A healthy body helps cultivate a healthy mind, and that’s why we’re passionate about keeping healthy at work. After all it’s where you spend a huge chunk of your time.
What if you could also have some expert advice on hand in the workplace? At Starttech Ventures, we are delighted to announce we’re doing just that, through a great new partnership with clinical dietitian Dimitris Petsios. More on him and his excellent service, dia-trofis.gr later.
As we always like to stress, we value wellness above all things as part of our working culture. And, we try to promote our ecosystem’s well-being “way of working” in many ways. With language courses, on-site fitness classes, remote endurance training, open library, and other activities, we aim to offer everyone personal development, as standard.
Keeping healthy at work starts from within
What does keeping healthy mean then? Everybody’s definition of it may be different. In broad terms, though, we can safely say it means eating well, getting enough (or some at least) exercise, and generally looking after yourself.
And we had announced a while back that we were gearing up for a partnership with Dimitris. Some members of our portfolio companies had already begun with some nutrition sessions. Now we are expanding our cooperation.
A few words about Dimitris and dia-trofis.gr
Dimitris Petsios is head of dia-trofis.gr, a clinical dietitians network that aims to change people’s eating and living habits. He and his team follow a cognitive behavioral treatment in order to support their patients in adopting a healthier way of life.
They offer nutritional and wellness counseling services. They also provide health intervention and prevention programs for companies (nutritional and wellness counseling services). And they focus on a full-on, holistic approach that helps people become more aware of adopted nutritional behaviors.
He and his partners visit our workspace at Starttech week-by-week to give us their precious help on our diet and nutrition issues. How are we doing? Let’s have a look.
The story so far
Step 1: Open discussion-presentation
Everything started with an open presentation where Dimitris set the basis of how our partnership will benefit everyone. He showed us, in brief, how the whole program will work, what basic changes we should make regarding our nutrition habits and gave us overall guidelines.
We’re kept up to date with sequential presentations. The whole program is divided into stages. So, apart from the kick-off presentation, whenever there’s a transition to another level of accomplishment, our dietitian makes sure that we are all well prepared and ready to go for it. That’s also done with periodical opening presentations.
“Whether the aim for someone is to lose, gain or maintain weight, all our members have a common goal. To change their habits in order to lead a healthy life. One that will keep each one of us full of energy, in order to achieve our goals and enjoy a healthy productive life.”
Step 2: Personalized nutrition sessions
During these sessions we had the chance to discuss in private with our dietitian what personalized alterations each one of us should make. We’ve been guided to do medical check-ups. Based on the results, and our preferences, our dietitians created an adapted, personalized nutrition program.
The most interesting thing worth mentioning is the fact that we’ve been guided to keep a diary, in order to become fully aware of our food habits.
These sessions carry on. We hope that by staying away from comfort food and other unhealthy habits we can look forward to a new healthier way of life, here in the office. Besides, our kitchen is already fully equipped with the necessary supplies: fruits, nuts and salads. So, there are no excuses. 😊
And as Dimitris usually says, “Our goal is not only to make eating better more simple, but putting the knowledge into action in a way that one makes these changes effortlessly, like he/she always knew and always could.”
So, in our philosophy, everyone can be the nutrition coach of thyself with no really hard work or tremendous effort required. And to that, comes the help from Starttech’s philosophy attitude.
Starttech as a support network
Apart from well-being in general, when it comes to setting long-term goals and staying loyal to them, you need motivation. In fact, you also may need just a little help to get going. And that’s the basic idea behind initiatives like this one. We all need guidance and support at some time or another in order to achieve our goals.
An expert – or mentor – that will help us understand what we have to do. They can offer valuable advice on the small or big changes that will get us closer to our goals. And that’s exactly what our Venture Building team offers our startups. Guidance and support to move from early stage to growth. As well as a noise-free environment, taking care of HR, admin, legal and the like, so they can focus on growing their businesses.
Living well, working better, feeling happier
Sometimes, the elusive pursuit of “happiness” can seem overwhelming in these crazy times we live in. The trick is to be happy with what you’ve got and the steps you take, which help you feel better overall. No matter how small or big those steps are.
There’s definitely been a change here in the office since we started working with dia-trofis.gr at the back end of last year. Everyone looks after their meals, their snacks, and their intake in general 😊.
So, thanks Starttech, and let me offer my praise in advance: well done to all of our members for their ongoing efforts!