The Happy Body and The Village Doctor

Aniela and Jerzy Gregorek live with their 4-year-old daughter Natalie in a Zen garden in a modest redwood sheathed house in the Glens in Woodside. Creeks and waterfalls cascade from all corners and small buildings peak out from under the trees. It is an oasis in already tranquil neighborhood.

In about 7 months I lost 78 lbs and achieved a level of fitness that, when factored with my age, is actually the fittest I have ever been. I have been stronger and fleeter but I have never been as integrated as I am today. Like many of us I tried a number of different techniques to get off the couch and to eat less. I kept losing my way because I repeatedly saw the process as just that, a process, something to be endured. I now see that the exact techniques are secondary and success comes not from a short-term set of practices but simply the commitment to become the person you think you want to be. What I mean is that many of the techniques for weight loss work and there are any number of exercise routines that will make you fit but they really only make a long term difference if you surrender to the idea that this is the way you are going to run you life and not something just tacked on as an expedient. A critical element is that exercise and diet are all of a part. Diet plans that don’t integrate exercise, and the reverse, rarely have much effect. I say it isn’t about technique but at The Happy Body there is certainly technique and it very specific.

Most people go because they want to lose weight but if you think that you will just be given a diet program you will soon be disabused of that. When I first showed up Jerzy took a look at me and it was pretty obvious I need a remodel. But why would I listen to him? On my arrival I saw a rather gorgeous woman leaving. “Who is that I asked, she can’t be a client she looks way to fantastic.” Oh, she is a client and if you do exactly what I tell you, I guarantee others will be saying that about you.”

People go to THB and for many reasons. Some need help with arthritis, others are just feeling old and some are accomplished athletes who want to be at peak fitness. My long time friend Jim went to increase his muscle mass. He has never had a weight problem. He is ramrod straight and he has an excellent diet. With this training Jim felt that he could perform later into life with a higher level of general fitness and here is someone who knows a great deal about the subject having been a driving force in the senior fitness movement for many years. He is approaching 80 and he looks to the future with optimism and enthusiasm. We used to jog together but I was to slow for him. I still am.

Barry is bit more typical. He needed to pull back 50 lbs and did it as planned. He shares with me the practice of working out regularly and keeping his eye on the scale. He and I discovered the same thing. Food wasn’t the enemy. In fact, quite the opposite.

I recently had lunch with Roger and Betty (he had the Caesar salad with chicken, dressing on the side, she the stuffed artichoke) both very active folks about my age and they had been down a similar path as me with regard to trying all sorts of different programs. Betty tried Jenny Craig, Nutrasystems and the gym scene. All this proved to be ineffective and one day Betty ran into a friend who was in the “you look terrific phase” so she signed up and soon her husband was in going too. A couple going through the Happy Body program is ideal of course. Roger and Betty are financial advisors and so quite often are desk bound but Roger is also a lacrosse referee and can now run enthusiastically back and forth for 50 games a year with his newfound fitness. They have a certain glow, which is once again plain old optimism about the future.

If you have a dramatic weight loss the reactions are predictable from: “Hey, you look good” to “Wow, you look terrific!” to “Whoa, are you dying?” Many of us have known people who were losing weight due to a serious illness and when half the people think you are one of them then you know you have your ideal weight. I am not kidding. When you are heavier and maybe 30 or 35% body fat, your face is fuller but get down to 10 or 15% and all the lines show up like cracks in a dry creek. They say that when you hit 40 you can pick your face or your ass but let me tell you at 60 you get neither so you had better focus on muscle, blood pressure and cholesterol.

The Gregorek’s have a new book coming out titled The Happy Body: The Simple Science of Nutrition, Exercise and Relaxation about how they deliver the goods. They tell you all about how they have become the dynamos that they are. Their personal goal is to be at the highest level of fitness for their entire lives and so far they are right on track. They are glad to share their path and the book will be available here as soon as it is printed. In it they tell you all about their exact strategy to become and stay fit and I can tell you if you follow the book it is guaranteed to work. But who really does what they tell you to do in books? The fact is that the human touch is what we all need and that’s why attending their program is where the fat hits the fire.

