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Why Employees Participate in Corporate Wellness Challenges and Activities

by Sarah Myer

Employees participate in wellness challenges for a lot of different reasons. A strong wellness program or challenge should include components that incorporate many of those reasons.

Provide Opportunities to Make Healthy Changes

Screenings, wellness challenges, wellness fairs, and disseminating health-related information via company networks are good starting places to help employees be more aware of their health and have concrete steps to take to improve it. Healthy changes could be personal, environmental, or policy changes. WorkWell NC does a great job of outlining the CDC Scorecard tool, which can be a helpful starting point for identifying and implementing wellness initiatives.employee wellness

Insurance Premium Reduction or Wellness Points

Insurance reductions are a strong incentive for employees to participate in certain wellness activities.

Team Building or Social Connections

Most wellness challenges and activities have a team or group component because many employees thrive when given opportunities to interact or participate in team building activities. Wellness challenges can include racing challenges, team points, and game-simulations where your team can virtually turn other teams into zombies if they don’t move enough. There are team and individual competitions, races, and challenges that exist or you can create one of your own. Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less uses Racery as a Walking Race for our annual Holiday Challenge.

Certificates, Discounts, and Swag

Employees love being recognized for their efforts and hard work. The motivation of a certificate, discount, or reward is enough to get people to participate in a day event or program. Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less awards each participant who completes the program with a certificate (in addition to their completion incentive determined by employer). Those who have gone above and beyond by attending all 15 classes receive a free t-shirt. I am not a certificate person but our team won our most recent walking challenge and there is a trophy we get to keep for the next 3 months. I have already scheduled the week it will be sitting on my desk.

 

How to Reward Yourself Without Using Food

by Surabhi Aggarwal, RD, LDN

We all have moments when we want to reward ourselves with something or it may be an event that needs to be celebrated. Many times, this celebration or reward revolves around or involves some type of food. There is nothing wrong with this approach as long as we can be mindful of our choices.  Each goal and milestone deserves to be celebrated, just think outside the realm of food.non food rewards

As we adopt healthy eating behaviors, one strategy is to think about non-food rewards and celebrations. A reward can be anything that makes you happy, something you enjoy doing; it doesn’t always have to be a food item. For example, I enjoy photography and using my camera gives me immense pleasure but I do not get to do it “for fun” often. On my birthday, I am happier taking pictures with my family vs. going out for dinner. I would rather have a simple meal at home if it meant I could spend more time taking pictures. While on vacations, I can pass on the dessert, buffets, or food-related activities if that means I can take more pictures! Food isn’t necessary to make an occasion special for me; my camera is. Other activities that serve as rewards for me are hiking and shopping.

Think of activities you enjoy but aren’t able to do on a routine day. These can be used as a reward or on special occasions. It can be gardening, taking a nap, going out for a movie, calling a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, etc. Keeping a list of some of these activities is a great way to pick something when you need to without falling back on a food-related reward because you couldn’t think of anything else in the moment. Print out our Non-Food Reward List to get you started.

What makes you happy when you need to reward yourself or celebrate? Share your ideas below.

182 More Steps a Day: A Participant’s Story of the NC Wellness Challenge

by Sarah Myer

Participating in team wellness challenges has been a great way to help me to remember to move before, during, and after the work day. Our walking team (Shamrock n’ Roll) recently won the latest NC Wellness Miles for Wellness walking challenge in the Super Hare division.  Each person walked 182 steps more a day than the members of the 2nd place team. That doesn’t seem like a lot of steps does it? But when I look back on where we started 1 1/2 years ago I realize that it was a lot more than 182 steps a day.

The first challenge our team participated in we placed 105th in the Super Hare Division. (Super Hare team members average 70,000 to 105,000 steps a week.)  We walked a total of 6,006,614 steps or 3,003 miles.

