Small Choices Change Everything
Making better choices takes work. There is a daily give and take, but it is worth the effort. The vast knowledge we have to prevent cancer, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses is staggering. Every day, I read about new ideas that could help someone I care about live a longer and healthier life.
Over the last decade, I have dedicated a great deal of time to organizing this virtual sea of information in a way that can benefit others. What I look for are simple and proven ideas. I read a wide range of academic studies and research-based articles — from medical and psychological journals to in-depth books — and try to extract knowledge that can help people make better decisions and live healthier lives.
Let me be clear. I am not a doctor. Nor am I an expert on nutrition, exercise physiology, or sleep disorders. I am just a patient. I also happen to be a researcher and voracious reader who loves to extract valuable findings and share them with friends. In this book, you will find the most credible and practical ideas I have found so far.
What I learned from all this research influences my countless daily decisions. Every bite of food either increases or decreases my odds of spending a few more years with my wife and two young children. Half an hour of exercise in the morning makes for better interactions all day. Then a sound night of sleep gives me energy to tackle the next day. I am a more active parent, a better spouse, and more engaged in my work when I eat, move, and sleep well.
What seem like small or inconsequential moments accumulate rapidly. When your good daily decisions outweigh your poor ones, you boost your chances of growing old in better health. Life itself is a big game of beating the odds. Take, for example, these four largely preventable diseases: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease. Combined, they kill nearly 9 in 10 people.
Researchers have estimated that 90 percent of us could live to age 90 with some simple lifestyle choices. What’s more, we could live free of common diseases that make our final years miserable. Even if you have a family history of heart disease or cancer, most of your fate is in your control.
A recent study suggests you do not “inherit” longevity as much as previously believed. Instead, the sum of your habits determines your life span. How long you live is more about how you live your life and less about how long your parents lived.
I am a living testament to the fact that lousy predispositions can be encoded in your genes. Yet even in this extreme case, my decisions affect the odds of new tumors growing and my existing cancers spreading. The reality is, the majority of your risk in life lies in the choices you make, not in your family tree.
No single act can prevent cancer or guarantee you will live a long life. Anyone who promises you something that absolute is a fraud. What I will share in this book are some of the most practical ideas to improve your odds of a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life.
30 Days to Better Decisions
As you read this book, I hope you find ideas that work for you and test them over the next month. From my own experience and from observing others, I have noticed that making better choices often becomes automatic after just a couple of weeks. However, it takes some initiative — on your own, with a friend, or as part of a group — to take the first step.
Each chapter has three research-based findings and concludes with three ideas for how you can apply them in your life. (See the Table of Contents at the bottom. Please take a minute to notice how each chapter addresses a specific component of eat, move, & sleep) Challenge yourself to use at least one idea per day for the next month. Write them down. Post them somewhere in your home or office. See if you can make good decisions automatic.
If one of these strategies works for you, stick with it. If not, move on to the next one. It’s up to you to determine which ideas make sense and can improve your life the most. No one can do everything in this book, period. But you should be able to add at least a few ideas into your daily routine. On the book’s website, www.eatmovesleep.com, you can:
•Create a personalized Eat Move Sleep Plan based on your needs and behaviors •Use the Reference Explorer for direct links to more than 400 academic journals, books, articles, and notes
•Download the First 30 Days Challenge and other tools to use with friends, groups, and teams.
Have fun. The key is to create a plan that works for your unique situation. If you apply some of the ideas with at least one friend, you can greatly increase your odds of building new habits. Or, if you prefer to test things as you go, keep moving at your own pace. Creating a few new patterns in the next month will lead to healthier choices for years to come.
The Eat, Move, Sleep Equation
Starting your day with a healthy breakfast increases your odds of being active in the hours that follow. This helps you eat well throughout the day. Consuming the right foods and adding activity makes for a much better night’s sleep. This sound night of sleep will make it even easier to eat well and move more tomorrow.
In contrast, a lousy night of sleep immediately threatens the other two areas. That bad night of sleep makes you crave a less healthy breakfast and decreases your odds of being active. In the worst-case scenario, all three elements start to work against you, creating a downward spiral that makes each day progressively worse. This is why the book is structured to help you work on all three elements together and not broken into three parts about eating, moving, and sleeping.
New research shows that tackling multiple elements at the same time increases your odds of success, compared to initiating a new diet or exercise program in isolation. Eating, moving, and sleeping well are even easier if you work on all three simultaneously. These three ingredients for a good day build on one another. When these elements are working together, they create an upward spiral and progressively better days.
If you eat, move, and sleep well today, you will have more energy tomorrow. You will treat your friends and family better. You will achieve more at work and give more to your community.
It all starts with making decisions like tomorrow depends on it.
