WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS
"Let food be thy medicine."
---- Hippocrates
In a recent talk to employees of a large nonprofit organization, I asked participants to write down one thing they would like to change about their health.
Can you guess what the overwhelming answer was? It was “lose weight”. In one hour, I taught these employees, from the CEO down to the truck drivers, five specific ways to start making changes to put them on the path to healthier weights and better health.
With two in three adults in the United States overweight and obese, it seems to me that solutions to the childhood obesity epidemic must begin with raising the health literacy of adults. There is no question in my mind as to why we have a health crisis in this country.
Here’s my challenge to you: help me identify three organizations in the southeast U.S. (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama) where at least half of the employees are overweight and obese and the employees want to get to healthier weights. Growing Healthy Kids, Inc. is looking for companies who want healthier and more productive employees. These three organizations will work with me over 90 days. As your virtual Chief Wellness Officer, I promise to improve the health literacy of your employees, improve your productivity, get your employees to healthier weights, AND lower your absenteeism.
Growing Healthy Kids, Inc. is a movement to provide leadership and solutions to the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States and beyond. Without the commitment of America’s businesses, local governmental units, and organizations, kids don’t stand a chance of growing up healthy and free of obesity-related diseases.
With the commitment of businesses, government employees, and local organizations, our kids DO have a great chance of being growing healthy kids and adults.
As adults, we are the role models for the children in our communities. If they see us drinking sodas and energy drinks loaded with sugar every day, then they think it is OK to drink a soda and think nothing of stopping by the local 7-11 to buy a Monster energy drink or a Coke on the way to school. We are our children’s teachers. Do we want our children to grow up to be obese adults with old people's diseases because we didn’t dare to care about how much sugar they are eating every day in their school lunches or in their afterschool programs with snacks supplied by the school district? Do we want our children to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes when they are 17 years old and suffer from the amputation of a foot or the loss of their vision when they are in their twenties and we bought honeybuns for them to eat for breakfast every day because it was convenient for us?
If your organization is willing to accept my 90 day challenge and be part of the solution to the OBESITY EPIDEMIC, then shoot me an email at: growinghealthykidsnow@gmail.com. Get ready to lead your community’s wellness challenge! I’m ready. The question is, are you ready?
Growing Healthy Kids, Inc. is a movement dedicated to improving the health - and lives – of America’s children with a laser focus on halting, reversing, and preventing childhood obesity.
In gratitude,
Nancy Heinrich
Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.
