UNM is trying to keep employees healthy by helping them maintain their weight over the holiday season.
Mary Jo Quintana, director of the Employee Health Promotion Program, said 41 employees are enrolled in "Maintain Don't Gain" this year, compared to 35 in 2007.
UNM employees' dependents can also participate in the program if they are older than 18, Quintana said.
"It's actually been done in quite a few other work-site programs throughout the country," she said. "The latest research indicates that you only gain one to two pounds (during the holiday season). The problem is that those pounds tend to stick with you over the year."
UNM employee Karin Retskin enrolled in the 8-week course last year and said the program was so successful she decided to do it again this year.
"I used the 'Maintain Don't Gain' as a tool to help me be successful in staying healthy," Retskin said, "which includes keeping my weight down."
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The course began Nov. 10 with a weigh-in, but Quintana said employees might still be able to participate in the program's educational activities on nutrition, exercise and stress management.
"What we're trying to do is to get people to focus on maintaining their weight," Quintana said. "Although most people do end up losing."
Quintana said the participants meet Tuesdays at the Alumni Clock to take a walk, and on Thursdays they meet in the Health Sciences Center plaza.
"We are trying to make it as convenient as possible," she said. "We also have twice a week where we are offering 30-minute fitness classes that we call 'Fresh-Air Fitness,'" Quintana said. "It's a good way to get in your cardiovascular and your strength training at the same time and then go back to work invigorated for the rest of the day."
Retskin said the program gave her the information she needed to maintain her weight. "Knowing that I was participating in an adjunct program to Weight Watchers, I entered into a contract with myself to be as successful as I could and not gain any weight over winter break," she said. "I actually lost weight over winter break."
Quintana said last year was a success because 80 percent of participants lost weight.
Shelley Rael, a senior clinical nutritionist at UNM, teaches two nutrition classes for the program.
"One of them is 'Tips for Holiday Eating,' so, helping people on strategies with tips for how to approach the holidays," she said. "But I tell people to still enjoy the holidays."
Rael also teaches a class called "I've Gained, Now What?" The course focuses on what steps people should take when they have gained weight, she said.
"(It tells people) how not to go to a crash diet or do some ridiculous fasting but how to go through strategies on how to lose weight appropriately," she said
Rael said people make major errors during the holidays that cause weight gain, like overeating everyday foods as well as seasonal dishes.
"The other big thing is alcohol. It's loaded with calories, so balance the alcohol with water and other non-calorie beverages," she said. "For every alcoholic drink you have, have water as well, because calories can really add up in alcoholic drinks."
Quintana said a lot of employees at UNM are already healthy and that the program is trying to keep them that way.
"Statistics show that 60 percent of these healthy people are going to end up getting risk factors the following year and end up in an unhealthy population," she said. "So our goal is to keep our healthy people healthy."
