All Aboard the Weight Loss Train!

Obesity is a supersized problem in our nation.

If your staff is any reflection of the country at large, it’s also a very real problem in your office. How many of your employees are overweight? Of those, how many are making concentrated efforts to change their eating habits and fitness level to drop the excess pounds?

For workplace wellness initiators, the challenge of getting those who need the most help to take it is a frustrating one. It’s difficult enough to sell weight loss and management, healthy lifestyle changes, and the like to people who are receptive to it, much less to the ones with little inclination to improve their health.

Few people would turn down a better body, a healthier heart, and a more positive outlook, all of which stand to be gained through commitment to change. So what makes some people so resistant to the idea of shaping up and eating better?

Often, the most resistant people are the ones who have tried and failed, perhaps numerous times, to meet their weight-loss goals. Discouragement gets the better of them and they stop trying, making it doubly hard for you to get them to recommit when they believe success is out of reach.

Sometimes, people just don’t know where to start. Maybe they’ve spent so many years moving only from desk to couch to bed and back again that they feel incapable of starting any kind of exercise regimen. Or they’re so embroiled in their eating habits that they don’t feel it’s possible to change them.

But the good news is that, though not often easy, change is always possible. Your job as a wellness promoter is to get that point across to your workers convincingly, appealingly, repeatedly. And to provide the tools and resources they need to start exercising, eating better, or (hopefully) both.

Your payoff is healthier workers with sharper minds, more energy, and fewer medical problems that cost your business and detract from their performance.

Here are a few pain-free weight-loss tips from WebMD to share with your staff: