The very idea of being a Changemaker is pretty remarkable. I am one of the two co-founders of LoneStart Wellness. Our wellness program started as a grassroots effort to urge "at risk" individuals, family, friends, acquaintances and organizations, to begin to take personal responsibility for their individual health and wellness. We say we are "spreading viral wellness," making wellness contagious. We have now helped organizations around the country begin to create a "culture of wellness" that over time will become a part of their company mission and vision. We want to create the same culture of wellness for our entire population. Big goal, but we believe we can help solve the obesity epidemic with something as elementary as developing our message / program, creating the ability to influence human thought and action. This means behavior change, and we know changing a few behaviors can drive a lot of change.
Of the "places" I feel connected to, the most important is "home," and for me, home means more than simply a physical location. But, as for a physical place, I grew up and went to school in New Orleans and still have family there. The devastation of Katrina has only strengthened my feelings for the city. Driving through areas I frequented in college is a surreal experience, and I can only begin to imagine how lost many residents must still feel. But, there is also a great sense of hope, and a passionate desire for repair and recovery. Actually, writing these words, I can see parallels with our wellness initiative goals.
I want people to "want" to take responsibility for their personal health and wellness. We all want to be well, but when almost 67 percent of us are overweight and 33 percent are obese, it's obvious too many of us are not making sound nutritional choices and are too sedentary. We are overfed but undernourished, yet this is a condition we each have the power to change. We need to create a growth mindset by focusing on behaviors, not outcomes.
And you know, the obesity epidemic, what some call the "war on obesity," is a fight we can win. We can win it because each of us has the "Power of Self," to change, to become an advocate for the program / strategy that helped us change, and to spread our success to family, friends, our communities and into the world. We can transform the world, each of us, by making wellness viral.
With the LoneStart Wellness Initiative, we say we are promoting lifestyle changes that change lives. I have a masters from Tulane University's School of Allied Health, and my husband, Jay (LoneStart co-founder) has a masters from Tulane in Social Psychology. We started LoneStart in 2005, on our own and have self-financed it to date. The program utilizes a behavior-based approach to wellness based on established principles of social psychophysiology. As an employee wellness / workplace wellness program, we offer what we call the 63-Day Team Esteem Challenge, which utilizes the team concept, builds morale and creates a goal-oriented support system. The program also supports individual participants, through which we do our best to convey the sense that they are part of something special and important. Thus our name, LoneStartNow. Each of us alone, must make a start, and we must do it now.
