Saving Men From Themselves (eBook)

20 Proven Tactics With a New Approach to Healthy Living for Men Over 50

Louis Bezich (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
248 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-1832-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Want more out of life? Tired of being told that it's all downhill over 50? Does the thought of feeling good, sleeping well, and improving your sex life sound appealing? If so, brother, this book is for you. Saving Men from Themselves is your guide to a lifestyle where you can achieve these goals with a fresh approach to health and happiness that rejects masculine stereotypes and builds motivation by leveraging your most important relationships. Simply put, a model that matches purpose with practice. Using the lens of fifty-plus men he explored in his first book, Crack The Code, author Louis Bezich presents 20 evidence-based tactics complete with strategies to energize your relationships, develop healthy habits, and stay mentally sharp. And, to drive these points home, real-life stories accompany each tactic demonstrating how humanity and habits come together to create a sustainable lifestyle. Equally important, Bezich's model confronts the growing gap between life span and health span-the years we live in a state of good health, able to participate in all that life has to offer. While his tactics carry the strength to tackle a man's traditional resistance to healthy practices, his new approach can benefit men and women of all ages. Most men, need to develop rituals that transition their lives to a point where their day is incomplete without physical activity and eating healthy is the norm-but it doesn't have to be drudgery. Saving Men provides men, and the people that love them, with a roadmap to find the motivation and the drive to lead a healthy and happy life. Saving Men will show you: •That new beliefs about masculinity can improve your physical and mental health, and how to climb out of those old worn- out stereotypes. •The value of managing sleep, stress, and cognitive health as well as the importance of happiness, laughter, friendship, and fun. •How to pivot and overcome obstacles that once seemed insurmountable but now are entirely doable.

Louis Bezich is a healthcare executive, husband, father, grandfather, part-time professor, and author with a passion for health and fitness. His devotion is a result of a lifetime of experiences that included divorce, single parenthood, and professional challenges where diet and exercise became the antidote that carried him through the tough times and ultimately enabled him to flourish personally and professionally. Decades later, what started as a coping mechanism has grown into a commitment that drives him to share his experience, promote social motivation models, and advocate for a new culture of men's health. An executive for over 40 years in the public and private sectors, Bezich currently serves as a senior vice president and chief administrative officer with Cooper University Health Care and is an adjunct professor in the Graduate Department of Public Policy and Administration at the Camden Campus of Rutgers University. He has also served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science and International Studies and a guest lecturer in the College of Natural and Health Sciences at the University of Tampa. He sits on various public, nonprofit, and corporate boards, including the Corriell Institute. Bezich is the author of Crack The Code: 10 Proven Secrets That Motivate Healthy Behavior and Inspire Fulfillment in Men Over 50. He is a contributing writer on men's health at PhillyVoice.com, where he has published over 200 columns, and a regular guest on the This Is It TV podcast with Cheldin Barlatt Rumer. Over his career, Bezich has been a featured speaker at national, regional and local forums of professional organizations and been a featured guest on numerous television and radio broadcasts, and podcasts. His TED Talk, Unleash Your Emotional Force to Live Healthy and Happy, was featured at TEDx Cape May in 2025. He has published numerous articles in the fields of public administration and health. He is also a contributing author to Corporate Lawbreaking and Interactive Compliance, edited by Jay A. Sigler and Joseph E. Murphy. Bezich holds a master's degree in public policy from Rutgers University, a bachelor's degree in social science from the University of Tampa and is a graduate of Harvard University's Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government. Saving Men From Themselves: 20 Proven Tactics With a New Approach to Healthy Living for Men Over 50 is his second book.

