Western Weight on the World

Today's Washington Post included an interactive graphic on the Body Mass Index across the world from 1980 to 2008. The data came from a study of cardiac risk factors and shows the growing prevelance of obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure across much of the world. Go to the article so you can truly understand the impact.

My commentary? We continue to export our Western ways of living (sedentary life consuming fast and processed foods), followed by our Western health issues (obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes) followed by our Western "solutions" (surgeries and pharmaceuticals). The only ones benefiting from the "Western-ways" epidemic are the shareholders of the companies that create the problem and then fix the problem.

Everyone else, and the environment, suffers. My advice can best be summed up with:

Shame on us.

Workplace Wellness

Thank you to Corporate Wellness Magazine for publishing our article, "One Size Wellness" in this month's issue. I encourage you to go to link to read the entirety of our article and the other fabulous articles written by my esteemed peers. This publication has great information and advice on workplace wellness strategies.

The following is an excerpt from our article listing seven steps for finding the best wellness program for your company. Feel free to share with your boss or human resources department.

1. Do a census. Understand who is in your company. Understand what they spend most of their workday doing (sitting at a computer, driving, physical labor). Understand their general health status, age, preferences and health knowledge.
2. Take a survey. Ask them what they would like in a wellness program. Ask them about their preferences. Ask them what would work best for them. Ask them their biggest personal wellness challenge or need. If you want help coming up with survey questions, do a Google search, there are plenty of examples on the web.
3. Create a budget. Wellness programs can range from practically free to hundreds of dollars a month. Sure, a weekly health coach onsite to meet with each person would be great and is generally very expensive. Be realistic about your annual budget and what your company can afford.
4. Consider a co-pay. People are more likely to follow something they are invested in. Simple fact. Ask your employees to pay a fraction of the wellness program costs and then consider a discount on their insurance premiums for meeting wellness goals.
5. Ensure accessibility. To be most successful, the wellness program you select should be available 24/7 from everywhere. Sure, office-based workout facilities are great but what does your staff do at night and on the weekends? Wellness should integrate into their lives, not just become another thing “to do.”
6. Build a community. Look for tools that help your team get, and remain, engaged in the program. Are there social networking features? Inter-company challenges? Ways to measure group success?
7. Seek Balance. A well-balanced wellness program includes exercise, nutrition and stress-reduction information. With the diversity in your group, each person will need a different aspect from a wellness program. More exercise won’t combat a bad diet of too much processed food. And eating leafy greens won’t much help the person so unhappy and too stressed. Be sure the program you choose has some elements of each key tenet of wellness (exercise, healthy eating and living well).

If you're ready to learn more about how Cybercise delivers workplace wellness solution, we have more information right here.

Not Medicine as Food

For several years, Dr. James Gordon at the Center for Mind Body Medicine has been training healthcare professionals about food during his Food As Medicine conference. Dr. Gordon is a world-class educator and author and developed this program to help clinicians incorporate food into a healing solution for their patients. The foundation of this program centers on our ability to heal our bodies and keep them healthy with the foods we choose to eat.

Contrast this with an article in the Wall Street Journal last week about Nestle's purchase of a "Medical Food" start-up. The company, CM&D Pharma Ltd., is testing a chewing gum to help kidney-disease sufferers. The WSJ article quoted the Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke who said, "This has huge potential. It is going to be multi-billion." For the record, the FDA considers medical foods different from drugs. Which means the regulatory and administrative burden of bringing these "medicines" to market will be significantly lower. I'm a bit confused how a division called "medical-foods" would not be subjected to the same scrutiny as drugs, but perhaps I'm naive.

Dr. Gordon and his team teach health professionals to use whole, natural foods to help people heal. Dr. Gordon doesn't charge "multi-billions" for his program. I wonder... how much good could we do in this world if we invest in programs like Food As Medicine instead of spending millions to create medicine as food products to then sell for billions to the unsuspecting consumer?

The Pressure of Perfection

When we were in school, we would study a subject and then be asked to pass a test. Most of us can remember the unpleasant sensation in our body around having to take an algebra test; few of us, probably, remember the quadratic equation. After you finish school, you realize life isn’t about tests anymore. Life becomes about living and being and going through each day in the pursuit of happiness. We all strive to live by the Golden Rule, “Do to others what you would like to be done to you.” Yet sometimes we forget the golden rule or get caught up in the drama around us.

