The Hungry Medic Health Plan
TheHungryMedic
Posts: 6 Member
The Hungry Medic Health Plan
Welcome to The Hungry Medic Health Plan. The intent of this health plan is to reach out to the EMS community and provide help with weight loss and healthy habits in the workplace. In EMS we are constantly on the move during our shorter shifts and always at risk of a call tearing us away from post during our longer shifts. EMS has an extremely high ratio of providers who are overweight and practice unhealthy habits. For some of us its because we haven’t gotten on the wagon, for others we simply don’t know the best ways to be healthy. The idea of this health plan is not to be a diet. It is to change not only what and how we eat, but how we look at food while we are at work. Following are tools, tips, and tricks to help you eat better and get healthy when you are in your rig. At this time, this is in its beginning change. I hope to change and improve it as I learn more and am able to better refine it for your use. One of the end goals is to create a system that will not only work for you as an individual, but that you can take to your superiors to create a low/no cost program that will eventually help your entire agency. To submit your thoughts or ideas you can contact me on Facebook at WWW.Facebook.com/TheHungryMedic or email me at GGerster@code3coffee.com.
What you eat:
Needless to say, the most important part of any attempt at weight loss or improving your health is what you eat. Your food is your intake of energy and when you take more in then you use you gain weight. The goal here is to know what you are eating and to change it for the better, at work and at home.
The first step is realizing exactly what you are eating. Yeah, you know you have to stop for fast food constantly and you usually order the Number 3. But what exactly does that include? How often in a shift are you doing it? How many times a day? A week? A year? Well one thing that you should do is to jot down your meals. I’m sure you have heard of this already, called tracking or calorie counting. It sounds tedious and when done certain ways it is. But done right it is a tool that has been proven to show significant success. To do this and be able to stay with it I recommend that you use a digital tool. Most of us have smart phones these day and those few of us who don’t have access to the internet.
There are many Apps available that can help you. The one that I recommend is MyFitnessPal. It has a very successful App for both iPhone and Android. Its database is supported by the community and monitored for accuracy. You can find almost any food item and log it with extreme ease, which is great when you only have a few seconds between calls. Oh! Did I mention that its Free?
Tracking your food helps you on a couple different fronts. First, it helps you set a goal for how much weight you want to lose and sets a reasonable daily calorie goal to help you reach it at different paces. Second, it makes you aware of exactly what you are eating throughout the day/week. When you see how fast those calories add up with what you are choosing to eat, you are naturally and subtly encouraged to steer yourself towards better options. It also helps you track your weight loss in a simple and easy manner so you can watch your results as time passes. There are also other tools, such as recipe builders and articles, to help you along the way.
The other important part of eating well is a double issue. Along with knowing what you eat, your choices and portions are also very important. You make over 100 choices a day concerning food. Coke or Pepsi? Medium or large? Should I eat now or later? There are many choices that come up during the day that can have a huge impact on your overall health. Making small, healthy changes can lead to weight loss, more energy, and significant reduction in your risks for serious health problems. I know that a lot of us drink a fair amount of fountain drinks on shift. The highest source of caloric intake in the US is from beverages. A simple switch from regular to diet can result in a loss of up to 10lbs and a significant increase in energy. Want to do better than that? Switch to water and Ice Tea to see a greater weight loss with even more energy!
Its also well known that if it is on your plate you are more likely to eat it, even if you are already full. So go medium or small instead of large. Still want the large drink, you say? Ask for it. You can change the size of individual items.
Order chicken when you can. It is higher in protein and will fill you up longer. It also has less calories, fat, and is usually less sauced.
Remove the sauces! A large amount of fat and calories comes from the sauces, specifically mayo. Taking this off completely or substituting for a “better” sauce can save you a lot in the long run.
Check all of your side options. Smaller sizes are often available and a large number of restaurants now offer healthier options. For example, a baked potato at Wendy’s is much better then fries. It taste better too.
The best thing to do is to bring your own food. What you make at home is almost always better for you then anything you can buy. It also gives you more control over your meal and what goes into it. Preplanning your meals is the the greatest way to eat healthier to ensure a healthy meal that you won’t miss.
Activity
Otherwise known as the dreaded Exercise! Much like knowing what you eat, being active is an important part of losing weight and becoming healthier. If you have it in you to join a gym and attend regularly, thats great! Create a schedule and consult with a trainer to establish an appropriate regimen. Remember that cardio is important in EMS for those times when we are running around our scenes and doing the less strenuous activities. Lifting weights is great, but you want to focus on endurance more than just increasing how much you can lift. Being able to lift that 400lb patient does you no good if you can’t maintain the lift down the stairs.
