The book is now published and is flying out of the Speakwell office. A 2nd edition is already in preparation. The best way to familiarize you with the book is to list the chapters and introduction and let it speak for itself.
Preface
In the words of Cicero I want, to teach, to stir the mind and to provide enjoyment. But I want more, I want your feet on the street, the trails or the treadmill, I want you eating well and I want you feeling great. This book is a call to action and your actions will be the measure of its success.
The left hand pages of this book bring you wisdom, humor, stories, quotations, poems and inspiration and the right hand pages help you channel that inspiration into positive, life-changing programs. In Alice in Wonderland there’s a scene in which Alice asks the Cheshire Cat for directions.
 |
Alice: Which road should I take?
Cheshire Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: I don’t know.
Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t matter. |  |
The following pages are filled with information to help you chose a way that’s right for you and unique programs to get you there. You’ll discover ‘The Power of Fifteen’, ‘Circle Canada’ and ‘Route 66’, you’ll find out the truth about walking, weight-loss and weight-control and why walking and lifestyle programs belong everywhere, from schools to the workplace, from seniors’ centers to city streets.
I pay special attention to the pedometer, an inexpensive little device, which can transform your walking program and play a big part in getting you where you need to go. You will be challenged and at times you might fall short, but that only sweetens the joy of your success, and to miss the joy is to miss it all.
One of my favorite authors, John Griffin, said, Write nothing you do not feel and believe to be true. That I’ve done, you have my word.
Introduction: You’re a Walking Miracle
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on the earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle, which we don’t even realize. :: Thich Nhat Hanh
I want you to look good and feel great,
I want you to be all that you can be,
I want you to walk.
‘Walking, Weight and Wellness’ provides a roadmap, which will guide you to high-level wellness. It will put back the movement in your life that our culture has stolen away. It will provide a formula to be slim and firm in a land where it has become ‘normal’ to be fat and flabby. It will provide islands of calm in a world of noise and distraction.
We are vigorous, active animals that do well when we move and badly when we are sedentary. The movement which comes naturally to humans is walking, and I want you to walk nearly every day. We are born with a 100-year warranty but we have to read the small print. The small print tells us to move on a daily basis; the small print says, walk.
I titled the introduction You’re a Walking Miracle not in any religious sense, but to remind you of the extraordinary nature of the human body/mind and what it can accomplish. The word ‘miracle’ comes from the Latin ‘miraculum’, meaning, object of wonder and to anyone who looks carefully at the human body/mind surely they see an object of wonder. It is a vast complex of trillions of interconnected cells. There are at least 10 times as many cells in our bodies as there are stars in the Milky Way. Marcel Proust reminded us that a sense of wonder comes not just from discovering new things and places, but by looking at familiar things through new eyes. I want you to look with new eyes at walking and its transformative powers. I want you to see yourself as a walking miracle.
Talking about my baby,
He’s a walking miracle.
:: The Essex, 1963
Chapter Headings
1. Walking Can Save Your Life
Walking is do-able, you already know how to walk, walking’s free, walking can be the core around which you build your eating and activity lifestyle. Walking burns calories, clears your head, improves your posture, assists the circulation and saves your life. We’ve known all this for thousands of years, there’s a Latin phrase that says it all.
Solvitur Ambulando—Walking solves all things
2. Why Walking is the Most Popular Form of Exercise in North America
There’s plenty of pleasure in a walk, which can be social or solitary, vigorous or easy, early or late and can take place almost any time, any place any where. In the movement of walking you discover stillness and problems get smaller with each step, ideas fill your brain, stress recedes as you align your body/mind and step-by-step your spirit is restored.
3. What Research Tells us About Walking and Wellness
It’s hard to get experts to agree on anything, but there are no dissenting voices about the value of walking.
A five mile walk (about 10,000 steps) will do more
good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult
than all the medicine and psychology in the world.
Paul Dudley White, Former Surgeon General
4. Pedometer Walking
Every step you take I’ll be watching you.
:: Sting
What gets measured gets done.
:: Tom Peters
A good pedometer will record every step of your comings and goings, your trips to the kitchen, your movement around the office and, more importantly, the steps you take when you go outside into the ‘real’ world and walk to the store or take a life-saving purposeful walk. This chapter includes a detailed evaluation of 30 different pedometers and helps you ‘pick a practical pedometer’.
5. Virtual Walking – Circle Canada and Route 66
An introduction to the sophisticated ‘virtual walks’: Circle Canada and Route 66, which are the centerpiece of numerous workplace and school-based walking programs. Our ever-increasing access to computers has created a whole different way to translate cumulative steps into an actual, visible journey. A well-constructed virtual journey gives substance to the numbers on your pedometer and translates them into cities and scenery.
