Article as seen in the Burlington Free Press
Dan McLean • Free Press Staff Writer • November 10, 2008

Layoff announcements and massive stock markets drops that hammer retirement savings have become routine, raising anxiety levels among Vermonters. Maintaining a healthy exercise regime and diet are reliable, and often free, methods to reduce stress, local experts say.

“One of the main reason people are physically active is that it releases stress. It gets them out of their head,” said Suzanne Brue, the author of “The 8 Colors of Fitness,” which matches types of exercise with various personality types.

“If you are on a climbing wall, for instance, you have to stay focused. When you think about ‘notching up’ you are not thinking about your 401k,” Brue said.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 8,943.81 Friday. That’s down about 36 percent from its 52-week high of nearly 14,000. The dramatic drop has obliterated retirement plans and stock portfolios.

Exercise, Brue said, helps people break the constant cycle of stress.

Kathy McNames, co-owner of Yoga Vermont in Burlington, was one of the case studies in Brue’s book. McNames prefers to incorporate exercise into what she is already doing. She runs to work, has chosen an exercise field as a career and runs her errands on foot.

“I like to exercise while I’m socializing or working. I like to do two things at once,” she said.

Jean Harvey-Berino, professor and chairwoman of the University of Vermont’s nutrition and food sciences department, teaches a class called “Obesity, Weight Control and Fitness” and was the lead author of the book “The Eating Well Diet.”

“Exercise does a lot of good things for people. It lowers levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and helps people sleep better. Exercise is sort of a cure-all for many of the evils of society,” Harvey-Berino said.

When economic woes and pressures of life begin to build, it can be more difficult to start an exercise routine, she said. In those cases, having a program at work can be quite helpful. Friendly competition between different shifts, departments and levels of management can be a useful way to encourage employees to pay more attention to fitness, she said.

Participation is boosted when employers provide time to exercise during the workday and financial incentives for staying fit, she said.

“The idea with any kind of behavior change is to break down barriers ... to make it as easy as possible. It doesn’t mean people will do it, but it means people will think about doing it,” Harvey-Berino said.

People should plan to get 30 minutes of exercise at least five times a week, she said. That exercise time doesn’t have to be slogging away in a gym, however. It could be as simple as a hearty 15-minute walk to and from work each day. “Walking is sufficient. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. They have to get moving,” she said.

To maintain current weight, Harvey-Berino said, people should consume about 12 times the number of calories as their body weight. For someone weighing 165 pounds, for example, that’s about 2,000 calories per day. To lose weight, fewer calories should be eaten, she said.

Susan Coburn, nutrition and physical activity chief for the Vermont Department of Health, has included workplace wellness as a “priority target area.” The state is working to create healthy eating guidelines that call for cutting down sweets in the workplace and providing more fruits and vegetables.

“You would move away from the doughnuts and the Danish to fresh fruit, muffins and smaller portions,” Coburn said.

She also encouraged employers offer “flex time” to facilitate exercise. Simple steps like putting a bike rack in front of the office also help encourage exercise, she said.

Green Mountain Power Corp. in Colchester offers a free supply of healthy snacks and provides employees with access to a physical therapist once every two weeks who assist them with blossoming health issues. In the past 10 months, the therapist had 225 visits from employees, said Rebecca Towne, the utility’s human resources manager. Three cases of carpal tunnel syndrome were avoided, she said.

The electric utility also offers $150 sporting-goods store gift certificates to employees who improve their health.

IBM Corp., which cut 100 contract employees from its Essex Junction work force this week, also offers a financial incentive to “encourage exercise and a healthy lifestyle,” company spokesman Jeff Couture said. Up to $300 can be added to employee paychecks each year by meeting certain physical activity requirements and completing online health risk assessments.

Brue said work-site wellness is becoming more popular. “Fitter employees are better employees. ... Employers are ready to invest in the health of their employees because it makes sense to do so,” she said.

Brue has applied the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is often used by corporate America to help identify personality types, in order to design an exercise regime that works for a specific person.

Some naturally get “bored pretty easily with exercise” and view gyms as “torture chambers” and need to find a way to work exercise into their daily routine.

Brue, who has been elected president of the Association for Psychological Type International, said there are eight personality types, each identified with a color. Brue is a “purple,” which is defined as “quick of step, outgoing and self-assured.”

Brue said she used to enjoy swimming laps and now does yoga. “I don’t like classes that I have to pay a lot of attention to,” she said.

McNames of Yoga Vermont said has taken the diagnostic test and is a “silver.” Silvers, according to Brue’s book, are “energized by new ideas and possibilities, ready to reset their sights to embrace novel concepts and opportunities.”

“It’s a perfect fit for me,” McNames said.

Brue said she has been researching the book for about six years and published it this past spring through a subsidiary of Amazon.com. She dedicated the book to her husband, Bruegger’s founder Nord Brue.

Suzanne Brue will speak at conference Nov. 20 in South Burlington to employers, personal trainers and others who are interested in learning about how physical activity should be geared for different personalities.

“It helps people get more physical activity in a way that they enjoy and works better with their personality. It’s really just wonderful,” she said.

Contact Dan McLean at 651-4877 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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