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Want more out of life? Tired of being told that it's all downhill over 50? Does the thought of feeling good, sleeping well, and improving your sex life sound appealing? If so, brother, this book is for you-and the people who love you. Saving Men from Themselves is your guide to a lifestyle where you can achieve these goals with a fresh approach to health and happiness that rejects masculine stereotypes and builds motivation by leveraging your most important relationships. Simply put, a model that matches purpose with practice. Men can be their own worst enemy. Generation after generation of men in this nation carry forward a cultural mindset, often adopted by their fathers and handed down to their sons, that does more harm than good a view of medical care as emasculating. Study after study shows that a healthy lifestyle can have a major impact on our health that includes longevity, reduced risk of disease and a positive impact on our cognitive skills. This is the call to action which prompted Bezich to pen Crack The Code and extend his message with Saving Men From Themselves. Using the lens of fifty-plus men he explored in his first book, Crack The Code, author Louis Bezich presents 20 evidence-based tactics complete with strategies to energize your relationships, develop healthy habits, and stay mentally sharp. And, to drive these points home, real-life stories accompany each tactic demonstrating how humanity and habits come together to create a sustainable lifestyle. Equally important, Bezich's model confronts the growing gap between life span and health span the years we live in a state of good health, able to participate in all that life has to offer. While his tactics carry the strength to tackle a man's traditional resistance to healthy practices, his new approach can benefit men and women of all ages. Using evidence-based references, Bezich skillfully translates the science into easily digestible tactics that are easily adaptable for men and easily understood by those who may be supporting a man in his quest to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Unlike diet and exercise books that are largely focused on the physical science behind medicine, Bezich's approach starts with tactics he introduced in his first book centered on building motivation through a man's emotional relationships. Using social science, Bezich offers tactics for building the motivation that will generate discipline to stick with healthy practices. Toward this end, the book covers subjects like communications, support, and happiness that will give men critical insights into strengthening their relationships and ultimately producing the drive to live healthy. Balancing these motivational tactics, Bezich presents several approaches to enhance a man's physical and mental well-being that include diet and exercise but extend further to illustrate that a lifestyle is more than sweat and physical sacrifice. The importance of sleep, regular medical care, stress management, and brain care complete a well-rounded portfolio of practices. To fully equip men with the intelligence they'll need to confront the enemies of healthy behavior, Bezich supplements his tactics with insights from the front lines of behavior change. Examples including the science of post-traumatic growth and the importance of pivoting when life throws you a curve ball, deepen the context for his tactics. And, with a reference to the power of social contagion, Bezich offers an inspirational look at the collective power of men and our nation, to create a culture of health and happiness. Saving Men gives readers the tools to transform their lives physically, mentally, socially and emotionally. It's as much about fulfillment and purpose as it is about diet, exercise and healthy practices. A winning combination of tactics that is long overdue, but an approach that may just be what men, and the people who love them, need to get the most out of life.

Textauszug

Introduction

I knew it didn’t have to be this way: my own life experience taught me that the notion that it’s all downhill when a man hits fifty was simply not true. Regular check-ups, staying physically active, and eating right kept me feeling good and looking my best into my fifties and beyond. It gave me the energy to raise my boys, lead an active social life, compete professionally, meet the love of my life, and enjoy time with my family. I wanted to scream from the rafters so that men everywhere, and the people that loved them, would know that a little effort could bring a world of happiness and fulfillment. Well, instead of risking injury by climbing the rafters, I wrote a book.

In Crack the Code, I described my journey as a single dad who turned to exercise as a coping mechanism as I balanced raising two sons with building a career, and how years later my coping strategy became a passion. Along the way, I navigated a second divorce, and some very public professional challenges. In the end, the resiliency I built, fueled by the habits I’d developed, helped me land in a good place—an executive in a major health system, where I discovered just how poorly men my age, and Americans of all ages, managed their health.

Turns out my experience is the exception to the rule. Most men over fifty neglect their health, adopt a sedentary lifestyle, and generally only see a doctor if they’re sick or hurt. For them, preventive medicine doesn’t exist. Consequently, men suffer more chronic disease than women and die younger. Wow, I thought. This is ridiculous. As men enter “the second half of the game of life” we have much to live for—graduations, weddings, travel, encore careers, time spent with loved ones and more. So much, yet that all seems to go out the window. We metaphorically shrug our shoulders and allow ourselves to succumb to this inevitability that we have no control over the circumstances. I called bullshit!

Through my research for the book, I discovered that despite spending more money on health care than any other industrialized nation, the health of American’s is just middle of the pack. Upwards of seventy percent of Americans are obese or overweight, barely three percent live healthy. These behaviors have a material impact on our health. Experts tell us that “seven out of ten deaths in the United States are the result of chronic diseases, which for many people, can be prevented by eating well, staying physically active, avoiding tobacco use and excessive drinking, and getting regular health screenings.” Incredible. Our behavior, for men and women of all ages, was taking its toll, and I wanted to find an answer. Turns out, it’s right in front of us, and my experience was very telling.

