#051 - A 91% Increase in Cardiovascular Death Risk...The Impact on Your People and Your Business (Tim Borys)

[00:00:01] Personal choices of employees are their own to make.

[00:00:04] However, companies also have a vested interest in ensuring that each person is as healthy,

[00:00:10] engaged and high performing as possible.

[00:00:13] Balancing the nuances of this grey area is one of the most challenging aspects of leadership

[00:00:19] and corporate culture.

[00:00:21] Doing it well requires a customized blend of access to information, clear communication,

[00:00:28] leadership strategy and employee engagement.

[00:00:31] The combination of these factors are important components of your unique corporate culture

[00:00:36] recipe.

[00:00:37] Today's episode brings up a topic that is traditionally within the employee's personal choice, but

[00:00:44] the health risk is important for companies to understand and mitigate, similar to the

[00:00:50] challenges from smoking, excess drinking and drugs or other unhealthy behaviors.

[00:00:56] Companies that can engage, inform and help guide healthier choices in employee populations

[00:01:01] are going to see outsized financial, operational and corporate culture returns.

[00:01:08] This episode brings my background in health coaching and performance to the forefront and

[00:01:12] combines it with the challenges facing companies leaders and the quest for improved workplace

[00:01:18] well-being.

[00:01:19] I look forward to your thoughts and comments and encourage you to reach out and engage

[00:01:23] in the conversation.

[00:01:27] Welcome to the Working Well Podcast, the show that explores the rapidly changing landscape

[00:01:31] of work and well-being.

[00:01:33] Each episode we dive into the hottest topics in leadership, employee well-being and the

[00:01:37] future of work.

[00:01:38] I'm your host Tim Borus.

[00:01:42] Today's episode is going to be a little bit different.

[00:01:45] Normally on the Working Well Podcast we're talking about leadership development, workplace

[00:01:51] well-being, things that companies can do to improve well-being in the workplace.

[00:01:56] So today's topic is related to that, but it's something that came out of my background in

[00:02:03] health and fitness.

[00:02:04] For those of you who aren't aware, I was a health and fitness coach, personal trainer,

[00:02:10] well-being consultant for many years and worked with thousands of athletes and corporate

[00:02:17] professionals on improving their health while being in performance.

[00:02:21] And one of the things that came up quite often was nutrition.

[00:02:26] People always wanted the best nutrition plan and over the past 30-something years I've seen

[00:02:32] all kinds of diet trends come and go, one of the more persistent ones is intermittent

[00:02:38] fasting.

[00:02:40] And I've written a couple lengthy blog posts on this and I'll put those in the show

[00:02:46] note so you can access those blog posts.

[00:02:50] And I hadn't really talked to clients about it in a while.

[00:02:53] I know there are still some people out there that do that and I've expressed my opinion

[00:02:58] multiple times on how I don't think intermittent fasting is very effective.

[00:03:04] I think it can have a small place at certain points, but how the majority of people implement

[00:03:10] it is highly ineffective.

[00:03:13] And I was coming at it from a weight loss standpoint.

[00:03:16] I don't think it really works well for weight loss from a long-term perspective because it's

[00:03:22] not approached with the right mindset.

[00:03:25] And those of you who've read some of my other material, my books, The Fitness Curveball,

[00:03:29] I outlined the four pillars of personal performance.

[00:03:33] Mindset, habits, movement and fuel in that order of importance.

[00:03:38] And when we talk about intermittent fasting people are doing that in my perspective

[00:03:44] from a flawed mindset perspective.

[00:03:47] They're restricting themselves purposefully to lose weight, which is might be great from

[00:03:53] a short-term perspective if you need to accomplish a certain goal in a short amount of time.

[00:03:59] But from a long-term sustainability standpoint it's really ineffective and it actually sets up

[00:04:05] a self-perpetuating cycle of what we call the diet yo-yo.

[00:04:11] Now, with that being said I've said my opinion multiple times over the years and like I said

[00:04:16] written a couple of blog posts on it.