A good number of us though, myself included, don’t have the time, money, or the gumption to go to the gym. And thats OK! Its not the goal here to join a gym, just to be more active. Simple ways to do this are all around us. Walking or doing light exercise for 30 minutes a day alone can have a significant impact on your health. If your are working a short shift (12,10,8) you can do things like parking in the far stall at the ER so you have to walk a little farther. Walking around your unit at post can get you some activity. Standing instead of sitting during patient turnover can also help burn calories, because you use more muscles for posture when standing.
When on a long shift (24) it is a little easier to be active. Walking around the post or walking across the street to the store instead of driving provides some activity. If you are at a post where you get to sit around long enough to watch a tv show provides a great opportunity. Using a resistance band while sitting in the recliner or walking around the room once every commercial break is an easy and unobtrusive way to get in a little activity.
Another tactic you can take to encourage yourself to move around a little bit more is to wear a personal activity tracker. Again, you can find a lot of these as free Apps on your phones, but I find them to be highly inaccurate. One of the things I recommend, and unfortunately this is one that cost a bit, is to purchase a dedicated activity tracker. There are cheaper options, like basic pedometers, but I personally recommend FitBit. It is an accurate tracker with a long lasting battery and App/internet integration. The fact that it syncs and displays information for you to easily read and interpret makes you more likely to use it and to be inspired by it. It also has the benefit of syncing with many other apps (including MyFitnessPal) to help with tracking and gaining more calories to eat.
One website that it syncs with is Earndit. This is great because this website rewards you for your activity. The more you move around the more points you earn. The more points the more rewards. This website also provides challenges and other incentive to get active. And once again, its Free!
When it comes to exercising encouragement and feelings of accomplishment is important. Apps like Runkeeper, Runtastic, and Endmodo will give you cues, map your course, and help you keep track of how you are doing. Many of these are free and those that aren’t are typically inexpensive.
Weight
When it comes to your weight, there are some ways to approach it that can help you. When you decide to begin your lifestyle change and start eating well and working towards you should find and choose a scale that you will use as your main weigh in station. This is important because different scales can read different numbers depending on calibration and technology, so you want to use the same one so you can accurately track your weight. When you start your journey you will want to weigh yourself and write down your starting weight. For personal motivation I also recommend taking a “Before” photo in simple clothes, in an easily reproducible pose and location.
Next you should set a reasonable goal. A recommended starting goal is 10 percent of your starting weight. The reasoning behind this is that if you set a goal that is to far away you can get discouraged when you don’t see the results you hoped for, but if you set a goal that is closer and easier (but not too easy) to attain you feel better about yourself when you attain it. Remember, you can always set a new goal when you reach your current one.
Once you have done this you will want to choose a day of the week. This will be the day that you weigh in to check your progress towards your goal. It is recommended that you weigh in the morning after you wake up and use the restroom, but before you eat. This will give you the best representation of how you are doing since you will have less fluid in your system.
Support
When working towards eating better, exercise, and generally working to become healthy it has been shown that people who work towards bettering themselves with friends and other people are more likely to stick with it and typically achieve a 30 percent higher success rate. If you can try to get your partner and your family to participate with you, even if they don’t need to lose weight. Having them following the same guidelines will reduce the external temptations around you and make it easier to stay with it.
Many of the Apps and programs available out there, specifically my primary recommendations, have groups and forums. If you can find people locally in your family, friends, or coworkers then start a group so that you can interact with each other in a private place. This will allow you to share ideas and encouragement, support, and recipes with each other. It also helps avoid any criticism from people who like to be mean or just don’t get it. A great, and popular, place for people to get together is Facebook. You can create a page for your group or join The Hungry Medic for a broader group.
If you can get enough people in the same area to join you in your journey to health then another approach to this is to establish a scheduled meeting. This is especially effective if you can get a large number of coworkers involved with company support. I would recommend a meeting every 1 to 2 weeks with a confidential weigh in (always using the same scale for continuity). Assign someone to act as the leader of the meeting in advance and choose a topic to discuss. Topics can be simple and are easy to find by searching health magazines and sites. This is a great place to find support and share ideas with one another. It also provides a sense of accountability to your goal and helps you to stay the course.
Conclusion
Using the tools and tips provided here will hopefully provide the structure needed to start towards a healthier lifestyle. These are simple things that all of us can do at home and while working on a rig. Starting with the Apps that I recommended requires very little time and effort so it should be an easy plan to follow while at work. Beginning with simple changes in your diet and awareness is the first step in a major change in your life for the better. By tracking your food and becoming aware you will begin to make better choices with minimal effort. Combine this with making small adjustments to the size of your meals and a little more activity will make it easier to shift yourself to a much better lifestyle. Speaking personally, I have lost almost 30lbs doing nothing more than changing what I order from fast food and drinking a little less soda. Being healthy is not an easy road, but it doesn’t have to be difficult either. I hope you join me on the journey to health.