Life as Practice
We only get one life to live and this is it. While this may seems a bit sad and depressing, let’s look at it another way. In a lifetime of 75 years you’ll have 2,366,820,000 seconds. During some of those seconds, you’ll remember the Golden Rule. During others, you’ll forget about the Golden Rule completely and purposely choose the opposite. The idea of life as practice is that you have the very next second to do something different. Think different, feel different, speak different, be different.

To really understand life as practice, consider this… You are thirsty so you walk into the kitchen and open the refrigerator. You’re about to grab some cool, fresh water and you spot a can of soda. As your hand is about to pick up the water, you start replaying old stories in your head. “I want a soda. Soda is bad for me. But I’ve been good lately, I deserve a treat. I am too fat. I miss soda. I’ll only have one. I love soda!” Depending on how active your mind is this little dialogue could go on for several moments. What happens next? You take a soda, pop it open and take a big long drink, quickly, so as if to pretend it didn’t happen. After you swallow the soda and begin to walk away, you grumble at yourself. You know water is better. Your body really wanted the water. You feel weak‐willed and upset with yourself. You’re still walking away, the soda still in your hand. Now you have a choice. Take another swig of soda or pour the rest of the can down the drain and go back for water?

Life as practice. You can make a different choice in this moment, too. So what if you chose the soda in the last moment? In this moment, you can choose again. And again, and again, and again. When you make a bad choice, give yourself the space to make a better one the next time. Don’t get caught up in being perfect each moment of each day. You aren’t, you won’t be and trying to pass each and every test without exception is a great way to make yourself unhappy. The idea of practice is that we keep practicing. Over and over; each moment a new moment.

The Wellness Wheel: Eat. (adapted)

In early January we released our Wellness Wheel and in mid-January, I devoted a few days of the blog to a more in-depth look at our Wellness Wheel to explore each section of the wheel and how it relates to our Move.Eat.Be. program.

On Monday, the USDA announced the newest Dietary Guidelines and I've devoted some time to reading the (ugh) 112-page document. Today, I explored the recommendations about eating more seafood. And, I very much enjoyed the article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal by Bill Tomson and Ilan Brat and the quote included they therein from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association which said, "A recommendation to add fish to your diet doesn't mean you should cut back on leaf beef." It made me snicker. I'm pretty sure if I took the time to dig back in the historical records to find when eating more chicken became all the rage somebody from some beef association likely said something very similar. If they had their way, we'd be eating beef for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Getting to the point... we're editing our Wellness Wheel. I realized two things: One - We had a category for "lean meat" which really was meant to include seafood. Two - I don't want to add to the confusion created by words like lean, light, low-fat, etc. So what was previously named our "lean meat" category will now be called "seafood and meat."

The renaming, of course, raises the question about what kinds of meat, and how much, you should include in your diet. We believe it is best to discover what works best for you by awakening your body and paying attention to how you feel. Some people will feel better eating no seafood or meat. Some people are better off sticking to mostly seafood or chicken. Some people thrive on red meat. And others, still, feel their best with all types of "seafood and meat" in their diet. Taking some time to discover what works best for you is the secret to sustainable, life-long wellness.

Until you discover your own personal approach plan to Eat. seafood and meat, here are some guidelines:

• Organic, sustainably-raised and natural is always best
• Consume smaller portions of all seafoods and meats (a serving is about the size of your computer mouse)
• Choose minimally processed versions (as whole and as close as you can get to nature). Generally speaking, this means:
• Little to no ground beef, sausages, hot dogs (unless you know and trust the producer)
• No fish sticks or chicken nuggets (unless you make them yourself from whole fish or chicken)
• No "meat" in cans or any kind of "pressed-meat patties"
• No cultured, or in vitro, meat

Why? All too often, we are told to reduce our calorie intake by switching to "lean meat" or "low-fat dairy" and other such terms. This advice is included throughout the USDA's new dietary guidelines. Unfortunately, when a food manufacturer takes a natural fruit, vegetable, grain, dairy or meat and processes it to force it into a product that can be called "lean" or "low" the resulting food-like product  does far more harm to our health. We are much better off eating appropriate portions of the original, non-processed food even if it is the "full fat" version. Hence the new Eat. category of "seafood and meat." Choose well. Eat. (real). 

