Get Help Maintaining Your Weight During the Winter Holidays
“Maintain Don’t Gain,” an employee wellness program, begins Nov. 14
Stay healthy and fit between Thanksgiving and the new year with “Maintain Don’t Gain,” which runs Nov. 14 to Jan. 8.
Making its return for the first time since the start of the pandemic, the eight-week challenge program will help staff and faculty lose or maintain weight through the holiday season with weekly emails that include stress management tools, workout suggestions and healthy lifestyle tips from LIVE FOR LIFE, the employee wellness program.
Registration is now underway and will remain open throughout the program as a resource for Duke faculty and staff.
“I just think it’s a great wellness management strategy and an overall fantastic way to motivate our Duke community to develop healthier habits and better themselves any way they can,” said Carlos Velasquez, a fitness specialist for LIVE FOR LIFE.
Throughout the program, LIVE FOR LIFE will offer tailored fitness consultations to help you reach exercise goals. Staff will also supply information to help you track weight, as well as tips for staying active in cold weather. Participants can earn LIVE FOR LIFE dollars — monopoly-like money to buy items in the LIVE FOR LIFE story — by losing or maintaining their weight (3-pound margin) during the holiday season.
The last time the program ran in 2019, 854 employees participated and lost a combined 2,237 pounds.
Dr. Fides Schwartz, a senior research associate for Duke Radiology, used the program in 2019 for accountability to maintain her weight throughout the holiday season — when fewer daylight hours and colder temperatures make staying active more challenging.
“When it’s colder and dark, it does take a little more effort from me to get outside,” Schwartz said.
Though a decadent piece of chocolate or a big meal with friends and family is hard to resist over the holidays, she plans to participate in the program this year as a means of motivating her to continue a weekly routine of martial arts, yoga and Polynesian dance into 2023.
“It’s a program that puts accountability into everyday life,” Schwartz said.
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