I spent my vacation in Vermont. Five days of essentially doing nothing. Not really nothing more like swimming, walking, hiking, reading, writing, eating and watching movies. For the first time ever I had time for all. I exercised a few hours day, read 4 books, watched 4 movies, worked on a short story and ate mostly organic meals. Not to mention significant alone time with my DH.
What allowed me to have enough energy to do all this and allowed my stress levels to decrease?
I didn't have to go to work. It was the lack of not having to go to my job that allowed me to do all these healthy things. Workplace wellness happened merely because I didn't have to go to work.
This is a call to change the state of workplace wellness. Because the problem isn't fat people. The problem isn't your workforce knowing the difference between good nutrition or bad. The problem isn't motivation to move. The problem is this constant harping to lose weight regardless of your health.
But that seems completely oblivious to the CDC which is now promoting LeanWorks! LeanWorks, brought to you by the same organization that did TWO studies that showed overweight people lived the longest, is a program to help your workforce lose weight. Fine, it's not much different than the other stupid programs that choose weight loss over health, until I came across the Obesity Calculator. The calculator will tell you how much money you will save if only the fatties who work for you lose weight. Which to me crosses the line from trying to make people "healthy" to right out discrimination. It labels people unhealthy based on the flawed BMI. Meanwhile more studies are stating obesity is not a death sentence.
This new program is wrong on some many levels.
1. It's discriminatory. Are jobs going to weigh people or demand intimate information from their personal life? Programs like this don't encourage healthiness, they encourage companies to fire fat employees regardless of their health.
2. It's filled with factual errors as well as lack of information. Many "Facts" have footnote numbers next to them, but I have yet to find those notes in the materials. The $117 billion "obesity" cost has always been a shaky number.
3. It encourages disordered eating. Healthy fat people may take it upon themselves to lose weight when they don't really need too.
You really want to make a healthy workforce, try this: decrease stress on the job. Fewer hours in a work week allows people have time to go home, make a healthy meal, exercise and have some leisure time. Stop making people do jobs of two people, value good work, give great benefits, decent amount of vacation, personal, child care, and sick time.
In the end, LeanWorks will create hostile work environments for fat people, increase eat disorders and like most programs that focus on weight loss as indicator of health, won't make people healthier.
They've kind of already started this here in japan in the form of "metabo"
Here is an english article on it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/world/asia/13fat.html
The school i work at recently did the metabo measurement on all employees regardless of age. A few of the male employees were over the "metabo" 33.5 inch limit and have thus been branded and teased by all female employees. One of whom is a 6 ft tall gym teacher who does nothing BUT exercise all day. At 5 ft 10 inches with a waist of 30 inches I was well under the 35 inch female limit but was consoled by my female coworkers for "being fat" (the average waist of the other female employees was around 26 inches) The female employees view metabo as a "joke" and a "good way to get back at the men".
Posted by: lewlew | July 14, 2009 at 04:53 AM
Amen!
Posted by: Julie | July 14, 2009 at 07:43 AM
I am absolutely horrified by this LeanWorks program. I'm even more horrified that any company would consider implementing it. Unless my weight is pertinent to the job I'm performing, it's no ones business but mine. I'm an excellent worker. They should be looking at my job performance, not thinking, "oh, that fattie is costing us x amount of dollars" or, "Oh, she's fat, definitely not healthy." I'm more than capable of taking care of myself, thanks.
The suggestions you made are great. A long, stressful work day doesn't easily lend itself to a healthy life style. After 10 hours of work, the last thing I want to do is spend another hour cooking. And at that point exercise seems more like a chore.
It scares me sometimes how employers are more concerned with their bottom line and waistlines, rather than the overall well being of their workforce.
Posted by: Lauren | July 15, 2009 at 05:38 PM
Similar thing with public employees here in SC (back in Feb):
SC bill would increase premiums on obese workers
Politicians are still debating this...but little discussion of whether the "facts" they are employing are accurate or not.
Posted by: DaisyDeadhead | July 21, 2009 at 11:39 AM
Linky no worky, sorry. Try again:
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2009/02/sc-bill-would-increase-premiums-on.html
Posted by: DaisyDeadhead | July 21, 2009 at 11:40 AM