A 91% Increase in Cardiovascular Death Risk…The Impact on Your People and Your Business.

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A Unique Episode of The Working Well Podcast

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Today’s episode is going to be a little bit different. Normally on The Working Well Podcast, we’re talking about. Leadership development, workplace wellbeing. Things that companies can do to improve wellbeing in the workplace. So today’s topic is related to that.

The Intersection of Health, Fitness, and Workplace Wellbeing

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But it’s something that came out of my. Background in health and fitness. For those of you who aren’t aware.

I was a health and fitness coach, personal trainer. And, wellbeing consultant for many years. And worked with thousands of athletes and corporate professionals on improving their health, wellbeing, and performance.

Debunking Intermittent Fasting Myths
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And one of the things that came up quite often, Was nutrition. People always wanted. The best nutrition plan. And over the past 30 something years, I’ve seen all kinds of diet trends come and go. One of the more persistent ones is intermittent fasting. And. [00:01:00] I’ve written a couple of lengthy blog posts on this. And I can, I’ll put those in the show notes so you can access those blog posts. And I hadn’t really talked to clients about it in a while.

I know there are still some people out there that do that. And I’ve expressed my opinion multiple times on how I don’t think intermittent fasting is very effective. I think it can have a small place at certain points, but how the majority of people implement it is highly ineffective. And. I was coming at it from a weight loss standpoint. And I don’t think it really works well for weight loss from a longterm perspective, because it’s not approached with the right mindset and those are, you’ve read some of my other material, my books (The Fitness Curveball). cover the four pillars of personal performance mindset, habits, movement, and fuel in that order of importance. And when we talk about intermittent fasting, people [00:02:00] are doing that.

My perspective from a flawed mindset perspective. They’re restricting themselves purposefully to lose weight, which is, might be great from a short-term perspective, if your need to. Accomplish a certain goal in a short amount of time, but from a longterm sustainability standpoint, it’s really ineffective.

And it actually. Sets up a self perpetuating cycle of what we call the diet yoyo. Now with that being said, I’ve said my opinion multiple times over the years. And I’m, like I said, written a couple of the blog posts on it. I talked to clients about it all the time. I read a study, just came out. From the American heart association. And this was a study of over 20,000 people over between eight to 17 years.

So a longterm study with a large number of people. And what they found is that. People who followed [00:03:00] an eight hour time restricted eating schedule. And that’s the typical or very common 16, eight fasting cycles. So you fast for 16 hours and then you eat during an eight hour window throughout the day. They found that that type of eating schedule. Had a 91% higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

That’s massive. Highly significant. And. Anyone who’s doing intermittent fasting needs to be aware of it.

People with heart disease or cancer also had an increased risk of cardiovascular death when they were following that cycle. And. So compare in the study that the author said compared with the standard schedule of eating across 12 to 16 hours per day, instead of only the eight hour window. Limiting food intake to less than eight hours. Per day was not associated with living longer. [00:04:00] So. When we look at what people are actually doing. To lose weight. It’s it’s often creating significant longterm. Impacts on their health. Which means we need to think more effectively and differently about how we’re approaching nutrition.

The Impact of Nutrition on Workplace Wellbeing
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Now where this comes back to the working well podcast. Is that. Any company. Is filled with employees. And employees are part of what we call the general population. I for years have worked with. Corporate executives, coaching them on health, wellbeing, performance.

And again, nutrition comes up all the time. So your employees for leaders out there, your team members, your employees are doing these types of. Eating regimens. And if it’s creating a 90% or 91% increase in [00:05:00] cardiovascular death. That’s a major risk.

Strategic Wellbeing in the Corporate World
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So incorporating effective nutrition is part of most workplace wellbeing programs. Yet it tends to get rolled out. As part of a. Heart health month or whatever, some one-off seminar.

I believe what we really need is to look a bit deeper at. The strategy that we have behind not just nutrition. But what I call the personal performance paradigm. The, the mindset, the habits, the movement, the fuel. What are the things people are doing in each of those areas to produce. Better health, better energy, better performance in work ad life. That’s something that. Companies aren’t really addressing. Again, Keep in mind, most traditional wellness programs have some [00:06:00] aspect of those things in there. However, there’s a difference between offering random programs and creating a strategic plan designed to elicit. Specific behavioral change or health outcomes. That’s very different. It’s the same equivalent to saying, oh, I invest. In the stock market and I invest in mutual funds, but I just sort of pick them with a Scrabble board and our, I, I spin a spinner and whatever one it lands on or just. Pick the most. Popular one of the day. It’s not a strategy.

