Amazon Q&A on the Eat Move Sleep book
Q: What prompted you to write a book about health?
A. After writing business books for more than a decade, I realized that improving health is the biggest business challenge of our generation. Nothing breaks household finances, corporate balance sheets, or national economies faster than poor health.
But the much larger reason why I decided to focus all of my time and energy on this topic is because I was tired of seeing people that I care about suffer unnecessarily and die early. We are literally killing ourselves, sapping our energy, and destroying our wellbeing as a result of lousy decisions we make about our health each day.
Q: Why have you spent so much time studying this topic?
A. I first started doing this research to save my own life, literally. While I have been reluctant to discuss this before, I have been battling cancer for more than twenty years now. Ever since my diagnosis, I’ve spent time every day learning about specific things I can do to extend my odds of living a bit longer. Over the last decade, I have focused more attention on helping friends, family, and colleagues to learn from these discoveries and lead healthier lives.
Q: What are some of the most important things you have learned from this research?
A. What I learned, not only about how to prevent cancer, but also how to prevent heart disease, diabetes, and obesity – is remarkably encouraging. The vast majority of human disease and illness is preventable. There are hundreds of specific, proven actions we can take to increase our odds of living longer and stronger. What matters most are the small decisions we make each day, ones that give us more energy in the moment and also prevent illness in the future.
The second major finding is that these three elements – eating, moving, and sleeping – build on one another. Eating right makes it easier to be active. Being active makes it easier to sleep. Sleeping well helps you to avoid bad foods, and so on. As a result, working on all three at once is even easier than focusing on one area in isolation.
Q: Don’t we already know that we should be eating, moving, and sleeping better?
A. In Eat Move Sleep, I cover a lot of the essentials that people know they should be doing, but have trouble applying on a daily basis. I like books that help me figure out how to apply things I already know but don’t do. There are several things in the book I have known for a long time, yet did not practice myself until I learned new ways to connect short-term incentives with what is best for my long-term health. Frankly, my biggest challenge in writing this book was narrowing down to the most practical findings for a broad audience, given the wealth of good science on these topics today.
(View on Amazon.com or visit the Eat Move Sleep main page)
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