All you need is a good pair of shoes and a place to walk. more

A new training center demonstrates SAHA's improvement goals. more

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Some SAHA Don'ts and Dos

Holding on to old attitudes is a sure-fire way to stifle your success.

By Henry A. Alvarez III
SAHA President and CEO

      In previous columns, I’ve discussed those things we must do to be successful. I’ve talked about our core values, our goals and our beliefs as an organization. Between me, your supervisor, your division chief and your vice president, you should know exactly what you must do to achieve and even surpass your goals with SAHA.

      Here’s my list of "Don’ts," followed by the "Dos."

• Don't: Fail to learn: Instead, you should ask questions, take the offered training courses, and talk to your supervisor about what you can do to improve your performance here. Make it your job to learn.
  
  
• Don't: Be disrespectful to our customers: Customer service is a cornerstone to everything we do, after all, we’re providing a public service. Treat your customer the way you would like to be treated – with dignity and respect. Also, don’t you get frustrated when you leave a message for someone to return your phone call but they never do? Don’t be that person. Return phone calls promptly. That, too, is a sign of respect and good customer service. At SAHA, we’re in the business of helping customers resolve their problems.
  
  
• Don't: Be inflexible: Instead, whenever your supervisor wants to do something new or different, be open to new ideas. In fact, I’ll go a step further: contribute new ideas.  Although some may say, “But we’ve never done it that way,” or “We’ve always done it this way,” that doesn’t mean there isn’t a little wiggle room to try something different -- especially if it can be done quicker, smarter or more efficiently to save taxpayers’ dollars. Adopt a new way of thinking about solving old problems, and don’t be afraid to fail. Learn from your mistakes and move on. Future success stems from past mistakes.  Thomas Edison liked to say, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
  
  
• Don't: Make excuses: Successful employees don’t make excuses for mistakes. In a bigger picture, non-profit organizations around the world, including SAHA, are being scrutinized for being accountable for their actions. Accountability, at its root, means: “the willingness to stand up and be counted -- as part of a process, activity or game.” It’s not something you’re held to or is done to you.  It’s a word reflecting personal choice, like truth and honesty.  In other words, be accountable for your decisions and actions, both good and bad. It’s easy to stand up and get applauded for good decisions, but much more difficult to be accountable for the latter.
  
  
• Don't: Ignore rules: Successful employees make it a point to know our rules and policies. They stop at stop signs and don’t “roll past them slowly.” They follow the work schedules and don’t treat them like a request for participation. 

If you want to have a long, fruitful career with SAHA, you’d do well to learn all you can about our programs, bend over backward to take care of your customers, enthusiastically support innovation and new ideas, learn from your mistakes and follow the rules we’ve established. There’s always a place at SAHA for people who want to DO the right thing.

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Walk Off The Weight

All you need is a good pair of shoes and a place to walk.

By Martica Heaner, M.A., M.Ed.,
MSN Health & Fitness
      
      Q. I need to lose about 30 pounds and walking is the only activity that I can stick with. How many calories can I burn and can I really lose weight just by walking?
      
      A. Walking is an easy way to burn extra calories to lose weight and decrease body fat.   How many calories you burn depends on how hard and fast you walk, as well as how much you weigh. It is impossible to say exactly how many calories you’ll burn in 30-minute walk without your being measured in an exercise physiology lab. But you can get a good estimate by looking at Web sites that calculate energy expenditure based on weight.

      For example, MSN Health & Fitness has a Web calculator that tells you roughly how many calories you’ll burn during different activities. During a 30-minute walk, say, a 140-pound person burns around 127 calories walking at a pace of 4 miles per hour (or a 15-minute mile) and about 191 hiking on trails. A 200-pound person will burn around 182 calories walking for 30 minutes at 4 miles per hour, and about 273 hiking for the same period.
      
      Research shows that a person needs to burn around 2,000 to 3,000 calories from physical activity every week to control body weight. That works out to be about 60 to 90 minutes per day. Shorter amounts, such as 30 minutes of walking, will improve your health, but are unlikely to lead to significant decreases in body fat or weight loss in a relatively short period of time.      
      If 60 to 90 minutes a day sounds like a lot of exercise, it is. But you can spread it out: little 15-minute bouts of walking throughout your day count, too. If you are regularly active and take the stairs instead of the escalator or pick a farther spot in the parking lot, for example, you can easily accumulate an hour of more of low- to moderate-intensity activity. Of course, if most of your activity involves sitting on a couch or in front of your computer, unless you are making a concerted effort to get up and move every hour, it may be hard to fit in a full 90 minutes per day.
      Theoretically, 3,500 calories equals 1 pound of fat. So if you walk around 60 minutes per day, you can lose 30 pounds in about seven months. You can speed up the weight loss by making small calorie reductions in your diet (for example, saying “no” to regular desserts or using skim instead of whole milk).

      If you are not yet fit enough to do a lot of exercise, take it one step at a time. Start with 10-minute sessions and add a few minutes per week.
      Most important, wrap your mind around the idea that you need to be active for the rest of your life. Walking may melt off the weight you want to lose now, but if you stop moving once that extra heft’s gone, it’ll soon be back. Plus remember that every time you make your body move, you’re burning more fat and fine-tuning from the inside.

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Getting Better Through Training

A new training center demonstrates SAHA's improvement goals.