My top 3 Tips for keeping health goals on track
My Top 3 Tips for Keeping Health Goals on Track for 2011
1. Map out your path
What are your goals, what do they look like and how will you get there?
2. Buddy Up
Having a friend to walk with or meet on early mornings or just someone to chat with when you need inspiration is the secret weapon to success
3. Be a Scribe
W rite things down and keep a diary or journal detailing your journey, it makes you accountable too.
I dare you to break through the 3-month barrier.
Go on, you can do it.
Sleep, oh sleep, where art thou?
A few years ago, pharmaceutical giant sanofi-aventis sponsored an anonymous, Web-based survey of 4,200 workers at four health care, transportation, and manufacturing companies. The first part of the survey included 55 questions about health and sleep.
The second part was the 25-question Work Limitations Questionnaire, which aims to measure the affect of health-related problems on job performance and productivity. Survey participants said they needed an average of 7.6 hours of sleep a night — but got only 6.4 hours. About 10% reported having insomnia, 45% said they had some trouble sleeping, and the remaining 45% were good sleepers.
Performance and productivity, as measured by the Work Limitations Questionnaire, was significantly lower among workers with insomnia and other sleep trouble than they were among those who usually slept well. Writing in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the researchers estimated that lost productivity due to poor sleep cost $3,156 per employee with insomnia and averaged about $2,500 for those with less severe sleep problems.
Across the four companies, sleep-related reductions in productivity cost $54 million a year. Wow.
Do you need to detox your body regularly?
The human is body is very clever. So clever, that it rids itself of toxins whenever they come by, using helpful organs like the lungs, liver, kidneys, also aided by our gastrointestinal tract and our immune system. The liver plays a leading role as most of the end products of digestion of food are transported directly to the liver and poisons and drugs are metabolized and detoxified in the liver. You do not need to externally detox your body and there is no scientific evidence to suggest that detox diets actually work.
Detoxifying the body is not new, but every New Year detox diets are really quite fashionable. Apparently, if you are feeling a bit low and lacking in energy, a spot of detox will do the trick.
There are many detox diets around and all fit into the ‘fad diet’ category. These diets often remove whole food groups or may rely on liquids only, and if followed for any length of time can actually be quite dangerous. This is especially so for children, teenagers, pregnant or breastfeeding women and the elderly.
If you want to gain energy and get revitalized it is far easier and more effective to reduce your intake of cigarettes, alcohol, saturated and trans fats, sugar and sugary foods. Plus, think about boosting your intake of fruit, vegetables and whole grains and, of course, get your body moving.
The other really popular thing to do is have a wheatgrass shot when swanning past the local juice bar. It’s the beautiful looking green grass on the counter. You will love it if you have the appetite of a cow and don’t mind the flavour of grass. There are many touted benefits of wheatgrass and I think the only thing it supposedly doesn’t do is wash your clothes. None of the claims have ever been proven.
Have you heard?
For those of you who are able to listen to talkback radio in the mornings, my segment on 6PR has moved to alternate Wednesdays (on air this week) at 10am with Paul Murray. We will be talking about the latest nutrition hot topics and answering listeners questions. Just turn the dial to 882AM …
The last word
Have you ever walked through your office around 3pm and noticed your staff gazing into space or getting up close and personal with the desk? Many businesses are surprised to learn that their staff may be productive for only 2 hours each day and certainly not after 3pm. The health and performance of your employees increases your bottom line. Give me a call and I will tell you how.
Yours in health and performance,
Julie
