Posts Tagged ‘wellness’

Employers love to say that they have a corporate wellness program. But how much actual wellness do these programs bring to employees? Not much, says a new randomized, controlled study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Placebo Wellness You’ll hear plenty of anecdotal reports. People are sooo much healthier if they participate in […]

It’s hard to miss. Some elements of food policy seem to be telling the world what people oughta wanna eat. And the subtext of that message is the idea that people who aren’t listening are eating junk food. You are what you eat. Junk people eat junk food. Healthy people eat healthy food. A new […]

NBC canceled The Biggest Loser for good reasons, but Schlumberger doesn’t seem to care. Yesterday, this oil industry employer kicked off a $10,000 workplace weight loss contest. They might be telling themselves they’re promoting employee wellness. But they would be wrong. At Best Counterproductive, Dangerous for Some The Biggest Loser was a controversial spectacle from the very […]

In case you hadn’t noticed, the 2018 Best Diets feature is out. It’s great click bait for people feeling the weight of all those holiday celebrations. Not much has changed. But the picture is just a little sharper this year. The real news is that this best diets list is, at its heart, anti-dieting. A […]

Let’s face it. We might be better off ignoring 80 percent of the reporting on obesity, nutrition, and health. Especially in nutrition, what’s hot one year turns cold the next. And the hot headlines often don’t match the facts. With that said here’s a brief, subjective rundown of some hot and cold subjects for the […]

It’s here. Diet season is cranking up and the advertisements are bombarding us. Gyms will make the money that sustains them all year with memberships people don’t use. And many people will beat up on themselves when short-term self-help goals fall flat. May we suggest a small dose of self-compassion? The Virtue of Self-Compassion Popular […]

Words have power. And today, the powerful word that’s on our mind is vulnerable. Many people today are celebrating the birth a vulnerable baby thousands of years ago. A Banned Word? Last week, political reporters were chattering about a list of words to avoid in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The direction […]

They’re dead for now. Those godawful coercive wellness programs will be illegal on January 1, 2019, thanks to a new court ruling this week. A judge finally threw out EEOC rules that allowed companies to impose big penalties on employees who don’t step on the scale and lose weight. Some employers called them incentives. But […]

Thanksgiving might be the ideal holiday for our times. Everyone gathers and gives thanks to whomever for whatever however it moves them. And then we enjoy a meal. Together. Perfect, except for maybe one thing – food stress. Moralizing About Food Writing in the New York Times, pediatrician Aaron Carroll tells us that “when we moralize […]

Efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare have come and gone this year. They may come again. But for now, seven years after passage of the Affordable Care Act, the direct impact on obesity care has been hard to see. At the ObesityWeek advocacy forum Wednesday, you could hear just about any perspective you wanted. The […]