Lean Health: Aging in Reverse

By Paul A. Akers

Lean Health is the fountain of youth in a book. It opens your eyes to the most natural and simple strategy for aging in reverse. Lean Health turns the LEAN model of success for your business... into success for your body.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9780990601036

Book preview

Preface

Who is your Customer?

As a business owner and entrepreneur, one of the most important ideas I have learned is the importance of loving your customer. My company provides services and products to our customers, and without them, I am out of business. However, in order for my business to be relevant, first the customer has to want what I have to offer. Once I understood how important customers were to my business, I came to appreciate and cherish them. I learned to love them and they reciprocated. When I say love, I mean to cherish, respect and improve everything for their benefit.

In the Lean world, we live and breathe to deliver a continuous stream of quality and value to our customers. The customer is not a part of our business, the customer IS our business. We are obsessed with continuous improvement and the elimination of waste. We do this so we can increase quality and let value flow to the customer assuring that we maintain a long term, mutually prosperous relationship; characterized by a deep and reverent respect.

As I wrote this book, I asked myself the question, Who is the customer in the Lean Health scenario? It was easy for me to identify the customer because all I did was ask, Who is getting the short end of the stick? Who’s calling the shots? It became so clear to me that I was the business owner that was screwing my customer…my body! Wow…when I put this together I realized that I needed to make sure I reestablished proper and respectful love of my newly discovered customer. My body is my #1 customer!

As I began to understand the relationship between me and my newly discovered customer, everything changed. The moment this concept connected with total clarity deep inside of me, the quality of my life accelerated at a more rapid rate than I could have ever imagined.

All of a sudden, I considered how everything I put in my mouth would affect my customer, just like the fuel I put in my Ferrari would affect its performance. I started asking, Is this good for my customer? What have I done to support my customer today? I stopped being mindless and I became mindful of my cherished customer (my body)!

In the business relationship, if you treat a customer poorly they are apt to find someone else sooner or later. In the Lean Health relationship, the customer (your body) is stuck with you. If you can continue to abuse your loyal customer, they will take it as long as they can, sooner or later they will just give up. If you choose to make an intelligent decision to nurture and care for your customer, it will reward you with a positive mind-set, confidence, more energy than you could have ever dreamed possible, a boundless mental attitude, superior physical health, a longer life span, countless admirers that marvel at how someone your age could look so good. Is it worth the effort? The irony is the small amount of effort to achieve exceptional health is significantly less than dealing with all the travails of poor or average health. At the end of the day, understanding that my body is the most important customer has been a true awakening.

So welcome to Lean Health. As you read this book, use the filter that every decision you make about the food you eat and the degree to which you move, affects the most important customer in your life…your body!

Chapter 1

A Perfect Night in Germany

At eight o’clock on a pleasant August evening, I was sitting at an outdoor café in Baden-Baden, Germany, one of the most beautiful places in the world. Across from me sat two of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, Alex and Paloma, from Mercedes-Benz in Germany. We had just spent the last three days together, touring the Stuttgart Mercedes plant and test driving a spectacular S-Class Mercedes around Germany and France. We were bringing our journey to an end in this beautiful little city of Baden-Baden, where we sat chatting over a fantastic meal, recalling the high points of our recent adventure.

Paloma, Alex and I in Germany

As I savored my fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and parmesan-sprinkled broccoli, Paloma looked over at me and said, Paul, when are you going to write your next book?

I would really love to, but I’m so busy,

I replied.

I asked, Why, Paloma, why should I write the book? She replied, "I was waiting for my healthy food and realized you helped us change our way of thinking so fast, just three days of being with you. I thought you needed to pass on your thinking to everyone, so you should write a book.

Come on, Paloma said, her beautiful Brazilian accent coaxing me along. You need to do it. You need to start now and write one chapter a night.

I looked at her in disbelief, "I am in the middle of a two-month trip around the world, teaching and training people in eight countries on how to implement Lean. I’m capturing everything I do on video, because before I left, Mel Damski, a well-known movie producer, asked me to document the entire trip for a new television program called Lean around the World. I also have to manage my company FastCap (a Lean manufacturing business back home in Washington State). I’m completely swamped and you’re telling me you want me to also write a book? Are you crazy?"

You’ll find a way, she replied, much more confident than me.

Paloma, 2 minutes after she asked me "Paul when are you going to write your next

Reviews for Lean Health

[Hunter Savage · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It is all I, I, I. My story this, my story that. Okay, to the next book...