At THB they stress above all youthfulness. Youthfulness is an attitude not an age. I can honestly say that two years ago I felt as if I was nearly used up. Today I see no horizon at all and am eagerly looking for the next engrossing project.

Jerzy and Aniela happen to compete on a world stage in Olympic weightlifting so naturally they love this path and many of the exercises they give you are based on their this discipline. I have modified some of the exercises but building on the core instruction I have found my way to a work out I now do for 50 minutes a day, six days a week. I use dumbbells, a rubber tube, straight bar and let gravity do its derndest. I never thought I would like crunches and sit-ups but I do a wide variety of them as well. I used to work out in a gym for years but it always seemed like an obligation, something to get through like a kid forced to chew through a pile of spinach. Until I was introduced to the gradual increasing approach at THB I generally resented working out. But ever the contrarians Aniela and Jerzy use some techniques that a few coaches object to. Their work out doesn’t involve much sweating, hyperventilating or any endurance at all. Object if you will but look at them; they positively radiate fitness. In the end the best workout is the one that you will do day-in-day-out so if you like the marshal arts or yoga or running I say, terrific.

My friend Ilona has a great take on her time at THB. She has always been quite fit but twenty pounds beyond ideal. She felt that the workout she was doing didn’t make her happy and much of the food she ate wasn’t fulfilling. She heard that Jerzy and Aniela were telling people that they could tune you up to peak performance so she went. Now years after her last session she tells me that she credits much of her physical and mental integrity from her participation there. As she become healthier and more confident her daughter took notice. This 13 year old had a less then happy body image with a weight problem that bothered her. Ilona didn’t want to push her but the girl’s food choices were leading her down a dark path. Based on her mother’ success her daughter decided to go to THB and as a result she was able to reach for the brass ring and today is self posed 17 year old who likes the way she looks and how she feels.

So think of the things you did in the past and try to recall if your trainer ever said to you “Just do exactly as I tell you and you will get the body that you imagine for yourself. You will earn it, you will own it and (baring illness) you can keep it all the way to the finish line.” At The Happy Body this can happen to you.

If you think this is too good to be true or is some sort of advertisement, well it isn’t. I know some folks will go there will not succeed. But I tried a number of ways to come to peace with my body and it worked for me.

Village Doctor
If you picture a kindly old sawbones with a stethoscope in one hand and a lollypop in the other dispensing tried and true homilies about common sense and good health under a chestnut tree on the village green you might want to swing that around to 2009 where you will find instead a small focused practice where good common sense is dispensed for sure, but tempered with the latest advances in both science and service. Behold, the concierge practice that is the Village Doctor. villagedoctor.com.

First a note on how this works. Retainer fee or concierge medical practice is basically an agreement between a doctor and a patient whereby the doctor sees fewer patients and the patient pays more for the basic office services. Frankly some will say it is too expensive for them and others will see it as appropriately priced. The fact is that the annual fee is not covered by insurance. But with the decoupling of insurance, the physician and the patient are freed from the hustle that has become a part of medicine and which can (not necessarily will, but can) create an adversarial relationship between a patient and a doctor.

The three doctors include the founder, Dr. Eric L. Weiss, a long time emergency room doctor who is also a medicine travel specialist. At one point he was the doctor for the San Francisco International Airport. As a result The Village Doctor is recognized as a top travel clinic for the nation. Dr. Prerana Sangani is an internist with a public health background and Dr. Raquel Burgos has an extensive background in pediatrics. The other staff members ensure that scheduled visits start on time and route you to your doctor at any time for emergencies. There is a lot of talk about wellness as opposed to treatment but let’s face it, unless there is time to actuate the specifics then it becomes just more jibber jabber.

In addition to the regular practice The Village Doctor has taken the wellness formula and rolled out The Wellness Studio that is open to the whole community and is separate from the medical practice. This from their website: “Incorporating selected complementary alternative medical (CAM) therapies and successful fitness programs, The Village Doctor now offers a truly integrative approach to wellness. Specialists are able to work independently or collaborate in creating a highly comprehensive personal healthcare program. The Village Doctor Wellness Studio, a newly remodeled eco-friendly studio, is conveniently located off 280 in Woodside. Patients of The Village Doctor Concierge Medical Practice receive the unique benefit of their primary care physician’s inclusion and oversight of their individualized wellness programs; however, the Wellness Studio is very much open to the public.” wellnessstudio.com The Center provides classes in Yoga, Contour and Pilates. There is acupuncture, physical therapy, massage and nutrition counseling. Hummm, I feel better already. Dr. Weiss has also included a healthy item on the Buck’s kids’ menu. A kid’s chef salad. Check it out.

