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. 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.
If you find yourself confused by the latest diet trends and information, you are not alone. According to one report, three out of every four people claim that today’s ever-changing dietary guidelines make it hard to eat healthy. More than half of people surveyed find it easier to figure out their income taxes than to know how to eat right.
This could explain why a majority of Americans are trying to lose weight, yet two-thirds are overweight or obese. One problem is that being “on a diet” is a temporary effort that assumes an endpoint. Many popular diets are destined to fail. When you see a book or advertisement claiming you can be healthy by doing just one thing for weeks on end, stop and think about the ramifications.
The quality of what you eat matters far more than the overall quantity. This is the primary finding from a landmark Harvard study that tracked more than 100,000 people for two decades. The researchers discovered that the types of foods you consume influence your health more than your total caloric intake. Quality of food matters even more than levels of physical activity. As one of the Harvard researchers put it, “The notion that it’s okay to eat everything in moderation is just an excuse to eat whatever you want.”
Many popular diets have some helpful elements, but only if they are part of a more holistic approach to eating. Think