[00:04:18] I talk to clients about it all the time.

[00:04:21] A study just came out from the American Heart Association and this was a study of over 20,000

[00:04:30] people over between 8 to 17 years.

[00:04:34] So a long-term study with a large number of people and what they found is that people

[00:04:40] who followed an eight-hour time restricted eating schedule and that's the typical or very

[00:04:46] common 16-8 fasting cycle.

[00:04:50] So you fast for 16 hours and then you eat during an eight hour window throughout the day.

[00:04:56] They found that that type of eating schedule had a 91% higher risk of death from cardiovascular

[00:05:04] disease.

[00:05:05] That's massive, highly significant and anyone who's doing intermittent fasting needs to be

[00:05:13] aware of it.

[00:05:14] People with heart disease or cancer also had an increased risk of cardiovascular death

[00:05:21] when they were following that cycle.

[00:05:23] And so compared in the study the author said compared with a standard schedule of eating

[00:05:30] across 12 to 16 hours per day instead of only the eight-hour window limiting

[00:05:35] food intake to less than eight hours per day was not associated with living longer.

[00:05:42] So when we look at what people are actually doing to lose weight, it's often creating

[00:05:52] significant long-term impacts on their health which means we need to think more effectively

[00:06:03] about how we're approaching nutrition.

[00:06:05] Now where this comes back to the Working Well podcast is that any company is filled with employees

[00:06:14] and employees are part of what we call the general population.

[00:06:18] For years I've worked with corporate executives coaching them on health, well-being,

[00:06:23] performance and again nutrition comes up all the time.

[00:06:28] So your employees for leaders out there, your team members, your employees are

[00:06:32] doing these types of eating regimens and if it's creating a 90% or 91% increase in cardiovascular

[00:06:41] death that's a major risk.

[00:06:46] So incorporating effective nutrition is part of most workplace well-being programs

[00:06:52] yet it tends to get rolled out as part of a part health month or whatever some one-off seminar.

[00:07:02] I believe what we really need is to look a bit deeper at the strategy that we have behind

[00:07:10] not just nutrition but what I call the personal performance paradigm,

[00:07:17] the mindset, the habits, the movement, the fuel, whatever things people are doing in each of those

[00:07:25] areas to produce better health, better energy, better performance in work and life.

[00:07:32] That's something that companies aren't really addressing.

[00:07:36] Again keep in mind most traditional wellness programs have some aspect of those things in there.

[00:07:44] However, there's a difference between offering random programs and creating a strategic plan

[00:07:52] designed to elicit specific behavioral change or health outcomes.

[00:07:59] That's very different.

[00:08:01] It's the same equivalent to saying oh I invest in the stock market and I invested mutual funds

[00:08:07] but I just sort of pick them with a scrabble board and I spin a spinner and whatever one it

[00:08:14] lands on or I just pick the most popular one of the day.

[00:08:19] It's not a strategy, well maybe not a very effective one, but the idea is that as leaders,

[00:08:27] as organizations, how are we positively impacting the health outcomes that our employees are having?

[00:08:39] We know that two out of every three people these days are either overweight or obese

[00:08:44] and that the fastest growing segment of that is the obesity segment with about 50-50

[00:08:52] between overweight and obesity right now.

[00:08:54] Now that's tripled or quadrupled in the last 30 to 40 years depending on which stats and

[00:09:00] which countries you look at, which means that it's not a genetic thing.

[00:09:06] There's difference in lifestyle, there's a difference in, I was talking with a researcher

[00:09:11] earlier today about gene expression and how our environmental factors might be changing

[00:09:17] the expression of our genes to create some of the challenges that we're facing right now,

[00:09:22] whether we're talking about low-level inflammation across the body, obesity,

[00:09:28] autoimmune diseases, all kinds of things are skyrocketing these days because of

[00:09:35] our environment, our behaviors and the ways we're approaching those two factors.

