Disruptive innovation is all the rage in business circles these days, but until recently, it wasn’t so popular in the health and fitness world.

That’s changing now, and thank goodness for that.

For far too long, we’ve been fed a steady stream of not-so-great advice. (“Eat low-fat and low-calorie! More grains and dairy! More cardio sessions! More willpower!”)

We’ve been offered a lot of not-so-great medical counsel. (“Er, we don’t actually know what’s causing that chronic problem, so here, just take this prescription.”)

We’ve sensed that these approaches weren’t working for us, and yet we’ve been a little afraid to strike out on our own. We weren’t sure where to go, or how.

The Renegade Path

For me, defying convention has never been about wanting to be different. It has been about wanting to have a snowball’s chance in hell of staying healthy in a world that has often seemed intent on making me sick, fat, and depressed.

That’s why we created Experience Life back in 2001. It’s why I later penned my little 10-point chapbook, Being Healthy Is a Revolutionary Act: A Manifesto for Thriving in a Mixed-Up World, and came up with the 101 Revolutionary Ways to Be Healthy. (Now an interactive Web feature, a poster, and a mobile app, all available at RevolutionaryAct.com.)

We launched RevolutionaryAct.com and the 101 Ways because we realized that a whole lot of us needed more meaningful inspiration and support than we’ve been getting.

We need help with daily choices and perspectives, and in seeing what we’re up against. But we also need support in feeling less like weird, isolated outliers and more like part of a healthy movement that’s gaining steam. Which, I am happy to say, ours is.

Thanks in part to the rise of Web-based and social media, the call for a healthy revolution has spread quickly over the past decade — into forward-thinking food and fitness communities around the globe; into progressive healthcare circles; and, slowly but surely, even into the mainstream media.

But we’ve still got a lot of work to do. Because right now, the best, most helpful information still isn’t getting out to a broad enough audience (for a sense of why, see “Decoding Health Media”. ) And the results aren’t pretty:

• Today, two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese (and our kids are catching up fast).
• More than 50 percent of U.S. adults are chronically ill; one in three of us has metabolic syndrome (prediabetes), and 90 percent don’t know it.
• About 70 percent of us regularly take at least one prescription drug. More than 50 percent take at least two.
• The top-selling prescription drugs are meds for blood pressure, cholesterol, depression, and heartburn — all lifestyle-related conditions that can be greatly improved or healed through lifestyle changes.
• Seventy-five percent of the money we currently spend on healthcare is used to treat (ineffectively) chronic lifestyle-related diseases.

It’s not just our bodies that are suffering. It’s our minds and spirits. Depression, anxiety, ADD/ADHD, and eating disorders are rampant.

Epidemiological data suggest that fewer than 20 percent of us are mentally and emotionally thriving. The remaining 80 percent, according to psychology researcher Barbara Fredrickson, PhD, are languishing or “living lives of quiet despair.”

The Need for a New Normal

OK, so let’s just stop and mull over those facts for a moment:

• The majority of the U.S. population is sick, overweight, mentally or emotionally disrupted, or all of the above.
• Only a relatively tiny minority is healthy, happy, and thriving.

What does it mean that our society reliably produces more unhealthy, unhappy, vulnerable people than healthy, happy, resilient ones?

It means, quite plainly, that our society is sick.

That sickness shows up everywhere. In our bodies, yes, but also in our families and communities, our healthcare system, our food supply, our government, our schools, our religious institutions, our economy, our ecological systems, and especially in our relationships to ourselves and each other.

Fortunately, this is something we can change.

How? By rejecting the unhealthy conventions that are producing all this misery and embracing more promising strategies with fresh hope and enthusiasm. By diligently mastering the renegade healthy choices and healthy skills that matter — and ceasing to waste our time, energy, and resources on things than don’t. By seeing that choosing to be healthy in an unhealthy world isn’t some odious, obligatory chore or a hopeless battle. It’s a transformative hero’s journey. It’s a revolutionary act. It’s a sacred art. And it can be done.

That, in essence, is what this new column of mine is going to be about. In each issue, I’ll explore one of the 101 Ways. And the renegade fun starts right here, with the mother of all Revolutionary Acts: Defy Convention.

So how do you do that? Start by simply noticing how many unhealthy things have become the convenient, default choices in our culture, including giant-size portions, checkout-aisle junk-food displays, and elevators made easier to find than the stairs.

Notice what’s presented (and pushed) as “normal” — in the media, at restaurants, at work, at the doctor’s office, everywhere you go. Realize a lot of it is crazy-making and sickness-producing, and very much in need of some disruptive innovation.

Next, start disrupting and innovating. Push back where you can. Take pride and satisfaction in the ways you are rejecting our society’s mixed-up version of normal in order to reclaim your well-being and your own healthier, happier version of reality.

When that makes you seem weird or different, pat yourself on the back and just keep going. Remember, given where the conventional majority is headed, different is a preferable destination.

That’s where we’re starting, anyway. I hope you’ll dig into the rest of the 101 Revolutionary Ways, both here and online, to see where our convention-defying journey goes next.

Revolutionary Reading

“Being Healthy Is a Revolutionary Act: Renegade Perspectives for Thriving in a Mixed-Up World” — You want to be healthy? Well, hey, that’s wonderful. This article is designed to help you succeed.

A Manifesto for Thriving in a Mixed-Up World — Pilar Gerasimo’s 10-point handbook for the healthy revolution.

“Fitness Redefined” — Baby boomers, a generation of convention busters, are reshaping expectations when it comes to their personal health and fitness, too.

“The Way of the Healthy Person” — If there is any clear path toward the promised land of healthy living, it begins on the fertile ground of our own assumptions, beliefs, and daily choices.

I love my morning practice so much (just a few blissful minutes for me before I so much as glance at a screen), I share it with anybody and everybody who expresses the least bit of interest.

A while back, Julie van Amerongen, founder of the Practice Project, invited me to share my daily practice there. The Practice Project is this cool site where Julie collects the diverse practices of all sorts of smart and interesting people, from health and wellness gurus to business leaders and authors.

She has them describe those practices in their own words, explain why they do them, who inspired them, what gets in the way, how they overcome those obstacles, and so on. Really neat.

So when Julie first invited me to contribute, I was thrilled. And then, I confess, I had a moment of apprehension: Was my short-and-sweet little “morning minutes” routine too simple and unsophisticated to merit a profile like this? I mean the basics are pretty basic:

• On waking, while coffee is brewing but before I’ve looked at any screens or turned on any electronic devices, I take a minimum of five minutes to light a beeswax candle and do something quiet and lovely for myself.
• I might do yoga, meditate, play guitar, pull a wisdom card, journal, read a passage in an inspiring book, or just breathe and look out the window.
• If it’s warm enough and the weather is nice, I take my morning minutes outside.
• At the end of the practice, I take three deep breaths while focusing on my intention and vision for the day. Then I blow out the candle and move into action.

Apparently this practice is simple in a good way. It was a big hit with Julie, and with her audience. She even wrote about it in a piece for Elephant Journal, which made me feel even more proud and happy that I’d shared what was real for me, and what worked for me, even in the face of all my “good enough?” doubts.

I guess a lot of people must have the same challenge I do — creating even a little time for oneself in a hyper-busy world. Which of course is one essential element of choosing to be healthy in an unhealthy world (which just happens to be the subject of my forthcoming book on Healthy Deviance).

So check out my practice notes, read up on some of the other practices at the site, let me know what you  think. And then tell me (as Julie would ask): What is YOUR practice?

P.S. If you want to know more about the benefits of a morning practice, and how I go about mine, check out the “Morning” episode of The Living Experiment podcast that Dallas Hartwig and I do weekly!

Haste makes waste. I’d heard that saying my whole life, but its true meaning sunk in about a month ago. It came announced by a searing pain and an audible crack – the unmistakable, sickening sound of a breaking bone.

A moment earlier, I had been at my desk, editing an article that had already gone through three rewrites, was now hopelessly behind schedule and – as I saw it – still wasn’t close to good enough. In a fit of annoyance, and up against a deadline, I had decided to work off my frustration by dashing up and down the stairs a few times. But four breathless flights later, I was no less irritated and no less behind schedule. “Oh CRAP,” I thought, “I don’t have time for this!”

And so, in a last-ditch effort to blow off steam, I assumed my classic Wilma Flintsone stance (little fists at sides, steam coming out of ears) and stomped my foot. Hard. Too hard, according to my fifth metatarsal. It gave way with an excruciating crunch and left me crumpled on the floor, cursing like a sailor.

For the record, breaking my foot did not rate well as a time saver. This fact occurred to me about three hours later – around the same time my deadline was passing – as I was looking at x-rays and explaining to the orthopedist just how I had managed to break my own foot bone into jagged little pieces.

The doctor seemed surprised. Apparently editors don’t frequently sustain this sort of work-related injury. Yes, I told him, I took calcium. Yes, I did weight-bearing exercise. No, I didn’t have an eating disorder, and yes, my bone density was just fine.