Well, maybe not a very effective one. But the idea is that as leaders, as organizations.

How are we positively impacting our people?

The health outcomes that our employees are having. And we know that two out of every three [00:07:00] people these days are either overweight or obese and that the, the fastest growing segment of that is the obesity segment with about 50, 50. Between overweight and obesity right now. Now. That’s tripled or quadrupled in the last 30 to 40 years, depending on which stats in which countries you look at. Which means that it’s not a genetic thing. There there’s difference in lifestyle.

There’s a difference in I was talking with a researcher earlier today about gene expression and how our environmental factors might be changing. The, the expression of our genes to create some of the challenges that we’re facing right now, whether we’re talking about low level inflammation across the body. Obesity auto-immune diseases. All kinds of things are skyrocketing these days because of. Our environment. Our behaviors and the ways we’re approaching those two [00:08:00] factors. So as companies, we have a massive opportunity to help people. But it requires a bigger picture strategy.

It requires. The executive team sitting down to say, Hey, what are the biggest hot buttons for our employee base? And how are we specifically addressing them? Not just from an information standpoint, because every effect, plan and wellness portal out there has all the nutrition articles has all the here’s a workout plan.

The Challenge with Workplace Wellness

You can download. Those resources are available. But they’re not. Being utilized in the way that’s most effective. Most people only utilize them. When they’re desperate. It’s a user self-serve model. So employees will only go there to seek the counseling. If they’re feeling. Depressed or if they get [00:09:00] referred to someone. Yes.

Some people do go seek it on their own. But generally when they’re facing. Undue challenges or stress. Now. As an organization, we have an opportunity to help build that into our culture. Build. Healthy happy, positive behavioral change into. Not just our wellness program. But in the day-to-day. Policies procedures, operations of the business. Now, keep in mind, we’re not dictating how people need to live in exercise. We’re consistently putting, not just the information, but the tools, resources, and opportunities to engage. In those activities. That wouldn’t be there in a traditional wellness program. And I often talk about the difference between [00:10:00] wellness and wellbeing. And it’s important. Distinction to talk about right now, because.

A lot, as I’m saying this, a lot of people are out there saying, oh yeah, well, our company already does this.

We do nutrition, lunch and learns. And we have this. Mindfulness app and we do all these things. And I say, that’s great. Those are awesome tools in your toolbox. How do they fit with the organizational strategy? Around improving performance and wellbeing. And. Are they actually improving wellbeing? Now wellness.

Tactics vs. Strategy

I define as the tactics, the, the, the actions that you take with the goal of improving. Wellbeing and wellbeing is the state of being the outcome that happens from ideally doing wellness things. And when we look at it more closely, Things like those [00:11:00] EFAP portals and the wellness portals and the mental health apps. They’re generally not producing. The results that are needed to create. Bigger picture. Change in individuals and ROI for the company. We know that most of the, those portals they have success is an eight to 10% maybe. Maybe 20% in the most. Extreme cases in terms of engagement. In those. Resources across the company. So if only 20% of the people max are engaging with it, and it’s usually around 10%. Or even less. That means we’re still missing the boat in terms of behavioral change. And again, a great tool in the toolbox, a resource to pull out from some time. But what people forget is that there are. Other [00:12:00] factors that are involved in. Creating wellbeing that are outside the traditional scope of wellness programs.

And that’s a really important factor to consider.

The Role of Corporate Culture in Employee Wellbeing
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And the biggest ones are the impact of leadership. Impact of corporate culture. And it’s a whole other podcast to dive into what corporate culture means, but essentially it comes out to. The daily. Actions. Habits, mindset that we approach the day-to-day operations of our business that create the employee experience and customer experience. To some extent as well.

But that’s what corporate culture is really about.