  • I walked 556,461 steps this challenge which averaged out to 9,900 steps a day.
  • I started to try to get in 2,000 steps a day at work. I took walking breaks. I emptied my recycling bin every day. I would walk to people’s desk to have conversations rather than respond via email. I tried to take the stairs more or take the long way back to my work space from a meeting.
  • My highest day was 23,420 steps when we helped my brother and his family move-in.
  • It only takes 131 steps to make cupcakes but it takes 7,500 steps to run around a playground with nieces/nephews for 2 hours.
  • My favorite steps from this challenge was a kayaking trip we did near Beaufort, NC. This walking challenge uses conversions for activities that are not walking. Activities such as gardening, biking, kayaking, and yoga convert into a pre-set amount of steps that the spreadsheet automatically calculates.

The second challenge our team placed 23rd in the Super Hare Division. Our team walked a total of 6,869,258 steps or 3,435 miles.

  • I walked 760,120 steps and averaged 13,574 steps.
  • I tried to get in at least 3,000 steps a day at work.
  • Highest step count was 23,959 steps. I spent 1 1/2 hours gardening/weeding and then spent the day packing and getting ready to spend Thanksgiving out of town.
  • I tried hot yoga during this challenge. That converted to a lot of steps and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

This most recent challenge. Our team walked 8,398,687 steps. That’s approximately 4,199 miles!

  • I walked 802,740 steps this challenge and averaged 14,335 steps a day.
  • I tried to make sure I had hit 4,000 steps at work during the day.
  • There was one Saturday/Sunday where I walked a combined 49,532 steps. I was pretty tired by Sunday night from a hike, helping my parents move, helping neighbors with their landscaping/weeding, and walking our hound dog.
  • One of the reasons my step count for the most recent challenge was so high was I recently started adding at least 60 minutes of weight training to my exercise routine each week. That converted to a lot of steps. There was one day I hit 10,000 steps by 9am because I had done 60 minutes of weight training and walked the dog 2 miles before work!

If you are an employee of the State of North Carolina, the 17th Miles for Wellness walking challenge sign-up will start on August 28th. The 2017 Holiday Challenge will also be featuring another Racery virtual walking race this year. Looking forward to seeing you on the virtual trail!

An experiment: Fruit and Center

by Kelly Nordby, RD, LDN

PROBLEM:  Summertime boredom is definitely setting in at my house!  And that means grabbing whatever is quick and easy.  Most often this means choosing the less healthy, pre-packaged choices from the fridge or pantry.  I noticed this happening more and more with my family as there is a significant amount of mindless roaming-grabbing-eating-repeat happening, for sure! healthy snack

PURPOSE:  To try to encourage healthier choices, I decided to try a little experiment with my family by implementing one of the strategies to increase fruit and vegetable consumption covered in both the Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less and Eat Smart, Move More, Prevent Diabetes curriculums.  The title of this experiment is called “Fruit and Center” (a play on “Front and Center”)

METHODS: I embarrassingly had to clear out all of the onions and garlic cloves that had been migrating into the “fruit” bowl and replaced them with eye-catching seasonal fruit, like peaches, nectarines and red plums.  I then made the fruit bowl the star of the show on the counter so that the bowl was the only visual food item as you entered the kitchen.

RESULT:  Miraculously, when the kids came in from outside, hot, tired, and hungry, my daughter grabbed the first item that she could see, which was a peach.  Very shortly after, my son was enticed and selected a plum.  After “ooohs” and “aaaahhs” (ok, maybe it was more like a mouthful mumble resembling, “this is good, Mom”, but I’ll take it) about how delicious the fruit was, my husband and I joined the party!  I have had to replenish the bowl already once this week and I happy to report that the Cheese Itz box in the pantry remains unopened ?

CONCLUSION:  Making the healthy choice front and center to make it the easy choice encouraged the entire family to eat the fruit first before choosing other less healthy choices.  SUCCESS!!

 

 

 

How I Found the JOY in Being Active – By Riding a Bike Again

by Cathy Thomas

I have not many bought many bikes. I was recently faced with a couple of aging bikes at my parents house. They live in an area where biking is really easy with bike lanes and neighborhood streets. I decided to go to a nearby famous retail store to purchase new bikes. After making two fine selections, I pulled them out of the rack. I pushed the bikes from the back of the large store to the front to pay. The trip through the store was a great journey. I had the opportunity to meet and briefly chat with at least 10 strangers elderly-couple-riding-bicycleswho all wanted to comment on the bikes. Faces lit up and big smiles appeared. One lady came up as if we had been long lost friends to not only touch the bike but talk about how pretty is was and how she knew it would be great to take home. One salesperson exclaimed that she fully intended to buy one next spring. Persons would just gaze and smile hugely about the sight of a bike. Some folks said how lucky I was to have just purchased such a pretty bike. I should tell you that these bikes were the cheapest on the rack – nothing special. The sheer joy that I encountered was not due to any cutting edge fancy bike, but the plain Jane cruiser bike with no gears or air brakes.

What is it that resonates with all of these people that I encountered? I came to the conclusion that it brought back the joy of what it means to have a bike. We all remember that first experience of jumping on our bike as kids to be free and feel the wind in our face. Remember the freedom you felt of being able to ride with the wind.

You may remember this feeling from your youth. If so, go out and get yourself a bike and hop on, nothing comes back as easy as riding a bike. If not, it is never too late to relive your childhood. Find places in your community to ride such as trails, bike lanes or greenways. If you have children or grandchildren, take them with you. Grab your helmet and go!

 

My Favorite Green Smoothie Recipe

by Carolyn Dunn, PhD, RD, LDN

Google green smoothie and you will find multiple recipes for this green concoction. Green smoothies are a blend of fruits and vegreen-smoothie-300x300getables with a heavy dose of green leafy vegetables usually kale or Swiss chard.

My favorite recipe:

  • 1 pear
  • 1 cucumber
  • 1/8 of a fresh pineapple
  • 2 cups of raw kale

Be creative with your fruit and throw in your favorites like grapes or strawberries. You need a heavy blender (Vitamix) to pulverize this into a drink. This recipe makes 4 servings and is about 50 calories per serving.

Is it magical, no, but it is a great way to get a serving of greens. It is also easy to take on the go. I have one in my lunch box right now. If you have a strong blender, give them a try.

 

How to EASILY Meal Plan – My Attempt to Become a Simplified Meal Planner

by Madi Johnson

My husband and I used to fly by the seat of our pants when it came to weeknight dinners, often asking ourselves at 7pm “hmmm what’s for dinner” and most likely resorting to take-out. For the sake of our wallet and our waistlines,Cook this buy that chart I knew we needed to eat at home more and that meant having a plan ahead of time. So I took it one step at a time and slowing started meal planning. I began with just one dinner a week. Easy enough and laid the foundation. I got used to grocery shopping with a list– a list! and sticking to it. With that one meal, we would make a little extra and have leftovers for lunch the next day. Bam – two meals planned for the week. Then I increased it to planning two nights a week, and then three nights, and so on and so forth.

So what does this look like in real life? On Sunday evenings I spend 30 minutes max writing down our meals. I start with nights we already have plans- Tuesday we have a friend’s birthday dinner? No problem, cross off Tuesday. We both won’t be home until late on Thursday? That will be a crock pot meal. Then I fill in the gaps. I start with tried and true recipes that I know will be easy to throw together on a weeknight and I mix it up from chicken dishes, meatless dishes, and fish at least once a week. Sometimes it’s as simple as “chicken and veggies on the grill”.  I also try to incorporate ingredients we already have or use “overlapping” ingredients. For example, I know we won’t use a whole package of 3 romaine lettuce hearts for these Korean chicken lettuce wraps, so I plan to make a taco salad later in the week to use the rest.  I love finding and testing new recipes so I try to add in at least one new recipe per week. This new “Cook This, Buy That” meal planner/shopping list combo makes it super easy write it all down and keep it organized!