(Read the rest of this article, which first appeared in Experience Life magazine.)

So much of what we’ve been sold under the guise of “health and fitness information” is a false bill of goods. What we’re told is so often only part of the story. And in the past, we’ve been way too eager to swallow the half-truths we’ve been given.

We’re told that this or that diet will make all the difference in our bodies, but no one explains how our internal reality — our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and so on — inform our ability and willingness to follow through on the most basic of personal commitments, much less a one-size-fits-all eating plan. Meanwhile, we ignore the fact that no diet has ever worked for long, and instead we start sniffing out the next miracle plan.

We obsess about the details of the latest studies and product claims, while we ignore the commonsense eating advice that somewhere, deep down, we all know is right: Cut down on the processed junk (including the “diet” junk) and eat a wide range of the whole, natural foods (including lots of fresh vegetables and fruits) that our body knows how to use to its advantage.

We’re told to get plenty of exercise, but no one explains how challenging that can be in a society where activity-friendly zones can be downright elusive and where passive electronic entertainments beckon at every turn. Meanwhile, we use convenience as an excuse and we stay planted on the couch, plugged into DVDs and reality-TV shows when our bodies are crying out for a little movement — when our hearts and minds are calling out for connection, expansion, release. We take heavily advertised drugs to feel fewer pains instead of making life changes that could eliminate their causes.

(Read the rest of this article, which first appeared in Experience Life magazine.)

To say that healthiness and sexiness are connected is, in many ways, to understate the obvious.

It’s widely recognized, of course, that many conspicuous elements of physical attractiveness — things like shiny hair, clear eyes, smooth skin, a fit body — have their natural roots in physiological health. And yet, both the true depth and complexity of the connection between good health and perceived sexiness remain largely undersold.

In reality, it would be virtually impossible to overstate the profusion of health factors that play a role in what we think of as “sex appeal.” Scientific studies have demonstrated that everything from miniscule variations in body symmetry to the concentrations of various hormones in our bloodstream can affect whether or not we are perceived as attractive to others.

(Read the rest of this article, which first appeared in Experience Life magazine.)

Show me your refrigerator and I’ll tell you who you are – or at least, who you think you are.

Take my friend Jane’s fridge. It used to be full of diet foods: low-fat this, sugar-free that, carb- and calorie-reduced, imitation everything. You’d be hard-pressed to find an actual, unadulterated food product on Jane’s kitchen shelves. If it didn’t scream “diet,” she didn’t want anything to do with it.

At that time, what I could have told you about Jane was that she was convinced that she needed to lose weight and that she didn’t trust her body to help her make wise food choices. She didn’t trust food, period.

She seemed to believe that the power to change her body for the better lay somewhere “out there” — with multinational food-processing companies and diet-smoothie producers that presumably knew a whole lot more about her health and fitness than she ever would.

Today, I’m delighted to report, Jane’s fridge says something entirely different about her. And that’s because Jane’s perspective on food has done a serious one-eighty — and her body has come along for the ride.

About a year ago, Jane and I had a heart to heart. She’d been reading the magazine’s advice about eating more whole foods, but she was convinced that if she traded in her fake-o diet fare, she’d start gaining weight. So I started in on a little impromptu pep talk.

I said, “Look Janey, you don’t need all this diet stuff. It’s not going to help you lose weight. In fact, it’s working against you, and it’s preventing you from making good progress with your fitness program.”

(Read the rest of this article, which first appeared in Experience Life magazine.)

It’s 2:30 a.m. I can’t sleep. My brain won’t turn off and my body can’t seem to quiet down. To my great annoyance, I’m running through my mental lists, cycling through a series of worries, details and projects in progress without making any actual headway.

Having learned the hard way that this endless loop will not terminate itself without some kind of intervention, I get out of bed, go downstairs and unroll my yoga mat. I light a candle, take some deep breaths, and do a few slow, gentle stretches.

Within minutes, I feel the smooth machinery of my parasympathetic (“rest and relax”) nervous system clicking into gear, and the frenetic jittering of my sympathetic (“fight or flight”) nervous system rumbling and grinding to a stubborn halt.

Simultaneously, I feel two consciousnesses confront each other: the ancient wisdom of my body, informed by eons of cumulative experience about what it needs, about what it can and can’t control — and the nattering rantings of my modern-day mind, replete with frustration and anxiety about an absurd laundry list of things that feel urgent, most of which I can do virtually nothing about.

(Read the rest of this article, which first appeared in Experience Life magazine.)