A Gallup study quantifies one of the compelling challenges facing all business: Seven out of ten workers are actively disengaged, costing $450-$550 billion annually in healthcare expense and lost productivity.
Virtually all large companies and many smaller enterprises are attacking the problem through lifestyle and wellness programs, an acknowledgment that the best route to engaged employees is to help them be healthy and engaged people in all phases of life.
Many of these efforts lie in four areas: smoking cessation, stress managment, exercise, and healthier eating. Success in any of them is unquestionably a forward step, but at best, such advances make people less unwell, rather than more sustainably healthy.
Not only is moving toward a positive more sustainable than straining to stamp out a bad habit, but those who fail to consider the whole — not only the unhealthy behavior but why it was being used — are prone to sliding back, or perhaps substituting a different bad habit. If you know anyone who, say, quit smoking and gained weight, you're familiar with the phenomenon.
So is Michael Prager. He fought epic battles against overweight, having lost more than 500 pounds altogether, but when he focused only on his nutritional habits, he always put back every pound he's lost, and then some. Then he began looking at the totality of his experience, and is maintaining a 155-pound loss for almost a quarter century.
In front of groups, Prager mixes information with inspiration to illustrate not only what leads to sustainable change but to its robust, unexpected bonuses. Then he follows up with wellness and lifestyle coaching for interested individuals and small groups to effect changes they want in their own lives.