Welcome to Steps For Wellness (the e-book and the community)!
Steps To Wellness is dedicated to our children. May they inherit a world that is healthy and sustainable — and may you avoid the complications of old age in the western world, and be there to enjoy it with them.”
Dear Friend:
It is our intention to share valuable information that you can use — as well as a structure and a framework — for you to get and stay healthy.
On this blog, we write about all sorts of things related to wellness, mainly by interviewing nutrition, exercise (particularly walking & hiking), and the supplements recommended by some of the Top Integrative Docs to insure against an imperfect diet. Also, we’re building a a special Google+ community to answer your questions about the ground-breaking “new” ticker-friendly fat called Omega 7 (Palmitoleic Acid), and how it fits into the larger context of health and wellness.
If you register for “Steps To Wellness”, you’ll get access to :
- Valuable information that you can use to get and stay healthy,
- A community of caring individuals dedicated to helping lift themselves an one another, and
- A sales pitch-free zone where you can ask questions, answer questions, and share information.
It’s our hope that when you join our community on Google+, introduce yourself, and engage in conversations with us.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Walking together, we can take small steps towards better health.
We hope to see you there.
You might just might make some friends along the way.
I know I have.
Our single biggest problem
What do you think is the biggest single problem we face as Americans?
Obesity? Nope.
Heart Disease? Nope?
Diabetes? Nope.
Try again.
Efficiency. It’s efficiency.
We’re too efficient. We like things fast & easy. Fast food, fast profits, fast facts.
It’s made us lazy. If it requires any kind of work, we want nothing of it, or as little of it as possible.
If we’re ever going to get healthy again, the first step is to change that way of thinking.
Instead of looking for shortcuts, we need to look for longcuts. Instead of looking for the easy way out, we need to start looking for opportunities to challenge ourselves.
Longer walks. More time in the kitchen. More time away from the computer, laptop, tablet, and smart phone, and more stress-free time with family and friends.
Wellness is a journey, not a race. And life is ultimately all about the friends you meet along the way, isn’t it?
You can’t take your money with you. And money can’t buy you happiness. Ask anyone who’s got money, and they’ll tell you: “It’s the relationships that are everything. Health is everything.”
Who can benefit from this e-book/community and why?
This book is intended for anyone who yearns to live mindfully, intentionally to a ripe old age — barring unforeseen events and acts of God — surrounded by family and friends. If any of these conditions apply, this book is for you:
- If you have body-mass index (BMI) of 30% or more and carry fat around your belly.
- If you’re in great shape, but have elevated cholesterol or C-reactive protein
- If you’re over 60, and you’re looking forward to an active retirement
Getting healthy is a revolutionary act. Getting healthy means forgoing excess wheat, sugar, alcohol, maybe dairy (it all depends on whether or not you have any food sensitivities, and you should really meet with an Integrative or Functional Doc near you to get tested).
I chose to write this book because for the past 3 years I’ve worked on a launching and managing a new nutritional ingredient, not just a new product, an entirely new category, called Omega 7. It was featured on the Dr. Oz show on December 17th, 2013, but it’s still very much in its infancy. People are just now learning about its extraordinary benefits. During this time, I have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Michael Roizen, whose work at the Cleveland Clinic is awe-inspiring. In an environment where healthcare spending is 1 out of every 5 dollars spent, through his integrative wellness approach, has reduced the increase in spending to zero, which shows it can be done.
Writing this e-book has been simultaneously exhilarating and scary. I’ve been written extensively about medicine, nutrition, and lipid metabolism in the last three years, and am using this material as the basis for the book. God gives us fear for a reason. To heighten our alertness and awareness. Feel the fear and do it anyway. It’s very exciting because I feel like I’m taking all the scattered pieces of my life, and organizing them into one overarching purpose.
How to get the most out of ‘Steps To Wellness’
“Steps To Wellness” is organized in a series of chapters or “steps”, and there’s some obvious wordplay with the “10,000 steps,” which is a really good way to start exercising if you haven’t been active. Walking is really, really good for you.
Steps To Wellness is organized sequentially, but you’ll get the most out of hit if you choose a chapter that appeals to you the most, and concentrate on it. It’s better to apply gradual change. Most failure occurs because we try to do too much too fast. In fact I’ve got an entire chapter dedicated to successfully changing your behavior. You should try at some point to tackle all the chapters. And it’s an iterative process — meaning you do it once, and get better. Then you do it again, and you get even better.
It’s my intention to let the community help me tranform this from an e-book into a real book. We’ll write it together, OK?
And we’ll make sure it has a happy ending.
It’s not going to happen overnight. I’d like say from the outset that we’re diet agnostic. Our STW Community Members are coming from different places. Some might be Paleo, some might be vegan, some might be 100% junk foodies.
Different things are going to work for different people. We treat one another with dignity and respect. And we’re not trying to sell anything, we’re providing a service. If you show up, and provide value through your questions or your answers, people will visit your profile to learn more about you. That’s the way the new world works — trust me. It’s all about adding value.
I would like to thank my wife Kim Novak & kids Charlie (11), Mary (8), and Lucy (6). I’d like to thank Stan Bush, our community manager who has taught me how to use technology in a way to make and deepen real-live human connections. A special thanks Dr. Michael Roizen, Chairman of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, YOU Doc, and best-selling author. I’d like to thank Dr. Sara Stein for introducing me to the real Pioneers of Functional and Integrative Medicine, as well as all the physicians round the world for practicing Functional, Integrative, Preventative, Natural, Alternative, Holistic, and Homeopathic Medicine. I’d like to thank so many of our customers who’ve since become advocates including David Bonello, Suzanne Jenkins, Gaylee McCracken. I’d like to thank William McDonough of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, who is the co-author of “The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance,” in which he teaches us any problem is essentially a design problem.
To your health!
Les Proctor
Author/Director
Steps To Wellness
A Nicheworks Media Property