Eat (at home).

My friend Bill wrote to me a few weeks back and asked how I was doing on my own quest to lose 10 pounds. Back in October, the numbers on the scale had crept up a bit too much and I began writing about my own experience to lose 10 pounds. After a month or so, my 10pound updates were consumed by other blog writing and, quite honestly, I didn't know if anyone was reading or if my observations were actually serving anyone else. I don't blog for me and in the absence of feedback or support to continue telling my story, I stopped. Thank you, Bill, for letting me know you did read and for taking the time to send me a note to check in on my progress!

Since my last update (11/15 at 127 pounds), we've had the holiday season and traveling and 2011 started off with more travel and many more meetings. Last week for example, nearly every meal was at a restaurant for lunch and dinner meetings on top of which I had a nasty cough so didn't do any cardio work for fear I'd cough up a lung. The scale on Sunday morning was 133. I grumbled about the house for a little while. It is so frustrating to make progress and then go in the opposite direction. Grrrrrr.

Since Sunday evening, I've prepared every meal for myself. The scale this morning? 130. I've lost 1 pound a day for three days in a row. I'm eating whatever I want, including having wine with dinner. Granted, when I made my Move.Eat.Be. plan for the week, the foods I chose were healthy. I concocted kale and white bean casseroles in my new little Le Creuset pots (I love them!) with a side salad and bread (yes, I'm eating bread!). Last night was poached salmon with tomato and green onion sauce (cooked in 2 TBS of butter), side salad, a left-over mini casserole and more bread. Tonight is roast chicken with root vegetables. Lunches are leftovers or salad greens with hummus, mushrooms and avocado. Breakfast is (usually always) banana, blueberries (frozen, wild, organic), other fresh fruit as available, topped with ground flaxseed and accompanied by almonds. I had a cookie last night. And, I've done a workout each morning and am following along to most of our 10-to Workday Workout program.

The moral of this story? Eat at home! It is much less expensive. It is much better for you. And, honest, it does not take that much time to cook dinner. Please don't be freaked out by the cooking shows and the celebrity chefs who use 10 pans, 20 bowls and claim you can cook like them in 30 minutes (sure you can, if there is a crew prepping for you and cleaning up after you).

Take the poached salmon. It literally took me 20 minutes from start to table like so:

1. Turn oven to 350⁰
2. Put water on to boil
3. Slice green onions and salmon filet into 1" wide serving pieces (sprinkle with salt and pepper)
4. Put mini-casseroles in oven to reheat
5. Make a salad dressing (olive oil, balsamic, dijon mustard, pepper, salt, thyme)
6. Stage sauce ingredients (grape tomatos, 2 TBS butter, sliced green onions, salt, pepper) near stovetop
7. Put salmon into boiling water (cooks in 10 minutes for 1" inch think slices)
8. Slice bread and pour some olive oil into a dish with freshly ground pepper
9. Put plates on counter. Set the table. Pour wine.
10. Heat butter in skillet
11. Poor a wee bit of salad dressing into bag of salad greens. Shake.
12. Put tomatoes in skillet with butter, cook for 2 minutes, add green onions. Cook for 2 more minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
13. Take salmon out of water
14. Plate (salmon with sauce on top next to salad). Slices of lemon. 
15. Retrieve casseroles from oven
16. Carry to table
17. Sit. Eat. Enjoy.
18. Cleanup took less than 10 minutes, including hand-washing the cookware.

Going out to eat is one of my very favorite things to do. But, until we can implement The Real Food Label in our restaurants, it is very difficult to understand what is really in the food we eat when we're out. And, I fear the additives and quality of the food when eating out (there are very few organic restaurants) has a negative impact on my ability to avoid weight gain. I'm amazed by how three days of eating at home has made such a big difference. Do yourself, and your scale, a favor.... create a Move.Eat.Be. plan each week and explore the rewards from your own cooking. 

The Real Food Label: The Movie

We're hoping the fine people at TED2011 in California think this is an idea worth spreading.