Here's How YOU Can HELP Your Employees SAVE Money and SHED a Few Pounds…

Admittedly, running out during lunch and grabbing something from the nearby fast-food is easier than making a lunch and bringing it to work.
Then, after a hard day working, who wants to go grocery shopping and have to cook dinner?
Well, here are some stats that you can use to help convince your workforce that, not only can they save money by not eating out as much, but they can also shed a few of those unwanted pounds:

• Nearly 40% of employees blow their budgets on stuffing their faces.
• Nearly a quarter of employees (24%) blow their budgets on dining out, according to Principal Financial Group’s annual Financial Well Being Index.

• Eating out more frequently is associated with obesity, higher body fatness, or higher BMI, according to research.
• Women who eat out more often (more than 5 times a week) consume about 290 more calories on average each day than women who eat out less often—that’s at least an extra 1450 calories per week.
• Most restaurants serve two to three times more than the healthy portion sizes recommended by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, says Chef Dave Fouts.

And, what about those much-needed trips to Starbucks on the way to work or at lunch time?
Well, according to Starbucks’ website, one bottle of Starbucks Doubleshot Energy Vanilla Drink is about 210 calories. However, why stop there?

• A Peppermint Hot Chocolate? 300 calories (for a small or “tall” in Starbucks’ parlance).
• Those sweet Caramel Macchiatos? Only 180 calories for a small.

But it’s the holidays, right?
What about that Gingerbread Latte? That’s only 200 calories. A mere pittance when compared to an Eggnog Latte….That’s a whopping 370 calories.
Of course, that does not factor in the steep prices that people pay for the Starbucks “experience.”
Speaking of the holidays, here’s why people feel so lousy after a huge holiday meal:

…a holiday dinner can easily approach or exceed 2,000 calories by itself, especially if you dig into the appetizers before dinner and wash it all down with a couple of glasses of wine. (One estimate put a typical holiday dinner as high as 4,500 calories, but that would be extremely difficult for most stomachs to stomach.)

Now, if the above doesn’t inspire you to talk to your workforce about how they can save money while dropping some pounds, maybe this will:
Obese employees not only spend more of their money, they also spend more of yours.

Overweight and obesity-attributable costs range from $175 per year for overweight male employees to $2485 per year for grade-II obese female employees. The costs of obesity (excluding overweight) at a firm with 1000 employees are estimated to be $285,000 per year, according to this research

Whatever you do (and however you do it), just please don’t call your employees “fat”…

Hat-Tip: This is why Americans are overweight and broke

The Principal Financial Well Being Index by WorkPlaceReport.com