And most important of all, mindset matters. Remember:
Its not a diet, its a change of lifestyle.
Welcome to The Hungry Medic Health Plan. The intent of this health plan is to reach out to the EMS community and provide help with weight loss and healthy habits in the workplace. In EMS we are constantly on the move during our shorter shifts and always at risk of a call tearing us away from post during our longer shifts. EMS has an extremely high ratio of providers who are overweight and practice unhealthy habits. For some of us its because we haven’t gotten on the wagon, for others we simply don’t know the best ways to be healthy. The idea of this health plan is not to be a diet. It is to change not only what and how we eat, but how we look at food while we are at work. Following are tools, tips, and tricks to help you eat better and get healthy when you are in your rig. At this time, this is in its beginning change. I hope to change and improve it as I learn more and am able to better refine it for your use. One of the end goals is to create a system that will not only work for you as an individual, but that you can take to your superiors to create a low/no cost program that will eventually help your entire agency. To submit your thoughts or ideas you can contact me on Facebook at WWW.Facebook.com/TheHungryMedic or email me at GGerster@code3coffee.com.
What you eat:
Needless to say, the most important part of any attempt at weight loss or improving your health is what you eat. Your food is your intake of energy and when you take more in then you use you gain weight. The goal here is to know what you are eating and to change it for the better, at work and at home.
The first step is realizing exactly what you are eating. Yeah, you know you have to stop for fast food constantly and you usually order the Number 3. But what exactly does that include? How often in a shift are you doing it? How many times a day? A week? A year? Well one thing that you should do is to jot down your meals. I’m sure you have heard of this already, called tracking or calorie counting. It sounds tedious and when done certain ways it is. But done right it is a tool that has been proven to show significant success. To do this and be able to stay with it I recommend that you use a digital tool. Most of us have smart phones these day and those few of us who don’t have access to the internet.
There are many Apps available that can help you. The one that I recommend is MyFitnessPal. It has a very successful App for both iPhone and Android. Its database is supported by the community and monitored for accuracy. You can find almost any food item and log it with extreme ease, which is great when you only have a few seconds between calls. Oh! Did I mention that its Free?
Tracking your food helps you on a couple different fronts. First, it helps you set a goal for how much weight you want to lose and sets a reasonable daily calorie goal to help you reach it at different paces. Second, it makes you aware of exactly what you are eating throughout the day/week. When you see how fast those calories add up with what you are choosing to eat, you are naturally and subtly encouraged to steer yourself towards better options. It also helps you track your weight loss in a simple and easy manner so you can watch your results as time passes. There are also other tools, such as recipe builders and articles, to help you along the way.
The other important part of eating well is a double issue. Along with knowing what you eat, your choices and portions are also very important. You make over 100 choices a day concerning food. Coke or Pepsi? Medium or large? Should I eat now or later? There are many choices that come up during the day that can have a huge impact on your overall health. Making small, healthy changes can lead to weight loss, more energy, and significant reduction in your risks for serious health problems. I know that a lot of us drink a fair amount of fountain drinks on shift. The highest source of caloric intake in the US is from beverages. A simple switch from regular to diet can result in a loss of up to 10lbs and a significant increase in energy. Want to do better than that? Switch to water and Ice Tea to see a greater weight loss with even more energy!
Its also well known that if it is on your plate you are more likely to eat it, even if you are already full. So go medium or small instead of large. Still want the large drink, you say? Ask for it. You can change the size of individual items.
Order chicken when you can. It is higher in protein and will fill you up longer. It also has less calories, fat, and is usually less sauced.
Remove the sauces! A large amount of fat and calories comes from the sauces, specifically mayo. Taking this off completely or substituting for a “better” sauce can save you a lot in the long run.
Check all of your side options. Smaller sizes are often available and a large number of restaurants now offer healthier options. For example, a baked potato at Wendy’s is much better then fries. It taste better too.
The best thing to do is to bring your own food. What you make at home is almost always better for you then anything you can buy. It also gives you more control over your meal and what goes into it. Preplanning your meals is the the greatest way to eat healthier to ensure a healthy meal that you won’t miss.
Activity
Otherwise known as the dreaded Exercise! Much like knowing what you eat, being active is an important part of losing weight and becoming healthier. If you have it in you to join a gym and attend regularly, thats great! Create a schedule and consult with a trainer to establish an appropriate regimen. Remember that cardio is important in EMS for those times when we are running around our scenes and doing the less strenuous activities. Lifting weights is great, but you want to focus on endurance more than just increasing how much you can lift. Being able to lift that 400lb patient does you no good if you can’t maintain the lift down the stairs.
