Brand Book Bites from Eat Move Sleep
– the book: Eat Move Sleep: How Small Choices Lead to Big Changes — an eye-opening book about improving your lifestyle habits
– the brain: Tom Rath, the author of five bestsellers including StrengthsFinder 2.0., the excellent assessment and resource for understanding your strengths, which has informed my understanding about myself and others extensively
– the best bits: If you think:
- your health is mostly determined by genetics or family history
- a calorie is a calorie
- working out regularly makes up for sitting at a desk for the rest of the day
…this book will set you straight. Tom explains the importance of the countless daily decisions we make — the bite of food to eat, the 30 minutes on the treadmill, the choice to go to sleep a little earlier — to the amount of energy we have and to our long-term health prospects. Some of the points that caught my attention include:
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.
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.
It turns out, the belief that you can eat anything in moderation is dead wrong. The quality of what you eat matters far more than the overall quantity.
Exercise alone is not enough. Working out three times a week is not enough. Being active throughout the day is what keeps you healthy.
One less hour of sleep does not equal an extra hour of achievement or enjoyment. The exact opposite occurs. When you lose an hour of sleep, it decreases your wellbeing, productivity, health, and ability to think.
– the brand story: If you’ve been following these “brand book bites” that I feature regularly, you know that I usually pull out from the featured book a noteworthy brand story to exemplify the book’s main point. As you can imagine, there is no real brand story in Eat Move Sleep — the story is really about us! As business leaders, we have the opportunity — and responsibility — to be our best selves every day, to add value to everything we involve ourselves in, and to make a lasting difference in this world. I’ve come to learn that our physical health plays a significant role in our ability to fulfill these expectations and so I hope you find this book as helpful as I did in.
– the bottom line: Eat Move Sleep will change your life — and perhaps save it!
Listen to my interview with Tom to get a preview of the research, findings, and lifestyle recommendations in Eat Move Sleep.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
other brand book bites:
- The Everything Store by Brad Stone
- REMOTE by Jason Fried