Corewell Health program to help achieve New Year’s resolutions

“It’s a self paced virtual program,” health coach Travis Stenger said. “Basically, people sign up, and then I will send them lessons once a week, and they don’t have to do them right away. They could do them on the same week at the very end, but it’s a five week program. So we hope that people do one lesson per week, just they kind of keep up with everything.”

The Healthy Stride program will be completely free for those who sign up. Over the course of the five week, Stenger and nutritionist Bailey Parmelee will go over topics such as fad diets, healthy eating, exercise and stress management, food labels and mindful/emotional eating. Sign ups are scheduled to run through Jan. 14 with the program beginning Jan. 16.

There are many challenges one face’s when trying to achieve the goal of being healthier, with Stenger saying just picking a starting point may be the toughest challenge someone will face.

“Some people feel like they know what they want to do and like to have a plan. They just need some prompting, just some somebody to be there for them,” Stenger said. “Then some people are just kind of in despair a little bit where they they don’t really know anything about anything. I feel like those are maybe the easier people to work with actually just because it’s easy to direct somebody that has no direction.”

Stenger’s goal as a health coach is to give these people an idea of certain goals to aim for on a weekly basis, such as minutes doing an exercise program or having a calorie goal in mind. Stenger said that working on diets and calorie intake is almost as important as exercise.

“Weight loss in general is kind of 80% food related and then 20% exercise related,” Stenger said. “That’s just something that people say but the reason for that is just because with exercise, it takes quite a bit of energy to burn energy, burning calories. Whereas, if people can do things to decrease calories, there’s no energy that’s applied in there.”

To start out over the winter months, there is the obvious challenge of the weather, travel and being outdoors is tricky during the winter months, which may hamper one’s goals to live a healthier lifestyle. Stenger talked about what some way people could be active throughout the winter months.

“I would say it’s very person dependent,” Stenger said. “Some people are very outgoing people, very social. So if somebody is one of those people, I’d say to try to get with a buddy to go out. If you want to join a gym, it’d be a good option for those people, just so they don’t have to go it alone.

“If they’re more of the loner type, people that really mind being around people, then I think that having some kind of a program or some equipment in your house is probably the best way to go.”

For more information on Corewell’s Healthy Stride program, or to sign up, visit their sign up at www.onlineregistrationcenter.com/register/341-7525