Redesigning Wellness Podcast

Dr. Michelle Segar is a motivational scientist who has been studying what motivates people to choose and maintain healthy behaviors, particularly around exercise.

We start with Michelle explaining what she does as a motivational scientist. Research suggests we tend to make daily health decisions based on emotions and in the moment instead of according to logic. We'll make the choice based on how we feel.

Wellness has come out of a medical model that's logical and makes sense but long term benefits of exercise don't influence people. The "feel good" benefits of exercise do drive long term exercise.

We need to look to marketers as we are trying to change health behaviors. Michelle compares this to Apple and how they guide us to feel in the moment.  We can help people see that if they move for 10 minutes they do have more energy. We also need to decrease the standards we give to people using a Kindergarten mindset. Let's shrink the goals we're asking people to achieve (at least at the beginning).

How can we move exercise from a chore to a gift? When you frame exercise as fun instead of physical activity, we get them to see it differently. Hook people to re-frame exercise by the quicker benefits like feeling happy, better sleep, stronger sex drive, connecting with your love ones, etc.

We need to shift people's perception that healthy behaviors from logic health reasons but instead as a vehicle to feel better immediately. Encourage people to notice how they feel differently when they make healthy choices. Ultimately, increase their self-awareness. The most challenging aspect is sustaining the health change because of the ongoing self management around the behavior.

Michelle gives her thoughts on external motivators like gift cards and financial incentives. She leaves us with a tangible tip to assess the reasons we give employees to participate....are they based on logic?

When it comes to the Corporate world, we tend to shy away from practices like meditation, deep breathing and using our intuition to make decisions. Today's guest, Jonathan Winn, gives us good reasons to incorporate these practices into our everyday lives.

As a warning, we start out talking about the U.S. election. Regardless of how you feel about the outcome of the election, I encourage you to listen to Jonathan's reaction and encouragement for us all to not feed the divisiveness. He urges us to seek the grounds where we have common space and warns us that whatever we focus on, we welcome it to continue.

Jonathan tells us about the benefits of incorporating focused breathing into your day and how your feeling is directly related to how you're breathing. 

The steps to using your breath are to observe without worrying about changing it, to slow down your breath and finally to deepen your breath.

Jonathan talks about how to incorporate breathing into your wellness program (first, don't describe it as a breathing program because that's the how) but rather on increasing focus, productivity and well-being. For example, it's what can you do to maintain your calm when you're on the phone with a difficult client.

He talks about the imbalance in the corporate world between creativity, intuition (going with your gut) and using logic/analytics (data driven pieces). Jonathan teaches clients how to listen to their own inner guidance and body intelligence. He also tells us how employers can help tap into employee creativity and innovation.

Finally, Jonathan tells the story of how he came into this world and why it influenced his company focus (and name).

As a wellness or HR professional, how often do you think about, research or identify organizational trends? It's easy to get caught up in our day to day and ignore how the world of work is changing.

That's why I brought Jacob Morgan on today's episode. Jacob’s one of the world’s leading authorities on the future of work, employee experience, and how the workplace is changing. Jacob also hosts the weekly podcast titled ”The Future of Work”.

In this episode we discuss:

• trends employers need to pay attention to
• #1 challenge employers face
• his thoughts on open workspaces
• characteristics of progressive companies

Jacob walks us through his Future of Work Forum and Community and fills us in on his new book, due out March 2017.

Finally, he leaves us with great advice for what health and wellness pros can do to move their organization forward.

Workplace wellness programs tend to focus on obesity and ways to get employees to lose weight. Unfortunately, many organizations rely on weight loss methods that don't work and may reinforce restrictive eating, yo-yo dieting and ultimately, more weight gain.

Today I talk with Rebecca Johnson, Director of Workplace Wellness for Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating Programs and Training.

In this conversation, Rebecca and I talk about how she got her start into the health and wellness industry, how we can help push the wellness profession forward and the tenets of the Am I Hungry training. Rebecca also leaves us with tangible tips for employers who want to address weight at the workplace.

For more information visit www.amihungry.com.

As wellness and HR professionals, we tend to get focused in our bubble of where we work and how we can make an impact on our employees. There are many forces outside of the worksite that impact individual's total health. That's why I wanted to expand our worksite lens and talk to Dr. Kelly Brownell.

Dr. Brownell tells us about the work he oversees as the Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. 

