HomeOPINIONBe Healthy, I’ll Pay You

Be Healthy, I’ll Pay You

By Jonas Miller

Staff Writer

The first time I had a Clif bar, I was with my dad on our way to his house, which at the time was in Cape Cod. I didn’t usually get snacks when I was with him since he has always been sort of a health nut.

“Here, you want a snack? Try this, you’ll love it,” he said with a tone I should’ve known to be misleading. Let me tell you that the first time I ever had a Clif bar, was also the last time. Seriously, it was, as Jimmy Fallon might put it, EW! To this day, my dad knows none of this, and I suppose, if he ever handed me another treat he thought was delicious, I would throw it off of a…well you get the point.

I tell you this story because Clif bars have been in the news recently, and unfortunately it’s NOT because they finally made a flavor that doesn’t taste like cardboard and depression.

Clif bar CEO, Kevin Cleary, has decided to start paying all of his employees to work out for just two and half hours a week.

Imagine going to work every day, and instead of a lunch bell, motivational “You can do it!” music blared through the loudspeakers. It’s not time to eat; it’s time to work out! Woo hoo!

I’ll admit, this excites me, being the exercise junkie that I am.  I’m in the gym every day, unless my schedule prevents it. Some days I’m outside of the fitness center before it’s even open (aka 5:45 am.) Working out is my favorite thing in the entire world, so naturally I’m jealous of anyone who gets paid to do it.

My one issue with this whole deal is that the workers are only working out for two and a half hours a week. If you are going to promote exercising and healthy living, I think you should set the bar a little higher.  Challenge your employees, instead of bribing them, which is what Cleary

seems to be doing.

I believe that exercise is very important, not just for the sake of staying healthy, but to just stay sane. Exercising is the best stress reliever I’ve come across in my 19 short years on this earth. Forget yoga or meditating or the completely ridiculous idea of aromatherapy.

Absolutely nothing compares to working your body to the point where you want nothing but to lie down and never get up. When the sweat is literally dripping off of your nose and your breathing is heavy, that is when you hear your brain, and your body, begin to say thank you. Thank you for pushing us to our limits, they’ll say to you.

Now, when you wake up the next morning and they’re cursing you asking “Why?? Why would you do this to us?” that just means you did a good job the day before, so keep up the good work.

One thing that generally steers a person away from the gym is the fear that someone will make fun of you, because you are not in the best shape. Coming from someone who has had that fear before, don’t worry about it. The gym is where you better yourself; everyone starts somewhere. Nobody is born with the ability to hold 200 pounds over their head, and if they do, they belong in a comic book with an ‘S’ on their chest, not in the gym.

Another thing: you are never “too busy” to exercise, never. Kevin Cleary is the CEO of Clif, meaning he is pretty much in charge of everything that has the name Clif on it. He finds time to exercise, so why can’t you? In his interview with ABC News, Cleary says he sits down every Sunday and plans his week out, exercise-wise. “I carve out the time: when can I get rides in, when can I get runs in, then I plan it right then,” Cleary said. He has excel sheets with his “plans” going all the way back to 1999.

Cleary certainly has the right idea in pushing a healthy lifestyle on his employees. Even if they only work out for two and half hours a week, that’s better than zero. “Something is better than nothing” is the mentality I always keep in the back of my mind. Even if you can only do something once, that’s 100 percent better than if you hadn’t done it at all. So keep your head up, remember that failure is always an option, and be healthy, damn it. You only get one body, so treat it right.

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