, and the savings gained through less employee turnover! And it’s a win-win for everybody. If employees just develop the following five behavioral habits, on average they will save 33%-50% on their own healthcare:

• Walking 30 minutes daily
• Eating healthy foods
• Ceasing smoking
• Limiting alcohol consumption
• And getting their waistlines down to less than half their height. 

So, there you have it – promoting wellness in the workplace generates significant cost savings for a company and its individual employees. And that’s a beautiful thing.

The post Target your efforts to generate the greatest value for your company’s wellness program investment appeared first on Corporate Health Coach Los Angeles - LifeUP Corporate Wellness.