[00:09:43] So as companies we have a massive opportunity to help people but it requires a bigger picture

[00:09:50] strategy. It requires the executive team sitting down to say, hey what are the biggest hot buttons

[00:09:58] for our employee base and how are we specifically addressing them? Not just from an information

[00:10:05] standpoint because every EFAC plan and wellness portal out there has all the nutrition articles,

[00:10:13] has all the here's a workout plan you can download. Those resources are available

[00:10:19] but they're not being utilized in the way that's most effective. Most people only utilize them

[00:10:28] when they're desperate. It's a user self-serve model so employees will only go there to seek

[00:10:36] the counseling if they're feeling depressed or if they get referred to someone. Yes,

[00:10:43] some people do go seek it on their own but generally when they're facing

[00:10:48] undue challenges or stress. Now as an organization we have an opportunity to help build that into

[00:10:56] our culture, build healthy happy positive behavioral change into not just our wellness program

[00:11:07] but into the day-to-day policies, procedures, operations of the business. Now keep in mind

[00:11:15] we're not dictating how people need to live and exercise. We're consistently putting

[00:11:23] not just the information but the tools resources and opportunities to engage

[00:11:29] in those activities. It wouldn't be there in a traditional wellness program and I often talk

[00:11:39] about the difference between wellness and well-being and it's important distinction to talk about

[00:11:46] right now because as I'm saying this a lot of people are out there saying oh yeah well our

[00:11:52] company already does this. We do nutrition lunch and learns and we have this mindfulness app and

[00:11:58] we do all these things and I say that's great. Those are awesome tools in your toolbox.

[00:12:05] How do they fit with the organizational strategy around improving performance and well-being

[00:12:12] and are they actually improving well-being? Now wellness I define as the tactics,

[00:12:23] the actions that you take with the goal of improving well-being and well-being is the state

[00:12:31] of being, the outcome that happens from ideally doing wellness things. And when we look at it

[00:12:39] more closely things like those eFAT portals and the wellness portals and the mental health apps

[00:12:45] they're generally not producing the results that are needed to create bigger picture change in

[00:12:56] individuals and ROI for the company. We know that most of those portals they have success is an 8

[00:13:05] to 10 percent maybe 20 percent in the most extreme cases in terms of engagement in those resources

[00:13:15] across the company. So if only 20 percent of the people max are engaging with it and it's usually

[00:13:22] around 10 percent or even less that means we're still missing the boat in terms of behavioral

[00:13:30] change. And again a great tool in the toolbox that resource to pull at from some time but

[00:13:37] what people forget is that there are other factors that are involved in creating well-being

[00:13:45] that are outside the traditional scope of wellness programs. And that's a really important factor to

[00:13:53] consider and the biggest ones are the impact of leadership, impact of corporate culture.

[00:14:00] And it's a whole other podcast to dive into what corporate culture means but essentially

[00:14:05] it comes out to the daily actions, habits mindset that we approach the day-to-day operations of our

[00:14:15] business that create the employee experience and customer experience to some extent as well.

[00:14:23] But that's what corporate culture is really about and corporate culture has some of the

[00:14:29] biggest impact on well-being out there. You can have all the wellness amenities, check all the boxes

[00:14:37] out there. If your corporate culture sucks it's not going to matter people are still going to be

[00:14:43] stressed out, burnt out, disengaged. So where I'm going to the intermittent fasting here and

[00:14:51] you know again we got back to the wellness side but it's all connected because when we've

[00:14:55] create, when we decide and strategically curate a corporate culture around well-being and performance

[00:15:03] and discussing things on a consistent basis like the foods you're eating, how you're moving,

[00:15:11] setting up a structure in the day where you have healthy options available for food,

[00:15:15] where you have the ability to move your body, to engage in activity perhaps while

[00:15:23] you're even meeting with colleagues and doing work we know that creativity improves,

[00:15:28] we know that focus and resilience and mental health improve when we move our body yet most

[00:15:36] companies are doing the opposite for employees. They're essentially chaining people to a desk

