By Elaine Wilson
Elaine.wilson@dma.mil
Jan. 13, 2011
The holiday season has been dangerous for my waist line. I’ve pillaged stockings for candy, raided cabinets for leftover holiday treats and even, I admit with shame, snagged a few bites of the chocolate-chip cookies my kids so lovingly laid out for Santa.
I freely admit I’m a holiday candy addict, which is the first step to recovery, I hope. For years, I’ve been trying to resist the sweet treats that are so abundant during and after the holidays.
Unfortunately, as my jeans now indicate, it’s too late for me to resist the savory cookies and candies this year. So now, since I was unable to practice the art of willpower, I must shift into damage-control mode, which mainly involves purging my cabinets of unhealthy treats and hitting the treadmill a few extra times a week.
For our military members and their families who can relate to my weight-related woes, you’re fortunate to have some great healthy lifestyle tools at your disposal.
Along with base fitness and health and wellness centers, Military OneSource offers some great tools to get the scale, and any stress-related weight gain triggers, into check.
I encourage families to check out Military One Source’s Healthy Habits Coaching Programs, which include a life health assessment and a coaching program.
The assessment is an evaluation of physical and behavioral health and motivation to change. You simply answer some questions and, in return, receive a personal report that helps you understand how to make changes.
The coaching program has three areas of focus: iCAnChange, iCanThrive and iCanRelax.
The iCanChange segment helps people reach weight and health goals, iCanThrive teaches you how to eat healthier, relax more and get moving, and iCanRelax helps you to understand stress and its affect on you, and gain skills to deal with stressful demands and life changes.
For our younger folks, OneSource offers iCanAchieve, which offers expert coaching by phone and online tools to help teens set and achieve healthy goals.
Curious about the program, and always on the lookout for stress reducers, I checked out iCanRelax and found it to be very user friendly. I took an online assessment, only about a 10-minute commitment, and received back a detailed report about my key stressors and some ways I can manage stress. The program also offered me an online or telephonic personal health coach, a personal homepage with interactive tools and tracker, and other helpful hints.
If you get a chance, take a few minutes to check out some of OneSource’s free, helpful programs. I gained some insight into my candy-fueled behavior, and hope to use some of these tools in the future to cut back on my stress-induced eating.
And hopefully, with some tips to steer me in the right direction, next year I’ll find the willpower to walk away from the candy or, at the very least, leave Santa’s cookies alone.
I’d love to hear your healthy eating and exercise tips for the New Year. Don’t hesitate to write in.