He drops some interesting facts about how the world population is expected to double in the next 50 years and that will put a tremendous strain on agriculture. China is now having a problem with obesity...more than with malnutrition.

We talk a bit about the agriculture subsidies for corn and soybeans and how they are complicated issues. He gives me a history lesson on why they were put into place in the first place.

We discuss how Philadelphia recently passed the soda tax and Dr. Brownell gives his input into the effect on other cities. He compares these soda taxes to tobacco taxes.

I ask him what he thinks of the angle Philly used to pass the soda tax (using bringing in more revenue vs. health implications) and what he thinks of the personal responsibility story when it comes to junk food?

Finally, I ask him if the soda tax replicate for the worksite, if obesity in adults can be solved or if we need to focus on prevention and how can cities/communities/employers can start a movement around health and wellness?

Today we talk a lot about the criticism that Jon and others have faced when challenging the status quo. Jon walks us through how he gained a newfound respect for WELCOA, the wellness organization that has previously been stuck in the past.

Jon tells us how him, Al and Rosie wrote up Employee Health Code of Conduct to prevent harmful practices done to employees. They want brokers, consultants, wellness vendors and companies sign the Code of Conduct.

Jon has a lot of respect for people will admit they were wrong. In fact, Jon used to run an Optifast program.

I jab Jon about his Linked In commenting and he talks about the continuum of snarkiness. He's received negative comments on Linked In as well but admits he's occasionally stepped over the line.

When you are speaking out about strong paradigms and challenging the status quo, you may need to be more direct.

Jon gives advice to his younger self/wellness pros getting out of school today and tell us about The Fusion, an upcoming conference in 2018 that includes Wellness, HR, safety and Organizational Development.

Jon leaves us with his advice for a company who wants to start a wellness program and tells us about their Thriving Workplace Culture certificate.

Jon Robison has been stirring the wellness pot for the past 30 years. He's co-founder of Salveo Partners, an expert consulting and professional development firm that guides organizations to create thriving workplace cultures, enhance organizational performance, and cultivate employee wellbeing.

We start off discussing Jon's philosophy around wellness/well-being. I ask Jon what got him thinking outside the traditional wellness program model. He answers the questions what's right and wrong with the wellness industry.  

Jon then talks about the Safeway Amendment and how the average incentive is $693 per employee per year. He feels incentives promote cheating, lying and taking short cuts.

Finally, we talk about weight loss programs in the workplace. The majority of people lose weight and 90-95% gain the weight back, most gaining back more weight than they lost. 

Because we end up going well past an hour, I ended up making my conversation with Jon two parts. Next week, I continue my conversation with Jon.

Financial wellness is all the rage in these days but what does it really mean? It seems like it can be pretty squishy and unclear just how to help employees with their finances. That's why I brought on Dave Jacobson, financial coach and national speaker.

Dave describes financial wellness as having peace and security around your finances. 

In this episode we talk about:

• His typical client
• Strategies for an employer to address the financial wellness of their employees.
• What questions an employer should ask a financial wellness vendor
• Stories and stats from people he's helped.

You’ve probably heard the staggering numbers around diabetes. In the U.S. there are almost 30 million people with diabetes and 89 million with prediabetes. As many as one in three by 2030 will have diabetes.

People with diagnosed diabetes, on average, have medical expenditures approximately 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes. 

It’s a bit of a problem in the U.S. but how can an employer address the disease?

Today I talk to Dr. David Marrero, who’s an expert in the field of clinical trials in diabetes and translation research. His career in diabetes research got started when he was diagnosed with diabetes 40 years ago and couldn’t find any research on the subject.

David and I discuss: the risk factors for diabetes, the Diabetes Prevention Program, treating the whole patient and what employers need to understand about their employees with diabetes.

As always, thanks for listening!

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Redesigning Wellness podcast! If you’re a regular listener, you know myself and past guests have mentioned the Wellness Underground. This organization was created by Brian Passon and Evin Cole (along with 2 other members who are still underground). They also started an “unwellness” workshop in 2015

Today, I talk to Evin and Brian about the 2017 workshop. I also go into a speed round that asks them questions from the organizers perspectives.

I went to the workshop this past January and found it to be a refreshing approach to the standard conference. In particular, I liked the small atmosphere, speakers and time and ability to connect with almost all workshop participants.

For more info on the 2017 Wellness Underground workshop, you can visit http://www.wellnessunderground.com/.