CONTENTS
The New Edition and Welbe App
Eat Move Sleep
1 The Three Building Blocks
Forget Fad Diets,
Forever Make Inactivity Your Enemy
Sleep Longer to Get More Done
2 Big Changes Through Small Adjustments
Every Bite Is a Net Gain or Loss
Step Away From Your Chair
Sleep Makes or Breaks a Day
3 One Good Choice at a Time
What Counts More Than Calories
Use Product Placement at Home
Work Faster While You Walk
4 Forming Better Habits
Sugar Is the Next Nicotine
Substitutes Are a Nicotine Patch
Take Two Every Twenty
5 Giving Your Immune System a Boost
Judge Food by the Color of Its Skin
A Vaccine for the Common Cold
Quality Beats Quantity in Bed
6 Lifestyle Choices That Count
Wear a New Pair of Genes
Measuring Makes You Move More
Target 10,000
7 Arranging Your Day More Energy
Be Less Refined
Family Style Is Making Us Fat
Burn Calories After Your Workout
8 Why Timing Matters
Empty Stomach, Bad Choices
The 20-Minute Meal Rule
Move Early for a 12-Hour Mood Boost
9 Quick Fixes
The First Order Anchors the Table
Move With Both Sides
Fight the Light at Night
10 Making Smarter Decisions
Prioritize Your Protein
Stop Buying Junk for Friends
Find Your Motivation to Move
11 Staying Healthy While You Work
Keep Work From Killing You
The Danger of Desktop Dining
Working While Intoxicated
12 Going Cold Turkey
The Throwaway Foods
Help a Quitter Win
Hit Snooze and You Lose
13 Myth Busting
The Butter Is Healthier Than the Bread
Don’t Eat Your Meat and Potatoes
Be Cold in Bed
14 Health Starts at Home
Small Plates, Smaller Waistline
Staying Active Starts at Home
Make Sleep a Family Value
15 Planning Ahead
Don’t Be Fooled by the Decoy
Structure Exercise for Enjoyment
A Night to Remember
16 Staying Sharp
Avoid a High-Fat Hangover
Take Your Brain for a Walk
Try Exercise Instead of Sleeping Pills
17 Rising to Expectations
Create Barrier Labels
Organic Does Not Equal Healthy
Go Public With a Goal
18 Good Nights
Feast at Sunrise, Fast at Sunset
Television Shortens Your Life Span
Protect Your Final Hour
19 Rethinking Things
Dried and Juiced Is Fruitless
Don’t Judge a Box by Its Cover
Make Noise at Night
20 Fine-Tuning Your Routine
Less Heat, Better to Eat
Driving to Divorce
Sleeping in Only Sounds Good
21 Living in the Now
Buy Use It or Lose It Foods
How You Move Matters
Keep Stress From Ruining Your Sleep
22 The Ultimate Anti-Aging Solutions
Get a Tan From Tomatoes
Look Younger With Each Step
Sleep to Impress
23 Giving Healthy Choices a Chance
Eat the Healthiest Food First
The Right Way to Get High
Sleep Your Way to a New Day
24 Holding Yourself Accountable
Grab a Handful
Take Five Outside
Pay for Peer Pressure
25 Preventive Measures
Eat to Beat Cancer
Get a Prescription for Exercise
Know Two Numbers by Heart
26 Clearing a Path
Buy Willpower at the Store
Clean Your Brain and Bowels
Sleep On It
27 Creating New Habits
Save the Cake for Your Birthday
Indulge Less to Enjoy More
Take Credit to Make It Count
28 Being a Trendsetter
Broccoli Is the New Black
Stick With Coffee, Tea, and Water
Tame Ties and Tight Pants
29 Everything’s Connected
Fight Risk With Food
Gain Sleep With Weight Loss
Eight Is Enough
30 In a Nutshell
Every Meal Matters
Put Activity Before Exercise
Invest in Sleep for Your Future
Concluding Thoughts
BOTTOM LINE: I estimate my readers are averaging 60-70 years of age and quite frankly, are already experiencing the major health setbacks the years of ignoring the eat-move-sleep truths in this book are now inflicting on us. We oldsters with this later in life experiential wisdom now being front and center, have some difficult choices to make, and quite frankly, they will be even more difficult than those we should have made in our thirties with kids had we read and implemented eat-move-sleep then while in our prime.
Now as “matured experienced seniors,” we have the opportunity to read this book, much as we do our Bibles, and become ambassadors for both of them to those in our spheres of influence. I do believe as we seek His guidance He will provide us the action steps when sharing from either the spiritual or the physical perspective, by always, absolutely always, being loving, inviting, compassionate, humble, with the demeanor of a servant but the assurance of being a child of the King. No excuses. No fear.
Face it folks, I believe our generation is so “turf absorbed” that we literally can’t converse over the fence, over coffee, in SS class, and especially with our kids, on the hot-button meaningful concerns of our hearts and minds. And it’s not at all that we have all the answers, but we do suspect the younger generations do not fully grasp what the future questions might be, are, or even their implications for today, tomorrow, whatever, whenever… But hopefully, we all know absolutely Who does and in His Assurance, we do indeed rest until our future arrive.
Just perhaps this quick & easy eat-move-sleep read will inspire you to try at least to impact the future physical health of your kids and the grands…. and break the ice to discussions beyond… I’m not blowing smoke here. Last evening we were all in Barnes & Nobles ( likely 5-8 years since I’ve last visited) looking at children’s books and I got so hung up on the display of the Golden Books (not so golden anymore, more like propaganda) and such as Simon & Schuster’s This Little Rainbow: A Love is Love Primer, and that was as far as I got in 30 minutes… Appalling is the word that comes to mind. But why am I so naive to be appalled considering the hour?
Next Up: “Could We With Ink the Ocean Fill?”