How do I find or remember recipes? Pinterest. I keep a “tried and true” board to help me remember dishes we have enjoyed. And I have created specific boards to easily find what I am looking for such as “Meatless Mains”, “Seafood”, and “Mexican-Inspired”. An important thing to remember about Pinterest, just because something claims it’s “healthy” does not always mean it is – make sure you read the ingredient list before pinning to your board. I also follow a few healthy bloggers, my favorite being Gina from Skinnytaste and I pull from her weekly emails as well as from her cookbook, Skinnytaste Fast & Slow.

Boom! No more than 30 minutes, honestly sometimes it takes 5 minutes, and our meals are planned for the week. The amount of money and calories this has saved us is astonishing. And it’s not always perfect, you never know what will pop up during the week, but it certainly helps us overall. I also try to keep it as e-a-s-y as possible, having fun with new recipes, and keeping a plan B in my back pocket just in case. If all else fails, we always have eggs in our fridge and that makes for a super quick dinner – just scramble and throw in spinach and/or any other veggies.

So there you have it! A little glimpse into the Johnson home and my meal planning ways. How do you like to meal plan? Favorite go-to recipes? Share below.

Top 5 Healthy Items to Buy at Costco

by Madi Johnson

If you know me, you know I am a big fan of Costco. They have huge savings, great quality products, and the most unbelievable return policy. Plus, the friendly atmosphere and helpful employees make me want to shop there – which is saying something. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you are really saving money on a product so I usually cost-compare my purchases to other stores and more often than not I find Costco to be less expensive. The key is making sure you will use the product before the expiration date, for example, I might be saving on a large package of eggs, but am I really going to use them all before they go bad? CookingLight just released this article comparing Costco prices to Amazon prices (note: read the word “healthy” with caution, sugar is still sugar). Also, Costco can be c-r-o-w-d-e-d. Go first thing in the morning on weekends or after work mid-week.

Costco has widened their healthy selections and below are my top 5 favorite go-to purchases:

1. Organic Spinach

healthy costco

Costco sells a one-pound container of organic spinach for $4.99. The same brand at Harris Teeter is only offered as 5 ounces and also costs $3.99. I throw this spinach in everything from salads to smoothies to stir-fry, to pasta sauce or pesto.

2. Nuts

what to buy at costco

Nuts have been proven to be a part of a healthy diet and are great to snack on. I like to snack on a variety of nuts to keep it interesting and to receive a range of healthy fats. My favorite options to buy in bulk from Costco are almonds, walnuts, and pistachios. I can then portion them out as needed, mix and match, spice it up by adding dried cranberries, or pair with grapes and low fat cheese. To keep these fresh, I put them in the fridge or freezer (walnuts in the freezer) and pull out when I need to. They stay exactly the same and last a long time – even the walnuts in the freezer. In addition to snacks, I add nuts to salads, smoothies, yogurt, and oatmeal. To learn more about the benefit of nuts, watch this webinar.

3. Oatmeal

Speaking of oatmeal, I love being able to purchase unsweetened oats in bulk. I am still waiting for Costco to add steel-cut oats, but for now, the old fashioned oats will have to do. I eat oatmeal almost every morning for breakfast (with a scoop of almond butter (see below) and milk (skim or unsweetened almond milk) on top – sometimes walnuts too). The large quantity lasts a long time and saves money (on Amazon, this same box is $23, at Costco it’s $10). I also love to use these oats to make my own (low sugar!) granola with sliced almonds to add to yogurt and homemade smoothie bowls.

4. Almond Butter

healthy items costco

Nowhere can you find almond butter at this price! The 27-ounce jar costs $13.99 at Costco. That’s the same price as one 16-ounce jar of Justin’s almond butter at Walmart ($13.71). The best part about this almond butter? The ingredient list: “roasted almonds”.

