An evangelist for wellness

I learn a lot from people by seeing the way they live their lives… their habits and routines. That’s why I loved reading this article about Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Dr. Oz is a well-known cardiothoracic surgeon (who went to Penn med school!). He is also an author, TV show host, husband, and father.

The article describes him as “an evangelist for wellness” who practices what he preaches, “demanding as much of himself as of others.”

My favorite wellness habits that Dr. Oz practices:

• Carries around bags, containers, and thermoses full of food: yogurt, fruits, nuts, fresh vegetable juices. “Roughly every 45 to 60 minutes, as if on cue, he would ingest something from his movable buffet, but only a bit, his portions assiduously regulated, like an intravenous drip of nutrition. It was the most efficient, joyless eating I have ever seen.” (That does not sound “joyless” to me!!)

• Practices a morning exercise routine: this includes a minimum of 7 minutes of fast-moving yoga, pushups, and sit-ups (7 minutes is better than nothing!) 

• Takes the stairs in the hospital (won’t wait for the elevator) 

• Holds the Oz Family Olympics: this entails “tennis, wind sprints, competitive stair climbing: anything to push back against the forces of, and tropism toward, sedentary living.” (Wow I LOVE this idea! That’s going on the ‘things to do with future family’ list!) 

• Creates spikes in his life-productivity curve: rather than living out the normal person’s life-productivity graph (which is an inverted U with peak productivity in late 30’s/early 40’s), Dr. Oz wants “to delay that summit by taking on new challenges at determined intervals, thus creating vertical spikes in his own productivity graph.”