Motivation Station

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about motivation. What does it take to get a person to eat right, to be active, to take the extra steps to live a healthier life? For some, it’s signing up for a race so that you  have something to work towards. For others, it’s the desire to fit into an outfit or bathing suit by a particular date or season.  Everyone has different motivators and as an aspiring nutritionist/encourager of active lifestyles, I’m always curious to hear about them. Who knows, maybe what made one person get up and get going could work just as well for someone else!

Here is one person’s story about how one word was all it took for him to make a change… 

"Andy" works for a mid-sized company that decided to implement a wellness program. If an employee signed up, their monthly health insurance rates would be lowered. All they had to do in return was weigh-in at a computerized scale once a week and make it clear that they were putting forth effort to improve overall health by either keeping a food log, taking stress-reduction seminars, quitting smoking, etc.

One of the features of the computerized scale was that it had your height programmed in so would give you your BMI each time it recorded your weight. Andy, who is in his mid-twenties and is of slightly above-average height, hadn’t paid much attention in the past to eating healthy. He’d always gotten away with getting his iced coffees with cream and sugar and eating pasta with sausage as an average meal. He didn’t appear to his coworkers as especially overweight, which is why it came to quite a surprise to him (and them, when he shared the information) that he wasn’t overweight; he was obese.

Every week he would sit down on the scale at work and every week the computer would tell him that he was obese. Seeing this word each week made Andy decide to make a change. He started ordering his iced coffees with milk; first whole milk, then eventually skim. Vegetables started to make an appearance in his pasta dishes. And, probably most importantly for him, he started running and going to the gym regularly. One year later he’s lost 30 pounds, ran a 5K with his co-workers, and is always on the look out for new ways to keep active.*

I think it’s important to remember that when hear about the “obesity epidemic,” it’s not always referring to people who might appear extremely overweight. There are reasons to motivate yourself into the healthy range besides outward appearance. Sure, Andy looks fit, but he also reduced his risk of chronic disease and lowered his blood pressure in the process.

What motivates you? What would it take for you to make a lifestyle change? 

Want to calculate your BMI? Try these sites:

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

http://www.bodyshapingtips.com/images/BMI-Chart.png

*special thanks to "Andy" for letting me share his story!