5. Plain Greek Yogurt

TWO 32 oz. containers of Greek yogurt for $5.97? I mean come on. I snack on plain Greek yogurt by adding fresh berries with a tiny drop of pure maple syrup or swirl in a scoop of peanut butter and dip apple slices. It helped to ease away from the presweetened yogurt by adding a touch of maple syrup to sweeten it myself and then slowly add less and less maple syrup (and what pure maple syrup do I recommend? Costco’s – great price and great quality). I also use Greek yogurt in the place of sour cream (tacos, potatoes, chili, you name it) and instead of mayo in tuna salad and egg salad (just add a hit of red wine vinegar as well).

Other favorite healthy items from Costco – frozen shrimp, Skinnypop popcorn (available in one big bag and snack size packs), pink lady apples, on-the-vine tomatoes, and berries (ALWAYS have great prices on berries!). What are your favorite Costco finds? We are always looking for new things to try– share below:

“My A1C at my most recent checkup it was down to 5.7!  My doctor was thrilled!”

by Madi Johnson

 

The following is an anonymous testimonial from a recent Eat Smart, Move More, Prevent Diabetes participant:online diabetes prevention

“My experience in the recently ending Eat Smart, Move More, Prevent Diabetes class with Marjorie was excellent. The weekly accountability in My Progress Portal helped me to keep track of not only how much I was losing, but my “active” minutes per week. I have found that in order to lose weight, I must be more active on a daily basis.

Recently my A1C levels have continued to go down. I started at 6.8, down to 6.5, then 6.1, and at my most recent checkup it was down to 5.7! My doctor was thrilled! I use the information that was conveyed through this program every day to keep me on track to accomplish my weight loss goals.”

 

Healthy Meal Guide for Team Meetings

by Megan Haubenreiser

Providing healthy options at team meetings is a great first step to creating an environment conducive to healthy behaviors. Having nutritious meal options at the office can also influence employees to begin to think about how they can incorporate meal alternatives in their personal lives. Below is a list of meal items that can help you determine how to swap or alter traditional meal offerings at your next team gathering.healthy team meeting

Beverages:

  • Have water available. Adding fresh citrus and cucumber slices can make the water more appealing to your employees.
  • Beware of fruit juices. It can contain the same amount of sugar as a soft drink. Be sure to avoid “cocktail” titles and always check the ingredient list on the nutrition label for added sugars.
  • Provide unsweetened tea and coffee. Offer skim milk, 1 % milk, or non-dairy creamer verses half and half.

Breakfast:

  • Offer fresh fruit such as bananas, apples, grapes, and sliced oranges. These options are also budget friendly.
  • Have a make-your-own yogurt parfait bar with low-fat or Greek yogurt. Topping options could include sliced nuts, low-sugar granola, or fruit.
  • Swap pastry items for whole wheat toast and assorted nut butters and jams with no sugar added.

Lunch:

  • Utilize local restaurants that offer low-calorie options.
  • An example for an easy on-site lunch could be whole-grain tortillas with lean deli meat such as turkey and plenty of options for vegetable toppings.
  • Serve salads with dressing on the side. Oil-based salad dressings are a good source of healthy fat.
  • Provide broth-based soup as a low-calorie appetizer or side item.
  • Offer baked potato chips in place of regular chips, or better yet, fresh fruit.

Snack:

  • Offer hummus paired with vegetables such as sweet peppers, cucumbers, or carrots.
  • Provide whole-grain crackers and peanut butter as a filling and fiber-rich option.
  • Set out a bowl or tray of ice and display low-fat and Greek yogurt options.
  • Allow employees to grab and go as needed with a fresh fruit bowl.

Dessert:

  • Create a make-your-own-mix station with air-popped popcorn, dried cranberries or other fruit, various nuts, , and dark chocolate. This will give the employee a chance to customize their dessert.
  • Providing fresh fruit, such as sweet berries or cherries, can be a great healthy alternative to traditional desserts.

Are you already using a healthy meal strategy in your workplace? Share some of your ideas and successes.