NEW YORK (AP) — Dominique Debroux, James Keppel and Jenny Watson don’t know each other, but all reached a point in their lives where they needed to make drastic changes to turn around potentially life-threatening conditions.
And they wanted — badly — to make the necessary changes.
“If you wake up and your first thought is, ‘I’m so sick. Oh my god, I am so sick!’ your brain is going to keep reminding you how sick you are. Instead, wake up and say to yourself, ‘Yeah, I’m going through some heavy stuff. What I want to do is find the solution,’” said Debroux, a 60-year-old survivor of cervical cancer and Lyme disease.
In the era of the so-called wellness revolution, the pressure to achieve a perfect lifestyle can be daunting. So exactly how do we kickstart a wellness journey without getting overwhelmed?
People who have done it, along with trainers and educators, have some advice:
Define ‘wellness’ and start small
Kristina Schuldt is a family medicine physician and wellness director for about 14,000 employees of the Mayo Clinic Health System.
“Wellness means different things to people. There’s fitness and physical wellness, but there’s also mental wellness, financial wellness, spiritual wellness,” she said. “A person should define what their wellness goal is.”
Don’t take on the entire wellness universe at once, she warned. Start with small steps.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
Increase water intake, for example, using a bottle or jug big enough to hold a day’s worth, with markings on the side to let you see how much you drink. If quitting smoking is the goal, cut down by one cigarette until it feels comfortable, then do the same thing again and again.
That goes for getting your steps in, too. If you’re not used to long walks, start with a few blocks and increase by two every week.
In the kitchen, sample superfoods to find out which ones work best for daily life. Will it be pumpkin but not kale? Flaxseed but not cranberries? Don’t force yourself to eat foods you don’t like. At the table, eat slowly. Savor each bit and try to recognize when you’re nearly full.
“Go with what we call the low-hanging fruit at first,” Schuldt said of first steps overall.
Think broadly on healing care
Debroux, a filmmaker in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, was 20 when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. While seeking some traditional treatment, including minimal surgery and radiation, she also turned to a holistic doctor for guidance on diet, supplements, and things like meditation and biofeedback therapy.
It all worked, but years later, at age 47, she faced another health crisis.
“My body wasn’t working anymore. I was exhausted all the time. I had all-over body aches, constant headaches. I was having neurological issues to the extent that at one point, I couldn’t remember one of my brother’s names,” she said.
Debroux’s gynecologist brushed it off as perimenopause, but that diagnosis didn’t feel right. She again sought out a holistic practitioner, who discovered Lyme disease.
“I went into that same space of, OK, let’s do everything. Healing means the whole body,” said Debroux, now 60.
She combined mainstream medication with herbs and paid close attention to nutrition. Four years later, the Lyme infection was undetectable. She went on to start a company that sells a protein powder made of peas.
Find what works and stick with it
At her heaviest, Jenny Watson weighed 420 pounds. In January 2023, she said, “I was at a point where I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I’m tired. My body hurts. I had hit rock bottom.”
Watson, a 36-year-old mom of two and a hairstylist in suburban Dallas, had tried fitness programs, but nothing ever stuck.
“What finally worked for me was picking up the right tools,” Watson said.
That included infrared sauna, in her case at HotWorx, which has outlets across the country. Various fitness sessions, from yoga to high-intensity interval training, are guided by trainers via screens set up in heated, infrared sauna rooms that accommodate up to three people, avoiding the pressure of huge class sizes.
Watson cites the kindness and encouragement of the staff for helping to get her over the hump. While she’s still not at her ideal weight, the pounds she lost have stayed off.
She continues to train, including weightlifting, while making other changes. She used to be a night owl, but she and her husband vowed to head to bed at 10 p.m. She started eating more whole foods, cutting many chemicals and processed foods from her diet. Her husband is her biggest supporter, making changes in solidarity.
Put a pin in the ‘eat, pray, love’ fantasy
Andrea Leigh Rogers, a fitness trainer who has worked with Gisele Bündchen, Nicole Scherzinger and other celebrities, is out with a new book come October: “Small Moves, Big Life.”
One of her key points: Don’t fall for whatever wellness trend is making the rounds.
“There’s the game of comparison. I don’t look like her. I can’t do that if I don’t look like her. Other barriers also feel heavy, like I have to pay $50 to do one class,” she said.
You don’t. What you DO need is to be consistent. That might mean mindful breathing, followed by a few minutes of stretching and a 10-minute workout in the morning. Or it could be a new approach to breakfast, or a rethink on the crush of daily responsibilities.
“We all have 10 minutes,” Rogers said. A good plan, she added, follows the acronym FEEL: “It’s fast, it’s enjoyable, it’s effective and there’s longevity.”
Sometimes, a reboot is needed
James Keppel, in Fort Collins, Colorado, nearly lost his liver to cirrhosis. That was in 2019. His first order of business was to get sober, which he did through rehab. He healed by making a series of nutritional and other life changes.
But a series of devastating developments, including a split with his wife and the premature loss of a close family member, left him floored. He sold his design company and turned to his sister for help, moving in with her and her family in Pennsylvania for nearly a year. He had to turn off the go-go rhythm of his old life.
“I slept a whole lot. I watched a lot of TV. I read a lot of books. I stayed off my computer. I didn’t take many phone calls,” he said. “I just slowly kind of ramped back up. You have to give yourself the space to get better.”
Keppel was inspired by his success to start his own private health care company offering one-on-one care.