Not the Medicine

Now, looking back, while my interest in the health outcomes and behaviors of Americans was sparked by my personal story, it was also a natural fit with my professional training and experience. You see, the principal influences on our health are our own behavior and related social factors—not a lack of medicine. America has the best health care in the world. When you’re sick, here is where you want to be. While not a perfect system, medical expertise is not the problem. Our health is a product of our own lifestyles and a tangled web of social determinants. A combination of psychosocial, cultural, and even economic factors creates an interdisciplinary ecosystem that influences our thinking. My graduate-level training and then teaching in public policy made me intimately familiar with multidimensional public problems, a construct that dominates the policy-making process. Further, as a seasoned executive, I knew that the toughest tasks require multilayered solutions, and as a health care executive, I knew that our industry struggles with the ability to incorporate these emotional and social factors into our treatment models. Yes, the more I dug into the state of American health, the clearer it became that the solutions were to be found outside of traditional medicine, and while the social science holding the answers was emerging, the greatest need was for a voice to consolidate the multiple theories and translate the science into a user-friendly and digestible model. With that realization, my advocacy was born.

Living the New Model

In Saving Men, I’ve given you twenty easy-to-follow tactics that will provide you with a day-to-day playbook of simple practices that can set you on a path to health and happiness. Be advised, these are not your grandfather’s medicine ball, gray sweats, smelly gym strategies! The tactics are built on the motivational platform I created in Crack The Code by presenting nuanced ways for enhancing your relationships and managing your well-being. I’ve also included innovative practices that are scientifically proven to contribute to your health but also add an element of fun and diversity to your lifestyle—both the science and my experience have shown me that success is all about finding a level of happiness with your lifestyle. And, as an added piece of intelligence from the front line of behavior change, I discuss the enemies you’ll face in your battle for health. Together, these twenty tactics represent a new and creative approach that can be the differentiating factor that gets you to the sustained behaviors that you seek—once and for all!

A Peer-to-Peer Proposal

As I mentioned, my academic training is in public policy where I have also served as an adjunct professor for more than twenty years. This training and experience combined with my senior leadership role in health care provides the appropriate background to tackle the interdisciplinary challenge presented by the state of Americans’ health. But beyond this formal preparation is my status as a man over fifty, a father, and grandfather with a personal journey that exposed me to the emotional force within us all at a relatively young age. This lived experience makes me a peer-to-peer messenger with an ability to present a credible voice. One built on my individual credentials and the science, but very much distilled and delivered in a practical fashion from a guy who simply wants to see others enjoy the lifestyle that I have discovered over a lifetime of challenges.

The Game Plan

I have organized my twenty tactics into three categories of behavior that show you that your journey goes far beyond diet and exercise. You’ll see how this comprehensive approach pulls in a strong mind–body connection that will fuel your motivation to succeed and provide the fulfillment you need to sustain your lifestyle over the long haul.

The Elements of a Healthy Lifestyle

Section 1: It’s All About the People in Your Life sets out eight tactics to strengthen your social relationships, reinforce your emotional bonds, and keep your most important and behavior-motivating relationships top-of-mind. Tactics range from the art of conversation to the value of a good laugh, how hugging improves your life, how to find happiness, the roles women play in your life, and sex as a motivator. I also include some great ideas to help you rethink your traditional views of masculinity, dismissing the notions that you’re too old for diet and exercise. The premise is simple, maintaining your social platform is equally, if not more challenging as building it. The tips found in this section will help you maximize your ability to leverage the inspiration immediately at hand.

Section 2: Your Physical and Mental Well-Being offers six tactics that drill down to the physical aspects of your health and well-being. Here I offer several proven practices, including practical tips about never placing limits on yourself, setting goals, deciding on your exercise program, and choosing the right diet. I also explore the benefits you derive from exercising in a natural setting, staying hydrated, and finally, what ending your shower with a cold rinse can do for you.

In Section 3: Going Beyond Diet and Exercise, I dive into some of the key concerns that sidetrack men’s health: stress, sleep, or lack thereof. In addition, I offer my insights into the benefits of simplifying your life, the bonus that staying sharp pays, and the inspiration that anticipating the future can bring.

With my 20 tactics in place, you’ll understand the distinction between adopting a “lifestyle” and simply watching your diet and working out occasionally. Woven together in a comprehensive strategy, you’ll experience the transformational power of the tactics on your health and your social relationships. It’s the ultimate win-win proposition.

Wait, there’s more, in Section 4: Three Final Points and Important Intelligence, I present proof that you can do this, and the down and dirty of the challenges you’ll face. I leave no doubt that you have this power to do this, the ability to transform your life and, in the process, enhance your most precious relationships—but not without some key intelligence from the front lines of behavior change.

To round out your understanding, and fully prepare you for your challenges, I first present a candid assessment of the interests working against you and your goal of living healthy. You’re in a fight, a battle to overcome the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.10.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-1832-6 / 9798317818326