Five Top Wellness Tips: How Wellness Programs in the Workplace May Reduce Workers' Compensation Costs: Tip 2: Weight Control

Five Popular Wellness Ideas
Smoking
Weight Control – 9 Hints and Tips
Nasal Allergies
Migraine
Depression Treatment

Remember, before starting a weight loss program see your primary care giver to be sure you're able to begin dieting and have no health restrictions.


Weight Control:  Manageable Ideas

These are some simple hints that have helped some people with weight control.

1.,  When you eat, the small intestine tells the brain when you have had enough by secreting two chemicals.  From starting to eat until the signal says "enough!" is usually about 45 minutes.  Most people can put away a lot of food in 45 minutes.  Try quitting while still hungry, but promise yourself if you are still hungry in 30 minutes, you will go back for (workersxzcompxzkit) more.  And, if you are hungry, keep that promise otherwise you won't believe you the next time you promise yourself.  You will find that not only are you not hungry, you have more energy than usual.

2.  Choose low fat foods, preferably with whole grains.  Fat has about twice the calories per pound of carbohydrates or protein.  Whole grains are converted to sugar more slowly than refined sugars or grains, and give your body time to better manage the intake.
Keep low-calorie, high-fiber foods (like fruits) available for snacking.  It is hard to have a healthy diet if the foods needed to do that are not readily available.

3.  Give yourself time to adjust to new foods.  A preference for familiar foods is a positive survival characteristic; if the red berries didn't make you sick last week, they probably won't make you sick this week; but if you've never tried the blue berries, you want to be careful.  If you try the blue berries a few times without getting sick, you may come to like them.

4.  Remember your mother telling you "Don't eat before dinner.  It will spoil your appetite?”  If you are very hungry at dinnertime, a light snack in late afternoon may do just that for you and make it easier to eat less at mealtime.

5.  One pound is about 3,000 calories.  That is, if you take in 3,000 more calories than you burn, you will gain a pound; if you burn 3,000 calories more than you take in, you will lose a pound.  Dutch pretzels have about 100 calories.  Eat one a day more (workersxzcompxzkit) than calories burned and gain a pound a month; 12 pounds a year; 60 pounds in five years.  Try to cut down on the high-calorie foods first, but don't overlook the little things.

6.  Although it is difficult to exercise enough to lose weight without controlling diet, some exercise can add up over time.  If you are at a stable weight using diet, increasing exercise by 100 calories per day will yield 10 to 12 pounds per year loss.

7.  Keeping a diary of what you eat for about a week is often helpful.  Make an entry each time you eat anything -- even one peanut.  Write down: (1) the date and time, (2) what and about how much you ate.  (It doesn't have to be precise, a rough statement is adequate.)  (3) How you felt at the time, (4) what you were doing since the last entry.

a. The time helps us figure out if there are patterns to hunger.  Sometimes, for example, a light    snack an hour or two before a meal quells hunger so you can eat less at mealtime and still feel   comfortable.

b.  What and how much helps us (1) to spot foods higher in calories than you realize and alert you to the danger and (2) to assess the overall caloric intake.

c.   How you felt at the time gives clues to the reasons for eating.  A person who reports waking up frequently at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. with a gnawing hunger relieved by a bowl of ice cream may have an ulcer.  Treating the ulcer makes better sense than fussing about the ice cream.  A  person who reports feeling intense hunger, to the point of shakiness, about 11:00 a.m. or 4:00   p.m. may be experiencing reactive hypoglycemia.  That can be managed without increasing  caloric intake, but you need to know that's the problem.  A person who reports, "I had a standing rib roast.  I wasn't really hungry, but everybody in the group was eating the same thing," needs better friends.

 d.  What you were doing since the last entry helps figure out how fast you are burning calories.  As said above, it is harder to control weight effectively by increasing exercise than by limiting intake, but exercise is important to health in other ways and can help if you are also working on intake.

If you keep this type of diary, it may be best for the first week to simply record without allowing the recording to change what you do.  A patient several years ago agreed to keep such a diary and she came back several weeks later 15 pounds lighter.  She said she would start to eat something, then think "If I eat this, I'm going to have to write it down," and refrained.  One can't quarrel with how it worked for her, but it can also be useful to know what the baseline is.

8.  A book titled  The Way to Eat: a Six-Step Path to Lifelong Weight Control, By David Katz, M.D. and Maura Gonzales, a nutritionist.1 is excellent.  The authors are not into fad diets, but have put together a collection of simple ways of changing what you eat to achieve a healthier diet.  The authors are aware weird diets are not sustainable and heroic diets while taking weight off, don't keep it off.  They know a diet leaving you hungry will not last.  They understand people with weight problems are rarely the gluttons most thin people imagine them to be.  They explain how tastes are formed (indeed, how the tendency to like the same things is an innate survival instinct) and suggest ways in which tastes can change to adapt to a healthier life style.  One example is whole milk vs. skim milk.  Many people accustomed to whole milk find skim (workersxzcompxzkit) milk watery, blue and generally disgusting.  The authors' standard proposition is: "Grit your teeth for one month and use nothing but skim milk.  At the end of the month, drink exactly one glass of whole milk, and see how you like it.”  Almost without exception, people find it unpleasantly thick and greasy, preferring the skim milk they have newly grown accustomed to.

9.  Restaurants stay  in business by making their customers feel happy when they are at the restaurant and as they leave.  If you walk out the door happy, you will come back even if, fifteen minutes after you leave, you feel bloated and say "I can't believe I ate the whole thing.”  They regularly serve oversize portions, even without your requesting "supersize me.”  A steak dinner with mashed potatoes and a side of fried onion may have enough calories to sustain a mountain climber for two days - not joking.  If you must eat out often, learn to look for inherently low-calorie foods and even ask for a half or two-thirds sized portion.  You may pay for a regular serving but remember, if you eat more than you need, it is worse than waste (It's waist?)  Another technique is before starting your meal, request an extra plate and remove a portion to take home.  If neces­sary, emphasize to the server the tip depends in part on seeing to the smaller portion.

Footnote 1. Hardcover ISBN: 1570719837, Paperback ISBN: 1402202644.

 Next: Nasal Allergies

Sanford S. Leffingwell, M.D., M.P.H., FACOEM  is a board certified specialist in occupational medicine, with degrees from Harvard University, University of Colorado School of Medicine and The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.  He can be reached at hlm@hlmconsultants.com.

Do not use this information without independent verification.  All state laws are different so do not implement any cost containment procedures until you have discussed them with your corporate counsel. Your individual doctor must treat medical issues. We are not giving medical advice; this is an overview of wellness topics, not medical advice.

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