[00:15:43] figuratively hopefully not literally but people are on zoom meetings or teams calls for eight to

[00:15:51] 10 hours a day they have to sit at their computer whether they have the camera off or not they're

[00:15:56] there in the office it's very similar. So what as leaders what what culture in our team never

[00:16:06] mind the bigger organizational culture at this point what culture in our team are we creating

[00:16:11] that allows us to positively impact the people on our team from a mindset, habits, movement and fuel

[00:16:22] standpoint. When we can do that our team will perform at such a higher level we will have

[00:16:30] more satisfaction as a leader the organization benefits again this is simple very straightforward

[00:16:40] the concepts have been there for ages as a personal trainer starting an industry

[00:16:48] C level executives VP level executives were coming to me to learn these skills

[00:16:56] and that's how I got into the fitness industry or sorry that's how I got into the corporate

[00:17:00] wellness industry. I was basically fixing stressed out burnt out broken down beaten up corporate

[00:17:07] executives and helping them get their mindset habits movement and fuel back on track so they

[00:17:14] could see the results they want and perform at their best in life then they would say hey

[00:17:19] why don't you come in and talk to my team about this I this is really cool no one's ever

[00:17:23] presented it this way before and so I started doing seminars and workshops and then these

[00:17:29] same companies would say hey you know what we're thinking about building a gym in our space

[00:17:36] can you run some programs out of there can you tell us what equipment we need and that led me into

[00:17:43] designing and managing fitness centers for large corporate clients and we've had multinational

[00:17:50] companies that we've run facilities for the interesting thing is there was still a gap

[00:17:58] and if we go back to corporate culture and leadership mindset

[00:18:01] that we're running these multi-million dollar facilities for large corporate clients yet we're

[00:18:07] seeing the same call it 10% of people that would use a gym whether the company had one or not

[00:18:15] and then that got us thinking well hey you know what what about the other 90% of employees

[00:18:20] what programs are we running for them so we started doing traditional workplace wellness

[00:18:25] workplace wellness programs we were checking the boxes off hey we're doing nutrition seminars

[00:18:31] hey we're doing wellness challenges we're doing wellness weeks wellness fairs all these things that

[00:18:39] were one-off activities and then we realized there was a gap there we'd have people coming to us

[00:18:47] saying you know what we love the gym we'd love to go but my boss wouldn't look too kindly

[00:18:55] on it if I if I went and went to the gym in the day and I've got kids and with my schedule it's

[00:19:01] hard to make it there before work or after work so I'm just not going I'm not utilizing that resource

[00:19:09] and when we start looking at leadership mindset this distinction between the wellness program

[00:19:15] and then the real work that gets done that's where we see the difference

[00:19:20] and that's what got me into executive coaching and the organizational performance strategy

[00:19:29] consulting with companies and leaders to set up programs that are not just effective but that

[00:19:38] are bought into the company culture that helping leaders shift their mindset to see the opportunities

[00:19:44] that are available from a people performance standpoint and an organizational performance

[00:19:49] standpoint because those two things go hand in hand so to come back full circle to the intermittent

[00:19:56] fasting and the 91 percent higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease we want to look at

[00:20:05] how does this all fit together in your organization just even from your leadership mindset

[00:20:12] perspective how is this resonating have you checked all the boxes but are maybe not

[00:20:20] seeing the results in your organization if so please reach out call me DM me I'd love to connect

[00:20:28] I'd love to hear what's working for your company what's not what your vision is for the future

[00:20:34] and I'd love to help you put that in place tim boris.com just go to the contact page reach

[00:20:40] out there on linkedin you can connect with me on linkedin Tim boris thank you so much we'll

[00:20:47] see you on the next episode that wraps up another episode of the working well podcast

[00:20:57] if you enjoyed the show please rate review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

[00:21:02] now which guests would you like to see featured on the show let me know send me a message through

[00:21:07] linkedin or on the contact page at tim boris.com see you soon