6. Weight Loss and Weight Control
- The Calorie Story
- So You Really, Really Want to Lose Weight!!
This has been a critically acclaimed section of the book, which authoritatively and accurately looks at weight loss and weight control and how each is impacted by eating and activity. The ebb and flow of calories will determine whether you’re fat, very fat, thin, very thin or in true Goldilocks fashion, ‘just right’. Calorie awareness is crucial and cannot be ignored. At school, we all heard the phrase pay attention and that’s exactly what is required of you now, not just to the information in this chapter, but to the quality and quantity of calories you allow into your body.
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four
unless I invited three other people.
:: Oscar Wilde
I’d do anything to look like him, except exercise and eat right.
:: Steve Martin
7. Walking Away From Stress
Walking is our best medicine.
:: Hippocrates (460BC – 377BC)
A brief look at the positive biochemical impact of walking.
I have two doctors, my left leg and my right.
:: G M Trevelyan
There are many paths to dealing with stress and it’s a good idea to find a path you can walk down.
8. Workplace Walking
All business organizations have to be aware of the ROI (Return On Investment) of any initiative. The commonly accepted figure for a successful company wellness program is that it will return 3 dollars for every one dollar invested. A well-structured walking program can exceed that ratio many fold because it requires no capital outlay, other than the purchase of pedometers (which are often supplied on a cost recovery basis). The physical, psychological and social benefits of regular walking inevitably have a positive impact on an organization’s bottom line. The positive impact of walking goes beyond an ROI and delivers an ROL (Return On Life). A look at successful workplace programs and ways in which a workplace can become a walk place.
9. Where Do The Children Play?
All life should be lived as play.
:: Plato
This chapter addresses much more than the use of pedometers and walking programs in schools. It provides an overview of the multiple factors that make it too easy for children to fall far short of their potential as young, active human beings.
10. Walking Shoes
If you want to forget your troubles, wear shoes that are too tight.
:: The Houghton Line
It must be the shoes.
:: Spike Lee
11. Stretch and Strength
An illustrated series of activities to develop and maintain flexibility and build strength, which will complement your walking program.
12. Beyond 10,000
Marathons and other long-distance walks and hikes.
You already have everything you
need to be a long-distance athlete.
It’s mind-set, not miles, that separate
those who do from those who dream.
:: John Bingham
13. Walking With a Difference
Pole walking: Elliptical trainers: Treadmills: Steppers: Walking in water; Labyrinth walking: Cobblestone walking: Power walking.
14. Life Change—Be Your Own Hero
Much of this book is about practical things, such as walking more and eating better and making changes in your life to create a fitter, slimmer, happier you. The changes and lifestyle I suggest would be easier to do if you didn’t live in a society that has engineered physical activity out of your daily life and that surrounds you with cheap food and drink at every turn. If you go with the cultural flow it is very, very probable that you will become sedentary and overweight. Remember, you live in a culture that has soft drink machines in funeral parlors; food at gas stations and celebrates every occasion from Fridays, to promotions to Christmas with thousands of calories. You need to be a bit of a hero to fight against the cultural tide of consumption. It’s a wonderful feeling to make a promise to yourself and keep it and know you’re not a puppet of the multinational marketers.
Change does not come easily and it’s worth listening to the wisdom of others and to be inspired by heroes who overcame challenges far greater than turning down a beer or walking late in the evening to get 10,000 steps.
If you find a path with no obstacles,
check and see if it leads anywhere.
:: Alan Joseph
As Sir Winston Churchill thundered to the students at Harrow School.
Never give in. Never give in.
Never, never, never, never, never give in.
15. The Power of Fifteen
This is a powerful chapter, which provides a formula for readers who want to lose weight and get into great shape, maybe the best shape of their lives. I experimented with the caloric intake/caloric expenditure formula and found that 1500 quality calories and 15,000 daily steps produced a steady and inevitable weekly weight loss of 3 to 4 lbs. (1.3 to 1.8kg) along with feelings of increased energy and health.
To maintain overall mind/body function I turned to the Sun Salutation and found that from Mountain pose to Mountain pose (beginning to completion) was 15 moves. The Power of Fifteen was completed by the peaceful, mind altering 15 controlled 15-second breaths.
I’ve been told that coincidence is some sort of celestial pun, or maybe God’s way of remaining anonymous, but as I laid out the book with the Power of Fifteen as the closing chapter, I was delighted, but not really surprised, to find that it was Chapter 15.
Once you have achieved your target weight you can adjust the formula to include some more calories or decrease your daily step count. A “Weight Loss Phase” and “Weight Maintenance Phase” are included in the chapter.
The Power of Fifteen is a mind/body toolkit to challenge you to fulfill your personal potential as a walking miracle.
'Walking, Weight and Wellness' is available for purchase
from our WellMart store »
discontinue