And corporate culture has some of the biggest impact on wellbeing. Out there. You can have all the wellness amenities, check all the boxes. Out there. If your corporate culture sucks. [00:13:00] It’s not going to matter people. Are we still going to be stressed out? Burnt out disengaged. So we’re, I’m going to the intermittent fasting here.

And, you know, again, we got back to the wellness side, but it’s all connected because when we’ve create, when we decide and strategically curate a corporate culture around wellbeing and performance and. Discussing things on a consistent basis. Like. The foods you’re eating, how you’re moving, setting up a structure in the day where you have healthy options available for food, where you have. The ability to move your body to engage in activity. Perhaps, perhaps while you’re even meeting with colleagues and doing work. We know that creativity improves.

We know that focus and resilience and mental health improve. When we move our body yet, most companies. Are doing the opposite for employees. They’re [00:14:00] essentially chaining people to a desk figuratively. Hopefully not literally. But people are at on zoom meetings or teams calls for eight to 10 hours a day.

They have to sit at their computer, whether they have the camera off or not, they’re there. In the office, it’s very similar. So what as leaders. What. What culture in our team. Nevermind the bigger organizational culture at this point, what culture in our team are we creating that allows us to positively impact. The people on our team. From a mindset, habits, movement, and fuel standpoint. When we can do that. Our team will perform. At such a higher level. We will have more satisfaction as a leader. The organization benefits. Again this is simple. Very straightforward. The concepts have been [00:15:00] there for ages.

As a, as a personal trainer, starting in the industry, see C-level executives, VP level executives. We’re coming to me to learn these skills. And that’s how I got into the fitness industry or, sorry. That’s how I got into the corporate wellness industry. I was basically fixing stressed out, burnt out, broken down, beaten up corporate executives. And helping them get their mindset, habits, movement, and fuel back on track. So they could see the results they want and perform at their best in life. Then they would say, Hey. Why don’t you come in and talk to my team about this?

I, this is really cool. No one’s ever presented it this way before. And so I started doing seminars and workshops. And then the same companies would say. Hey, you know what. We’re thinking about building a gym in our space. Can you run some programs out of there? Can you tell us what equipment we need? And that led [00:16:00] me into designing. And managing fitness centers for large corporate clients. And we’ve had multinational companies that we’ve we’ve run facilities for.

Expanding the Scope of Wellness Programs
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The interesting thing is. There was still a gap. And if we go back to corporate culture and leadership mindset, We’re running these multimillion dollar facilities for large corporate clients yet we’re seeing the same. Call it 10% of people that would use a gym, whether the company had one or not. And then that got us thinking, well, Hey, you know what. What about the other 90% of employees?

What programs are we running for them? So we started doing traditional workplace wellness programs. We were checking the boxes off. Hey, we’re doing nutrition seminars. Hey, we’re doing. Wellness challenges. We’re doing. Wellness weeks, wellness fairs, all these things that were one off. [00:17:00] Activities.

And then we realized there was a gap there we’d have people coming to us saying. You know what. We love the gym. We’d love to go.

My boss. Wouldn’t look too kindly on it. If I. If I went and I went to the gym in the day and I’ve got kids and with my schedule, it’s hard to make it there before work or after work. So I’m just not going. I’m not utilizing that resource. And when we start looking at. Leadership mindset. This. Distinction between the wellness program and then the real work that gets done. That’s where we see the difference. And. That’s what got me into executive coaching. And the organizational performance strategy consulting with companies and leaders to set up programs. That are not just effective, but that are bought into the company culture that helping leaders [00:18:00] shift their mindset to see the opportunities that are available from a people performance standpoint. And an organizational performance standpoint. Because those two things go hand in hand. So to come back full circle to the intermittent fasting and the 91% higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

We want to look at. How does this all fit together in your organization? Just even from your leadership mindset perspective, how is this resonating?

Invitation & Collaboration
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Have you checked all the “wellness” boxes?

But, or maybe not seeing the results in your organization. If so. Please reach out. Call me. DM me. I’d love to connect. I’d love to hear what’s working for your company. What’s not. What your vision is for the future. And I’d love to help you put that in place. Tim borys.com. Just go to the contact page, reach out there. On [00:19:00] LinkedIn, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Tim Borys.

Thank you so much. We’ll see you on the next episode.