Wellness programs are win-win efforts
Posted on Monday, August 20, 2007
DALLAS — Steve Zuhoski’s loss is a net gain for his employer, Texas Instruments Inc.
Truth be told, the 80 pounds he has dropped from his 6-foot-4 frame are his gain as well.
“I feel like I’ve taken 10 years off physically,” says Zuhoski, 51, manager of foundry reliability.
“I sleep better. I’m more active. I have more energy,” he says. Zuhoski’s blood pressure averages a healthy 110 over 70, leading his doctor to take him off blood pressure medication.
The lanky engineer achieved his weight loss and fitness gains through a company-sponsored wellness program dubbed Your Weigh... Together. It is part of a menu of programs that recently won TI a platinum award as an employer for healthy lifestyles from the National Business Group on Health, a Washington nonprofit.
(Plano, Texas-based J. C. Penney Co. won a silver award for launching wellness programs. )
Wellness at TI harks back to the company’s first Texins Activity Center that opened in the 1960 s. In recent years, the company’s focus has broadened to prevention programs to improve productivity and cut health-care costs. Your Weigh and Walk This Way, a walking program rolled out nationwide last fall, are the newest.
A study by Health Enhancement Research Organization of Birmingham, Ala., found that medical costs associated with obesity can cost a company $ 1, 244 per employee per year.
Zuhoski started his battle with excess weight by taking an online health assessment offered by TI. He is among the 82 percent of employees who’ve taken the test. Individual results are private, but the company can look at the totals for clues to overall health issues, says Linda Moon, manager of wellness and health management. Each test-taker gets a $ 120 reduction in health-care premiums as an incentive, along with personalized feedback.
“If you’d read mine, you’d say, ‘ You’d better lose weight, buddy, and your blood pressure’s too high, ’” Zuhoski says.
Through the 10-week Your Weigh class, he got software that enables him to track his daily calorie count.
“The key difference here is that I made definite lifestyle and habit changes through the class,” he says. “How I eat, how I choose my food, portion control, how I eat when I go out — they’re ingrained habits now.” His exercise choice is an hour of aerobics twice a week at the Texins Fitness Center, alternating with two one-hour sessions with personal trainer Troy Sandel, for a total of four intense workouts weekly.
Terry Taylor, project manager in information technology, opted for another of TI’s new wellness programs, the 12-week Walk This Way. Taylor, 47, now sports a cobalt pedometer on his belt. “The pedometer encourages me to take the long way, to park farther away,” he says.
Record-keeping is a motivator for Taylor, who keeps a spreadsheet on his closet door to track his progress with losing inches, body fat and weight. He’s down 30 pounds since December.
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