{"id":1945,"date":"2014-05-14T12:25:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T16:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.willclower.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/treating-the-problem-not-the-symptom-of-an-unhealthy-lifestyle.html"},"modified":"2016-09-19T11:24:25","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T15:24:25","slug":"treating-the-problem-not-the-symptom-of-an-unhealthy-lifestyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=1945","title":{"rendered":"Treating the problem, not the symptom, of an unhealthy lifestyle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mlcmmqmgggev.i.optimole.com\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.willclower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/obesityCostChart.jpg?ssl=1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img data-opt-id=1528759456  fetchpriority=\"high\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/mlcmmqmgggev.i.optimole.com\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.willclower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/obesityCostChart.jpg?resize=320%2C242&#038;ssl=1\" height=\"242\" width=\"320\" \/><\/a><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><a data-show-count=\"false\" data-size=\"large\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/willclower\">Follow @willclower<\/a><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\"><br \/><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\">Just got my copy of the Am J of Health Promotion, in which there is a great article on <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/1nIHRod\">&#8220;The association between employee obesity and employer costs: Evidence from a panel of US employers.&#8221;<\/a> &nbsp;<\/span><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\">The results are exactly as bad as you might imagine.&nbsp;<\/span><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\"><u><b>RESULTS:<\/b><\/u><\/span><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\">Normal weight employees cost ~$3830\/yr (medical, sick day, short-term disability, and workers&#8217; comp claims). Obese employees cost &gt; 2X that amount, ~$8067. These numbers are stark and, for self-insured companies who are paying all their own bills, this is a heavy burden to bear. This is why wellness has moved from a &#8220;feel good&#8221; item to a &#8220;strategic imperative&#8221; to build a strong workplace culture of health.<\/span><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\"><b><u>But what to do about it?&nbsp;<\/u><\/b><\/span><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\">It&#8217;s important to distinguish between symptoms and problems. Overweight\/obesity (the symptoms) are physiological expressions of an unhealthy lifestyle (which is the problem that creates the symptoms you see). Sure, companies can DO some manner of &#8220;biggest loser&#8221; weight loss challenge &#8230; and that&#8217;s fine. But these initiatives must also accompany lifestyle coaching or the problem will just recur.<\/span><br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/>&nbsp;<br style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\" \/><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\">As any&nbsp;clinician will tell you, it&#8217;s&nbsp;indeed important to treat the symptoms that present themselves to you. However, as any dieter who has &#8220;yo-yoed&#8221; up and down will tell you, short term improvements won&#8217;t stick unless the root of the issue is addressed.&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\"><br \/><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\">When thinking about driving solutions, we must educate on healthy lifestyle behaviors that ultimately lead to low weight, healthy hearts, and longer lives.&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: #f7f7f7; color: #666666; font-family: 'Proxima Nova', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;\"><br \/><\/span>For more information: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.willclower.com\/\"> Click here to visit Will Clower&#8217;s website. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Follow @willclowerJust got my copy of the Am J of Health Promotion, in which there is a great article on &#8220;The association between employee obesity and employer costs: Evidence from &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[494],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Qv5g-vn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4063,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions\/4063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}