Use smart tools to support your physical well-being
When life gets busy, often one of the first aspects that can fall to the wayside is our physical well-being -- this includes things like exercise, nutrition, and the ability to make positive lifestyle choices.
Focusing on our physical well-being is a worthwhile endeavour. While there is no easy way to restart old healthy habits or create new ones, there are some simple and convenient tools available to you at VIU that will help youfeel better and support your physical wellness.
Let’s Get Physical
Optimize your physical health with the support of Manulife Vitality for Group Benefits – a personalized health and wellness program that rewards you for making healthy choices.
Available through your group benefits plan, the Vitality app helps you recognize your current health state and lifestyle habits, and then rewards you for taking care of yourself and implementing healthy lifestyle choices. Vitality offers you the tools and motivation you need to reach your personal health and wellness goals, and you earn Vitality Points while doing it. You even get rewarded for things you may already be doing like walking your dog, getting a flu shot, or working out.
When you reach your weekly Active Rewards target, you collect Vitality Points you can spend at places like Chapters/Indigo, Hudson’s Bay, and Tim Hortons. Hit Silver status and receive 40% discount off a Garmin smartwatch. *Vitality is available to all VIU employees with extended health benefits.
Receiving rewards takes very little time and they build continuously.
"After Brenda McKay (Director, Human Resources) told me how easy it is to accumulate points, I signed up. After filling out some of the questionnaires, I had earned a $10 gift card to Indigo and a 40 percent off coupon from Garmin," said Aly Winks, Internal Communications Specialist. "These are rewards I can actually use, and support my book-buying habit! It's also fun to track my activity each day and see how I'm doing and how my points are increasing."
Put me in, Coach!
Do you ever feel like you know what lifestyle habits you want to adjust, but you’re not sure how to go about it? Like using a map to find a route that gets you where you want to go, a lifestyle coach can help you create a plan to adjust your lifestyle habits and set your course for a healthier lifestyle.
Manulife group benefits offers lifestyle health coaching. Connect with a healthy lifestyle coach through the Lifestyle program, to set your course for developing better coping strategies, encouraging active living, improving sleep, understanding good nutrition, or helping with smoking cessation. Visit the Lifestyle webpage for full details or contact the service by calling 1-855-584-4004 or sending an email to mycoach@manulife.ca
Now You’re Cooking
When all that healthy activity or your busy lifestyle leaves you too tired to cook a good meal, it’s easy to turn to packaged meal services or even take-out options. Instead, consider Mealime, the cooking efficiency app made available through HR. Mealime allows you to find recipes according to what’s in your pantry, creates shopping lists for recipes you want to make, and helps you explore new flavours through healthy cooking options. Sign up for Mealime Pro, available to all VIU employees for $1.80/month – a 40% discount. Great flavour awaits!
It has made healthy meal planning easier for Gillian Robinson, Director, Strategic Communications.
“My family has been using Mealime for meal-planning since last summer and it is a huge help in getting healthy and tasty meals on the table. We tried meal-prep delivery services, but they are expensive and were not always reliable when it came to delivery. Each week I use the Mealime app to select which meals we want to make, create our “meal plan” and Mealime automatically generates a grocery list. I pull up my grocery store app, order what we need, and we are set for the week. Each meal has simple instructions which are not overly time-consuming to prepare. The meals are tasty and fresh and the app has a large variety of recipes to choose from. Even my teen and pre-teen have described them as “really good”(!). Using Mealime has also allowed us to eliminate food waste, processed foods and cut down on our grocery bills. I highly recommend,” she said.
Improving physical well-being is an endeavour well worth the effort. Visit the HR webpages for other physical well-being supports. Questions about any of the above? Email Benefits@viu.ca.
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