Great News About Your Health!

I have some great news!


Last week I attended a workshop on the seven benchmarks of creating an effective corporate wellness plan so I can try to make my office wellness program a little (okay a lot) more legit.  As the board president of a non-profit worksite wellness organization (check us out at Working Well, Inc), I kinda feel like the program I implement for my coworkers needs to be top-notch. So I went.


Two slides really stood out to me. To give credit where it is due, these are from a national worksite wellness organization called WELCOA: the Wellness Council of America. 
 Here's the first one. 

One of my favorite Daily Doses is encouraging people to be their own healthcare plan. When we think about what we can do to control health care costs, how much thought goes into changing our own behavior to make ourselves less expensive to insure? Take a look at how much of our health care costs are determined by high-risk lifestyle choices. Choices. Just to make that part clear. :)

And here's the second one.

So what's the good news?  Here you go: today, you can lift that burdensome yoke of excuses off of your shoulders and live free from them. You're free! Get out there and become your own health care. Get out there and get healthy!

And, oh yeah, if you're not sure where to start, I can help with that. :)

I hear about genetics a lot.  Hell, I've used genetics as an excuse for my own weight gain and slow metabolism, when in reality I became fat by eating too much and screwed up my metabolism with fad yo-yo dieting!  It's true that our bodies have a set point but it's not as much a role as we think.  The vast majority of what determines our health is our health behaviors. Again, our choices. Take a look at where genetics falls: 20%. And even more surprising, access to healthcare is only 10% of health determinants.  We blame genetics and lack of access to resources for a lot of what ails us, but in reality, the choices we make determine the majority of how well our bodies function.