I made a commitment to try the practice for a year and see what happened. I am now 60 years old and for the last three years I have been a patient of The Village Doctor. I’m not there a great deal but I have come to see it a bit like a traveler crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. The actual time I’m on it is not that much but it is a great way to get where I’m going and I have been going two places. First I have needed to be sent to specialists in a couple of areas focused around injuries. It is a typical and not very interesting story.

The second thing and this has been the really vital (vital is such the perfect word here as I means “related to or the characteristics of life”) Dr. Weiss took my vitals during the first checkup and said, “Hey, you fat slug. Get fit or die.” Actually he didn’t say this but this was the message I heard. He let me know in his gentle way what I already was pretty sure of, being way overweight and staring at the universe from my vantage point on the couch was a life threatening reaction to a long-term problem.

So what to do? He suggested that I give The Happy Body folks a call. Now I had done that already about a year before and got some fellow on the phone who sounded a bit scary. He basically said to come see him if I was through being fat and lazy…well I wasn’t. And, unlike Dr. Weiss, he really was that direct.

Anyway Eric said I should probably go see them and I did. But that’s another story. Now when I go in for my check up I am happy with my vitals. My numbers are in the normal range and my blood pressure is actually low. It turns out that a guy in his younger years celebrates great biceps and abs. As he get older it’s more about good knees and a solid back and as he, and of course she, gets up there, it’s blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose that become very interesting to you.

So there may be no spreading chestnut tree but there is good medicine at The Village Doctor.

TED 2009

First a definition. TED is real, virtual, exclusive, inclusionary, site specific and global. TED started 25 years ago as a convocation of explorers examining the universe of Technology, Entertainment and Design. Today it is still about all this and more. TED is quickly becoming a big part of the world brain. I have attended for several years and TED has grown, as have I. Much like a space probe using the gravitation of the planets they pass to slingshot for more speed I am using TED as a pivotal point for my own life as I move forward to the challenges ahead.
In fact it was at TED in 2008 that I made a commitment to myself to whip myself into the best shape of my life. Happily I stuck to it. My commitment to myself for this coming year is to…well, you will have to watch this space same time next year.

TED has two major aspects, the formal stage presentations and the socializing during the intervals. At one point I found myself chatting with Bill Gates, Al Gore and Robin Williams. Robin asked me, “Aren’t you the Buck’s guy?” I admitted I was and Al said, “I go there.” I realized that Bill was a Buck’s customer as well. Just like you.

The generally serious academic presentations are broken up with dance troupes, piano jockeys, comedians, singers and even a live, remote youth orchestra from Venezuela. We have all heard youth orchestras and they are generally enthusiastic but a little raw. José Antonio Abreu’s (a TED prize winner) Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra draws from 250,000 young musicians, many from impoverished areas and it was, to my ear, the equal of any big city orchestra. These kids made me feel that the future was in very capable hands. Much of the conference is about the future, transcending shorter term problems like the economy. Where are we going as a people on this beautiful blue ball? Big notions and individual personal achievements are presented like the man who walked, not skied or sledded, to the South Pole. We swooped with Uli Gegenschatz the inventor of the winged flying suit as he showed us a film of him zooming through the Alps. He is actually working on a new suit where he jumps, flies and lands without a parachute.

Bill Gates filled us in on his world plan for fighting disease and his teacher training programs. At one point he pretended to release malaria infected mosquitoes into the crowd from a small jar saying, “Why should the poor be the only ones who get malaria?” When the anticipated laugh line didn’t materialize he added that the mosquitoes really didn't have malaria. For some reason this was interpreted by the press as dangerous or the rich had it coming and other unkind kind things. Hey, press folks, it was a joke! In fact Bill has a very good sense of humor and if you don't believe it, look up his retirement video on line. Chris Anderson, the Curator and host of TED, said as the pretend mosquitoes flew off that here was Bill releasing more bugs into the world (a line that did get the laugh). Bill Gates is a hero for the ages and to be in his presence is a tremendous honor. Later in the week I stepped into an elevator which held him and a service person with a cart on which rested a fruit plate. Behind the waiter’s back I mugged a snatch at the fruit. Bill gave me a conspiratorially permissive wink and I grabbed a strawberry. A small exchange, and for me indicative of the good will and mutual respect the very famous show the less so at the conference.

