Lend Employees a Healthy Hand

You may not realize it, but a healthy bottom line for your company starts with a healthy diet.

According to the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, employers spend about $130 billion a year in healthcare costs related to being overweight.

You can help decrease this number by encouraging a healthy lifestyle in the workplace.

A study by the National Institutes of Health found a 58% reduction in new cases of diabetes over a five year period with modest lifestyle and diet intervention.

Help employees lose weight and eat better with portion control. Try tacking up posters, putting out reminders in the lunch area, and e-mailing the following “helping hand” method from Health.com about simple portion control:

• Open your hand and stretch your fingers out as wide as possible. That’s how many fruit and vegetables you should have at a meal.
• Make a tight fist. That’s a serving of carbs like pasta or bread.
• Look at the size of your palm. That is the correct portion size of a hamburger patty, chicken breast, eggs, fish, or any other protein.
• Make an “OK” sign with your index finger and thumb for a serving of fat, like olive oil and salad dressing.

For most people with small hands, if you do one of each of these measures at every meal, you’ll eat about 400 calories. For those with big hands, about 600 calories.

Portion control aside, there are many diets to choose from and your employees may be confused about what to eat.

While there is no one diet solution that can work for everyone, the nutritional rule of thumb from the United States Department of Agriculture says approximately 50% of calories should come from carbohydrates, about 30% from fats, and approximately 20% from protein.