A good number of us though, myself included, don’t have the time, money, or the gumption to go to the gym. And thats OK! Its not the goal here to join a gym, just to be more active. Simple ways to do this are all around us. Walking or doing light exercise for 30 minutes a day alone can have a significant impact on your health. If your are working a short shift (12,10,8) you can do things like parking in the far stall at the ER so you have to walk a little farther. Walking around your unit at post can get you some activity. Standing instead of sitting during patient turnover can also help burn calories, because you use more muscles for posture when standing.
When on a long shift (24) it is a little easier to be active. Walking around the post or walking across the street to the store instead of driving provides some activity. If you are at a post where you get to sit around long enough to watch a tv show provides a great opportunity. Using a resistance band while sitting in the recliner or walking around the room once every commercial break is an easy and unobtrusive way to get in a little activity.
Another tactic you can take to encourage yourself to move around a little bit more is to wear a personal activity tracker. Again, you can find a lot of these as free Apps on your phones, but I find them to be highly inaccurate. One of the things I recommend, and unfortunately this is one that cost a bit, is to purchase a dedicated activity tracker. There are cheaper options, like basic pedometers, but I personally recommend FitBit. It is an accurate tracker with a long lasting battery and App/internet integration. The fact that it syncs and displays information for you to easily read and interpret makes you more likely to use it and to be inspired by it. It also has the benefit of syncing with many other apps (including MyFitnessPal) to help with tracking and gaining more calories to eat.
One website that it syncs with is Earndit. This is great because this website rewards you for your activity. The more you move around the more points you earn. The more points the more rewards. This website also provides challenges and other incentive to get active. And once again, its Free!
When it comes to exercising encouragement and feelings of accomplishment is important. Apps like Runkeeper, Runtastic, and Endmodo will give you cues, map your course, and help you keep track of how you are doing. Many of these are free and those that aren’t are typically inexpensive.
Weight
When it comes to your weight, there are some ways to approach it that can help you. When you decide to begin your lifestyle change and start eating well and working towards you should find and choose a scale that you will use as your main weigh in station. This is important because different scales can read different numbers depending on calibration and technology, so you want to use the same one so you can accurately track your weight. When you start your journey you will want to weigh yourself and write down your starting weight. For personal motivation I also recommend taking a “Before” photo in simple clothes, in an easily reproducible pose and location.
Next you should set a reasonable goal. A recommended starting goal is 10 percent of your starting weight. The reasoning behind this is that if you set a goal that is to far away you can get discouraged when you don’t see the results you hoped for, but if you set a goal that is closer and easier (but not too easy) to attain you feel better about yourself when you attain it. Remember, you can always set a new goal when you reach your current one.
Once you have done this you will want to choose a day of the week. This will be the day that you weigh in to check your progress towards your goal. It is recommended that you weigh in the morning after you wake up and use the restroom, but before you eat. This will give you the best representation of how you are doing since you will have less fluid in your system.
Support
When working towards eating better, exercise, and generally working to become healthy it has been shown that people who work towards bettering themselves with friends and other people are more likely to stick with it and typically achieve a 30 percent higher success rate. If you can try to get your partner and your family to participate with you, even if they don’t need to lose weight. Having them following the same guidelines will reduce the external temptations around you and make it easier to stay with it.
Many of the Apps and programs available out there, specifically my primary recommendations, have groups and forums. If you can find people locally in your family, friends, or coworkers then start a group so that you can interact with each other in a private place. This will allow you to share ideas and encouragement, support, and recipes with each other. It also helps avoid any criticism from people who like to be mean or just don’t get it. A great, and popular, place for people to get together is Facebook. You can create a page for your group or join The Hungry Medic for a broader group.
If you can get enough people in the same area to join you in your journey to health then another approach to this is to establish a scheduled meeting. This is especially effective if you can get a large number of coworkers involved with company support. I would recommend a meeting every 1 to 2 weeks with a confidential weigh in (always using the same scale for continuity). Assign someone to act as the leader of the meeting in advance and choose a topic to discuss. Topics can be simple and are easy to find by searching health magazines and sites. This is a great place to find support and share ideas with one another. It also provides a sense of accountability to your goal and helps you to stay the course.
Conclusion
Using the tools and tips provided here will hopefully provide the structure needed to start towards a healthier lifestyle. These are simple things that all of us can do at home and while working on a rig. Starting with the Apps that I recommended requires very little time and effort so it should be an easy plan to follow while at work. Beginning with simple changes in your diet and awareness is the first step in a major change in your life for the better. By tracking your food and becoming aware you will begin to make better choices with minimal effort. Combine this with making small adjustments to the size of your meals and a little more activity will make it easier to shift yourself to a much better lifestyle. Speaking personally, I have lost almost 30lbs doing nothing more than changing what I order from fast food and drinking a little less soda. Being healthy is not an easy road, but it doesn’t have to be difficult either. I hope you join me on the journey to health.
And most important of all, mindset matters. Remember:
Its not a diet, its a change of lifestyle.
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