Overweight to Pay Extra for Insurance

Alabama has the second highest rate of obesity in this country at 30.3% of all in the state obese. Because of this, the state has started a new program with it's state employees.

Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don't work on losing weight. The state is offering free health screenings and giving employees a year to see a doctor (for free), get into wellness programs, or work on their own to improve their weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. If they don't improve in that year, they will have to start paying $25 per month for health insurance that is otherwise free.

Alabama already charges workers who smoke, but this will turn attention to a problem that plagues many in the Deep South: obesity. Mississippi is the fattest state in the nation and many believe that the deep south lends to unhealthy eating and a cultural acceptance of being overweight.

Colorado is the leanest state in our nation with the lowest rates of overweight and obesity. Many states and private companies reward their employees for staying normal weight or smoke free. Still others give incentives just for getting their blood pressure and cholesterol screened. Prevention pays!

What do you think? Should people who are overweight/obese have to pay more for health insurance?

Labels: health insurance, obesity, Tara Gidus

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

"Obesogenic" Environment?

"Obesogenic" is not likely a term that you have heard before, but you may be hearing it more in the future. It refers to an environment that promotes gaining weight and one that is not conducive to losing weight. A study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association looked at what kind of environmental factors promote weight gain.

Unfortunately many office environments are "Obesogenic." Is yours?

Do any of these sound familiar?

• You spend most of your day sitting at a desk
• The stairwells at your office are not usable because they are dingy and dirty
• You have Donut Friday every week
• More often than not you have someone's leftover birthday cake lying around
• Vending machines are stocked with sugar and fat-laden foods
• The cafeteria serves nothing but grease, cream, and sugar
• Someone always seems to be bringing in homemade treats all the time
• The candy jar gets replenished when it gets just half empty

Obesity is costing employers over $13 Billion dollars a year. Employees are missing millions of work days due to illness related to obesity. Let's put our money and time into something more productive and healthy!

What can you do?

• Start a walking club at lunchtime
• Ask management to clean the stairwells and put motivational pictures and sayings in the stairwells
• Take the stairs several times per day, even if you just go up and back down a few times to get your heart pumping
• Order pedometers for everyone on your team and have a contest of who can get the most steps each day
• Petition the cafeteria to serve lower calorie options
• Keep healthy foods in your desk drawer for quick snacks
• Encourage your coworkers to leave their baked goods at home
• Get rid of the candy jar!

Photo of candy jar provided by D'Arcy Norman

Labels: obesity, Tara Gidus, weight gain, workplace

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

F as in Fat

The fourth annual F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, 2007 report from the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) came out today. The stats are not good. No states decreased in obesity rates from last year, and there was a rise in obesity rates in 31 states. The South is especially looking bad. The reports shows that 8 of the 10 states with highest overweight stats for children as well as 10 of the 15 states with the highest rates of adult obesity are located in the South.

Here are some interesting observations from this report:

• 85% of Americans believe that obesity is an epidemic.
• Jeff Levi, PhD, Executive Director of TFAH, says, “Poor nutrition and physical inactivity are robbing America of our healthy and productivity.”
• 21% of American adults report they do not engage in any physical activity. Mississippi, the state with the highest rate of obesity, also has the highest rate of inactivity.
• Every state has school PE requirements, but many are limited in scope for not enforced.
• More than 2/3 of Americans believe children do not participate in adequate amounts of physical activity during the school day or outside of school. More than 70% of Americans rated proposals to increase PE in schools as very useful.
• 60% of Americans favor a proposal to measure students’ Body Mass Index (BMI) annually and confidentially provide this information to parents.
• 81% of Americans believe that the government should have a role in addressing the obesity crisis.

My thoughts

Adults are getting heavier in this country. It is an epidemic and each year the statistics keep getting worse. But the saddest news is that now we are seeing that our children are also greatly affected by our poor habits and examples. They are becoming overweight and obese at alarming rates—childhood obesity has tripled in the past 20 years. People seem to be getting the message that we are getting fatter, but yet the stats show that we continue to get fatter. We need public health policies to help us, especially when it comes to setting policies in our schools around nutrition and physical activity. We need employers to offer incentives to get people to lose weight, quit smoking, and adopt healthier lifestyles. And most of all, we need to be an example to our children. If you won’t do it for yourself, please do it for your children. The generation of children we are raising has a shorter life expectancy than we do because of health consequences associated with obesity. Help your children (and grandchildren). Show them what it means to eat smaller portions and to choose lower calorie foods (and like them!). Show them how enjoyable it can be to move your body. Get them involved in sports and go out there and do it with them. With some effort and good role modeling we may be able to halt the childhood obesity epidemic and maybe even reverse it!

Photo courtesy of Trust for America's Health (TFAH)

Labels: obesity, overweight. childhood obesity, Tara Gidus

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Do Your Friends Make You Fat?

Talk about a reason to be careful how you pick your friends! A news story today reported that obesity could be ‘socially contagious,’ meaning that if you have friends or family who are fat, your own chances of becoming fat are increased--and by a lot! The study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers found that your chances of becoming obese are increased by the following percentage if you have the following relationship with another obese person:

Spouse: 37%

Sibling: 40%

Friend: 57%

They said that it was not as simple as obese people finding other obese people to hang out with, but rather there was a ‘direct, causal relationship.’ In other words, people think it is okay to get heavier because those around them are getting heavier. It has become more socially acceptable than ever to become heavier. This thought pattern is spreading among friends and pretty soon we have an overweight nation!

Let’s see if we can turn this around! If obesity is contagious among friends, then so must be health consciousness and thinness! Let’s change our thinking and our actions and start to move more and eat less when we are with our friends. The researchers in this study say the social network effects extend three degrees of separation, so if you can have a positive impact on your friend, it may also help your friend’s friend and your friends’ friends’ friends! WHEW!

Get out there and instead of meeting for dinner and drinks, meet for a walk in the park, racquetball, or a swim! Have contests with your friends of who can come up with the tastiest low calorie recipes or the best ideas for yummy but healthy brown bag lunches.

This is a picture of me and my runner friends when we ran the 199 mile Saturn Relay Race from Calistoga to Santa Cruz through the Napa Valley in California. I am in the middle in the shorts because I was the first runner. This is the kind of stuff I do with my friends! :-)

Labels: friendship, obesity, Tara Gidus, weight loss

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment