Chapter 7
IN THIS CHAPTER
Building your health care team
Keeping tabs on your mental health
Dealing with health events
Fueling your body properly
Getting enough exercise
Making time for rest
Physical health is frequently ignored as we pursue success. But poor health can affect our concentration, energy level, and stamina, which leads to lower performance in all other areas of our life. When we neglect our physical bodies, we are fatigued more easily. We contract more illnesses, so we miss work and miss opportunities. We have trouble sleeping, and that can affect all aspects of life negatively, including our overall attitude and mental well-being.
In the Untied States, we face a litany of health problems, most of which are self-inflicted through poor diet and lack of exercise. Physical health and well-being, like every other area of life, is fueled by our habits. Eating well, sleeping enough, and being physically active all result from developing good habits.
We invest billions of dollars in weight loss programs, fad diets, and supplements. According to the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, more than 70 percent of people are overweight or obese, but only 36 percent of the population thinks they are overweight. That's a staggering amount of ignorance and denial. I must admit that I presently have more weight on my body than I should. To get my weight in healthy proportion to my height, I am going to have to grow exponentially taller or, more likely, continue to work at reducing the extra pounds on my body.
My public admission, as I write this chapter, is a clear indication of the gap that exists between knowing and doing. The foundational principles and strategies for health have not altered that dramatically in the last 20 or 30 years. Sure, we get new information all the time about foods and exercise strategies. And experts can also change their minds about what is ultimately good or bad for us. Bottom line: What is the primary cause of cancer, heart disease, and many other diseases and conditions that reduce our quality of life? It’s poor diet and lack of exercise.
The objective isn’t to have the latest, cutting edge, or experimental strategy for optimal health. There are no magic pills that will make you fit. The goal is to implement foundational habits that result in a long-term sustainable lifestyle change and bridge the gap between knowledge and action. When we are in the action zone, we have the opportunity to form new habits of health, and the habits are critical to success in our physical lives.
We have seen significant advancements in medicine in the last half century. The diagnosis of cancer, years ago, was a diagnosis of premature death. In the ensuing years, cancer treatments have extended lives far beyond what was once imaginable. The odds of being cured from common forms of cancer, like breast cancer in women or prostate cancer in men, have climbed exponentially.
As a teen growing up in the 1970s, one of my favorite shows was The Six Million Dollar Man with actor Lee Majors playing the role of Steve Austin. Steve Austin was the bionic man who had been put back together after crashing a test flight plane. He was, to paraphrase from the show, “better, stronger, and faster” than before. That futuristic depiction, while in the 1970s, seemed farfetched. But fast-forward to present day and there are a whole host of replacement parts that orthopedic surgeons now routinely implant in our bodies. Hip, knee, and shoulder replacements are done in almost every hospital in the United States each day. And then there are cardiovascular advancements. Heart valves can be replaced and blocked arteries can be opened, increasing the longevity of our most important organ, the heart.
All of these advancements, while miraculous, do not change the one undeniable fact: We are only given one body in which to live in on this earth. The most important principle is to take care of the one we are given at birth. While we might replace some body parts, we can’t swap the whole body for a new one.
It’s common in life to take for granted something we receive for free. Our body falls into that category. We've all heard the old proverb that our body is a temple. In ancient times, a temple was the most valuable and used piece of real estate in the city or town. It was a place of honor and reverence. If we are to treat our body as a temple, we need to sustain it with high quality food and nutrients, exercise it, and always take care of it. Unfortunately, many of us treat our bodies like a trash can.
We all enjoy foods that aren't good for us. They might be high in sugar or high in fat (or both), but we consume them anyway knowing that we aren't helping our health. I don't feel, however, that complete abstinence from these foods is sustainable. For example, I have a weakness for ice cream. It’s one of those desserts that can get me into trouble. You bring a half gallon of ice cream into the house and I am likely to sit down and eat the whole thing. Should I cut out ice cream completely from my life? We know that plan is destined for failure, right? That’s why I force moderation on myself. I only buy ice cream in pints so that I have no choice but to enjoy a much smaller amount.
If we eat a few unhealthy foods in moderation, our bodies are equipped to process the toxins out. If I enjoy a soft drink every once in a while, it’s likely to have minimal damage. But if I drink four diet sodas per day, which are loaded with chemicals and artificial ingredients, over time, my body will feel the effects of me treating it like a trash can.
The only exceptions I would make to the rule of moderation are smoking and taking drugs. Those two habits have addictive qualities that cause psychological and physical dependence as well long-term health problems. Why take the risk?
We all need to surround ourselves with experts who help in keeping us healthy. The doctors, nurses, nutritional experts, personal trainers, meal preparers, and friends play a large role in our family’s quest to stay healthy.
Your primary doctor is the foundation of your health team. A doctor who stays well read in the medical journals, medical advancements, as well as new drugs and treatment options is essential. You and your physician form a team that works together to improve your overall health. A doctor also requires us to do our part by communicating clearly what is ailing us. The doctor prescribes a treatment plan. We must do our part to follow it exactly through the whole process. Having confidence in your doctor through personal experience or from referral and reputation aides in the healing process.
Good doctors also assemble a team of specialists they have confidence in. Every doctor should have a dream team of specialists in cardiology, orthopedics, gastrology, surgery, urology, and gynecology. As you age, these specialists play an ever-increasing role in your health and quality of life. Sometimes unexpected disease strikes, like it has for me. You might also do research on your own to give yourself peace of mind and perhaps seek a second opinion.
Once diagnosed with Meniere’s, I was on a quest to find a specialist of significant experience and skill in treating patients like me with this disease. I fortunately found one at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon. Truly, I would travel to the ends of the earth to find a specialist to help manage my treatment of a disease that I will have for the rest of my life.
Our family history and genetics plays an important role in our overall health. It’s crucial to record and keep track of your family history of disease. There are genetic influences in most health categories, and that's especially true with regard to heart disease and cancer. If your father, mother, or other close relative has elevated cholesterol levels, as my father does, or has had heart disease, again like my father, it’s a marker of risk that you can’t ignore. I can assure you that I have received many benefits from being Norm Zeller’s son. The only thing he has passed down to me that I don’t want is the genetic predisposition to high cholesterol. Even with a proper diet, I am at the high end of the acceptable scale for my cholesterol levels.
It’s critical to know your genetic markers for high blood pressure as well. My wife Joan is on blood pressure medication because hers is high due to genetics. Many people in her family are also on high blood pressure medication. Most people are unaware that they have high blood pressure. Get yours checked regularly.
We all need specialists at times on our team. As we cross the threshold of 50 years old, our visits to specialists become more frequent. We need our eyes checked more frequently by our ophthalmologist. Men need to see the urologist because our plumbing flows less freely (or too freely). And don't forget the gastroenterologist, who will take care of your first colonoscopy screening. I didn't have my first colonoscopy until I was 53 years old. The truth is, the reason I got it then was because my younger brother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Fortunately, they caught it at an early stage, and after surgery and radiation treatments, he has been cancer free for a few years. I am thrilled with his early diagnosis and return to health. I am less than thrilled due to shared genetics. I must get a colonoscopy every five years rather than every ten years from my gastroenterologist.
The foundation for good health is being positive and optimistic. We need to expect that we will be healthy and successful in life, but that involves crafting a plan for good health through proper eating, exercising, and abstinence from vices that will reduce our quality of life and shorten our length of life. When you decide each day to feel good and expect to accomplish what you desire, your health and well-being is significantly enhanced.
The influence of optimism, positive thinking, and positive expectations are all linked to better mental health. Each morning when you wake up, remember that you have been granted a new day ahead of you, that you are actually alive, with 86,400 seconds to invest as you choose. That realization can set the tone for mental health and success.
We need to start each day with gratitude and appreciation for what we do have and not lament what we don’t. With a grateful attitude, it's infinitely easier to accomplish your goals and objectives. Get in the habit of listening to positive music, like worship and praise songs, during your morning routine. Music that is upbeat and soul filling will elevate your mood.
Another option is to listen to motivational talks from Zig Ziglar, Earl Nightingale, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, or anyone else who you feel has a positive and valuable message. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote the book The Power of Positive Thinking in 1952, is a dynamic communicator in print and as a speaker. You might want to listen to him first thing in the morning.
It’s important to set your mindset to positive. Try doing verbal affirmation statements. Affirmations said aloud can focus, sharpen, and set strong expectations of success for the future. Here are a few examples:
Affirmations, to be effective, need to be aspirationally real and relevant. For example, don't affirm in front of the mirror that my body is lean, toned, and at my ideal weight when in reality, I am 50 pounds overweight and in horrible condition. The audio of my voice does not remotely match the video of what I can see. You can state affirmations in future tense using “I will” or “I will in 6 months.” The “I am” that is a country mile from the truth is easily rejected by your logical mind that sees the image staring back at you in the mirror.
As with so many things in life, the better you do, the better you feel. The motivation you create through doing well and feeling well helps you to continue the progress. When it comes to health and fitness, once you get the ball rolling with new habits and begin to see the slightest bit of progress, you'll have increased energy and motivation to keep up the good work. The positive results will begin to snowball, and we feel even better about ourselves.
If you want the science behind this greater feeling of well-being, here it is:
All these changes in our brain lead to a natural increase in our motivation level. We can even trigger these neurotransmitters through music, a motivational message, or a workout partner. When we are more motivated, we are more likely to follow through on the commitments that we have set for ourselves. We have a higher confidence level that we will achieve what we desire.
We all have health events in our lives or the lives of loved ones that can derail or change our plans for success. Whether it’s a disease that we contract unexpectedly or a mental health challenge like depression or drug dependency, there is almost no one that hasn’t directly or indirectly dealt with health issues as they climb the mountain of success.
I guarantee that health events will happen to us all. There's no avoiding them. They will differ in their intensity and duration. The how or what to do will vary. Additionally, I want to state that I have been dealing with health events that influence strategies, systems, and timelines of success for more than 50 years. What I can declare with the upmost confidence is that your goals don’t have to change. You may simply have to change how you go about achieving them.
I learned this truth in observing my mother, who battled multiple sclerosis and all its physical effects for more than 40 years. The disease never changed the power of her mind or altered what she planned or wanted to do. In fact, the MS steeled her to a level of determination that was probably not previously there. She was determined to not be defined by the disease and instead was defined by what she accomplished.
When a health event strikes, whether it’s a short-term illness or chronic condition like my Meniere’s disease, you want to first address its influence on your life both long term and day to day. You might not be able to gauge things with 100-percent accuracy, but ask yourself these questions:
Once you have collected the information from your physician, explored treatment options, seen a specialist if you needed to, and asked yourself these questions, you can then make adjustments to your timelines for goals and objectives.
The biggest change for me in my Meniere’s disease has been my reduced travel schedule for speaking events. My old travel schedule of speaking in a new city and venue each day that I am the road is off the table. I can no longer take the stress of giving a talk in the morning, being on a flight in the afternoon or evening to another city, and then repeating the cycle the next day and throughout the week.
Ask yourself these questions each week to better focus and create powerful habits:
When you are dealing with health events, it helps you to focus quickly on what is really important. It’s amazing how much we can cut out that is peripheral in our lives, which allows us to reestablish reasonable margins. I call that finding the “white space” in our lives. If you notice on either side of this page, there is white space where you can make notes and draw arrows to key parts of the text. Life has a way, especially during health events, of removing the white space from our lives.
I know this sounds a little out there, but journaling is very effective. Through the process of journaling and observation, I found that of all days, my severest vertigo episodes were on Mondays. They happened late in the afternoon between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. I can't explain it, and neither can my doctors and specialists, except for stress. Once I understood the pattern, I began the habit of ending my Mondays at 2:30 p.m., which has eliminated the issue.
Frequently, we need to recalibrate our definition of success and what is truly important to our business, career, financial life, and family. Adversity and change are wonderful teachers that most of us would rather avoid. If we are to arrive at our desired goals, we need to ask ourselves these questions that relate to our better use of resources:
These types of questions help you refine your daily and weekly resources you use to achieve success. As you evaluate, you might discover, for example, that you watch too many hours of TV. A few hours a week is entertainment; a few hours a night is wasted time.
We all have things that we waste money on. When I was diagnosed with Meniere’s, I reviewed our family budget and found thousands of dollars we wasted monthly. By cutting out the waste, I increased savings, which helped us decrease our time needed to achieve complete financial independence.
I also removed some of the life maintenance tasks that I did too much of as a younger man. I removed hours a week out of my schedule mowing, weeding, and maintaining our yard. With our corrected family budget, I had plenty of money to spare to hire a yard guy. We can easily delegate house cleaning, yard work, grocery shopping, meal preparation, and laundry to someone who would be happy for a job. Doing so frees us up time to both accomplish more and rest more.
As I've said earlier in the book, the act of intense focus always proceeds success. When balancing the health challenges with the achievement of success, it’s easy to treat success as an event, or worse, as a destination. If I could only ______. You fill in the blank: earn more money, feel better, take more time off, save more money, buy that bigger house. When we have the rug pulled out from under us, we become hyper-focused on the destination aspect of success.
Earl Nightingale has the best definition of success I have heard in my life: “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or worthy ideal.” The key element in this quote is the word progressive, which refers to the movement toward, not the arrival at, success. When dealing with a health event for you or a family member, you need to focus on answering these questions:
Diet or exercise? Which is more important for health and weight loss? Diet wins every time. Multiple times in this book, I refer to the 80/20 rule, and it applies when comparing diet and exercise options when you need to lose weight. The 80 percent is your diet, and the 20 percent is exercise. Rather than exclusively taking my word for it, let’s do the math. As the saying goes, the path is in the math.
If you want to shed a single pound of fat, you need to achieve a 3,500-calorie deficit. That's the number most dieticians use. Let's shoot for losing a pound per week, so that's 3,500 calories divided by 7 days, so you need to have a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day. If you just exercised to burn 500 calories every day, you would be spending a lot of time working up a sweat. For example, a 150-pound person would have to run at a 10-minute-mile pace for around 45 minutes to burn 500 calories. And lower-intensity exercises require even more time to burn that many calories.
There's an easier way. You're better off eating less than exercising more. If you're eating 2,500 calories per day, cut back to 2,000 per day, which is still a lot, and you'll achieve a 3,500-calorie deficit each week. That's so much more doable (and much less painful) than running 45 minutes every day. Or cut your food intake by 400 calories and throw in some exercise to burn 100 calories. That's 80-percent diet and 20-percent exercise.
Let’s look at a few fundamentals of eating:
The excuse of not knowing that cigarettes and other tobacco products are unhealthy went out in the 1950s. Everyone knows the negative effects today. We have ten states where it’s legal to smoke marijuana. Whether you believe the drug is a poison or not, the smoking of it leads to lung problems for certain. There are differing opinions on alcohol and especially red wine. Many heart experts suggest that a glass of red wine per day can be good for your heart. But drinking more than that offers no health benefits and leads to liver issues along with other physical problems, including obesity, as many alcoholic drinks are loaded with calories.
The most common poison we ingest is processed sugar and high fructose corn syrup. The explosion of processed sugar in our foods has added significant weight to our society and increased the rate of diabetes exponentially. It’s literally a problem of epidemic proportions. Whether it’s processed sugar or processed foods, we eat too many processed poisons in the United States.
Our diet in the United States is over-carbohydronated. Now that’s not a real word, but it should be. The bottom line is that we are consuming too many carbohydrates in our diet. Many experts agree that our diets are too high in carbs and don't have enough protein, fruits, and vegetables.
There are a number of excellent resources in the Dummies line of books about eating right. Here are just a few: Nutrition For Dummies, Weight Loss Kit For Dummies, and Controlling Cholesterol For Dummies. Any of these titles will get you on the path of healthy eating.
We all need to eat more clean, rich protein. Some excellent protein sources are fish, especially salmon, which is high in the right kind of omega-3 fatty acids. Poultry is another excellent choice for rich protein with low fat. There are excellent sources of lean protein from game meat such as venison, elk, and bison. Steer beef is higher in fat than other types of red meat, but it’s still is a valid source of protein in moderation. Using nuts to supplement your protein needs is also a good option.
Eating ample helpings of fruits and vegetables is key to your personal daily diet. There is no such thing as eating too many green vegetables. For most of us, it’s a matter of finding some items we like and deciding on a low-fat and flavorful way to prepare them. Green vegetables are the gold standard, so try to eat lettuce, spinach, celery, cucumbers, peppers, kale, collard greens, green beans, peas, or broccoli. There are enough options, so if you are like President George Bush, you can swear off broccoli for the rest of your life and be just fine.
Our heart works overtime every day to pump oxygen and nutrients to the cells in our body. It never takes a break. That level of sustained effort demands our full attention to fuel it well. Besides the aforementioned green vegetables, what are some of the foods that are heart healthy?
Food is made to fuel our bodies, but it should also be enjoyed. We were designed to taste food and enjoy the texture of it. The combining of flavors, coupled with wine or beer, can create a memorable evening of enjoyment. We can use meals to create a sense of well-being, deepen our relationships, and strengthen family connections. Gathering for a great meal lowers our stress levels. All these pathways converge in success. The key is moderation in everything we put in our bodies for fuel and enjoyment of life.
We all require some amount of movement to maintain our level of health, stamina, and cognition. The population in the United States has become too sedentary. There are incredible benefits to being physical. Let’s check out a few:
I have to admit, getting on the treadmill is not really my cup of tea. Walking on a belt going nowhere is, in my book, boring. If that was my only option, it would be drudgery. In order to be consistent in exercise, you have to find people, equipment, and types of exercise that you look forward to.
There are so many options that are available in the gym or fitness facility or just in the plain outdoors. Even playing golf is a reasonable level of exercise if you walk rather than ride a golf cart. The typical golf course is 6,500 yards. That's just short of 4 miles for 18 holes if you only walked in straight lines from tee to green. Even the best of golfers hit the ball left or right of center. Tiger Woods might be walking closer to 4 miles, but the average golfer like me is going to walk more than 5 miles (and lose a few balls along the way).
You have to decide what exercise type would be enjoyable and even fun. I am best when I mix in some competitive games in my exercise routine. I played the professional racquetball tour for about four years. I cut my teeth on one-on-one competition. I don’t play racquetball anymore because I would certainly not be as good as I once was, so I play squash instead. It’s a better workout aerobically. My heart rate is more sustained because the rallies are longer than in racquetball. My competitive juices still flow, and my heart gets strengthened all at once.
Before your motivation gets way ahead of your current physical condition, check with a few experts. Start by going to get a complete physical from your physician. Then discuss what an appropriate exercise program might be for you given your present physical condition and goals.
At least see a personal trainer to have them design an exercise program that encompasses both cardio and resistance training. If you feel the need for an extra push, hire them for a handful of sessions to get your started. They can teach you the right techniques for lifting weights so that you can avoid injury and work your muscles more effectively. You might even enjoy the experience of having a coach and continue working with them.
Common sense in an exercise routine comes from two primary things: We must find a good balance and then listen to our bodies. We need to balance our time so that we can accomplish fitness as well as our other goals in life. We have to find the balance between good, sensible exercise levels and not overdoing things to the point where we injure ourselves, especially when instituting a new routine. Our body tells us when we overextend by being too sore and taking longer than normal to recover. When that happens, give yourself time to rest.
The key to good health through exercise is not accomplished in a day, a week, or a month. It’s the consistency of activity for a series of months. Once you get that far down the road, you have established new habits and a new lifestyle. Here are a few final tips on exercise:
I have come to realize that rest has an important role in our lives. We all need rest to help us recharge our emotional and physical batteries. You can’t always run your car's engine at really high rpms before you have a major failure. The same is true with humans. The action of just resting is sometimes the most productive thing you can do. Ask yourself these questions:
I discovered my rhythm a number of years ago through monitoring my energy levels and stamina. I hit a wall at about 13 weeks without taking an extended break. I could maintain a high productivity pace for 13 weeks with weekends off. When I hit 13 weeks, my energy, effectiveness, and intensity drop like a rock, and fast. If I was out for 15 or 16 weeks from my last vacation or break, I was a shell of my former productive self. I might be at the office in body, but my mind, energy, and especially intensity were all lacking.
In this discovery, I tracked how many days off I needed to recharge fully. I found out it wasn’t a full week but 5 days. That was enough time off for me to come back rested, recharged, and raring to go.
We all have a rhythm to our energy levels and ideal work patterns. I know you might not be able to take off that amount of time from your job, but you do need to know your personal rhythm of life. You might be able to go at higher intensity for longer and need less downtime than I do. My 13 weeks shouldn't be your benchmark. The most important thing is for you to discover your unique pattern.
We all require a certain amount of sleep. Our bodies are actually hard at work when we are sleeping. The brain is creating essential chemicals; muscles repair themselves after the stress of exercise. We all have responsibilities and deadlines that sometimes require us to burn the candle at both ends. For example, as I write this chapter, it’s 11:38 p.m., about two hours past my normal bedtime.
We all have different levels of sleep required for our health and well-being. If we deprive ourselves of our proper amount of sleep for a few nights, or even a few weeks, we open ourselves up to sickness. We are more fatigued and prone to mistakes and errors. Our energy level is reduced, and our irritability is increased.
I am certainly looking forward to tomorrow when I will be back to my normal routine. Goodnight!