On TED.com you can see all the talks so I will mention a very few of them. P. W. Singer updated us on the burgeoning world of remote warfare. Combat robots in the water, on the ground and in the air. Compassionless killing machines. Very cinematic stuff and not in a good way. This was followed by a group of vocalists called Natural 7 who have taken hip-hop, jazz, R & B and rock and come up with a truly original sound using voice and electronic modulation to rock the house.
At one point I found myself at a table with a small group of Tedsters both typical and extraordinary. We were discussing the survival of the oceans with Silvia Earl the eminent oceanographer who was one of the winners of the TED prize. Next to me was the director of Stanford’s design school, Banny Banerjee. Next to him was Ram Shriram and his wife Vijay. Ram was an early investor in Netscape and helped launch Google. There was also Glenn Close and her husband the biotech exec David Shaw. I am a bit conflicted about Hollywood celebrities. We know who they are and they don't necessarily know us. This imbalance can make striking up a conversation strained. There are those of them who exhibit a kind of a grace that says, “It’s OK, you can talk to me” and Glenn one of these people. She was not wearing makeup, exhibited no movie star spin and she looked you in the eye. I was bold enough to ask her about her current TV show and she was very happy to talk about it. Well, I don't mind discussing my work and so why should she? Folks are cool at TED and even I forbore from blazing away with my camera. Also at the table was Dan McClellan who is completing Oceans, which we had seen rushes of earlier in the day. I have never seen such an intimate look at the lives of ocean creatures. Easily the most costly and possibly the grandest documentary to date.

Tim Berners-Lee led the audience in a chant, "raw data now!" After singlehandedly inventing the World Wide Web Tim now wants to have free flowing raw data which he sees as more like human thought than the gigantic encyclopedia the Internet has become. Ray Anderson invented the mundane seeming carpet tile. But here is a manufacturer who isn't content to just make a product. His company is approaching a zero % carbon footprint. This segued into a presentation about the mummies of the Capuchin monastery in Palermo, Sicily. There we were looking inside an Italian tomb which spoke to culture, religion and taxidermy over the last four centuries. I have for many years been a big fan of the Capuchins who had the curious habit of turning the bones of their followers into furniture.

Willie Smits is Dutch Indonesian and he was a tremendous hit. Willie was in a village marketplace one day and found a sick orangutan dying in a trash heap. He nursed it back to health, gathered more of them and eventually established a sanctuary where there are now over a 1,000, but this isn't the whole story. From his husbandry of the apes he found creative ways to reforest vast stretches of jungle which have been laid to waste. Now years later his Masarang Foundation has reestablished agricultural people living in harmony with the natural environment.

Margaret Wertheim enchanted us with an unlikely topic. She crochets coral reefs. Margaret observed that coral, cactus and many other living creatures grow with hyperbolic geometry. This potato chip shape yields high surface areas. She began crocheting in wool a representation of a coral because of her passion for traditional female handcraft combined with a love of natural physics and concern for the threatened reefs. Hundreds heard her message and contributed wool coral for a vast exhibition presently on exhibit in L.A. I learned a fact that had thus far escaped me. Coral reefs grow atop extinct volcanoes at the same rate as the volcano’s cone degrades into the sea. A delicate balance indeed. Margaret and her sister Christine have established The Institute for Figuring to celebrate this and other arts. The reef is part AID’s quilt, part Bayeux Tapestry with shades of general relativity and sitting at Grandma’s knee.

Another presenter, Dale Chihuly, has made a reef too with his sexy, scintillating glass art; opposite yet complimentary to crocheted wool. Another expression is the monumental architecture of Daniel Libeskind. His controversial (could it have been any other way?) design for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center is all angles and sharp corners. In fierce opposition to the work of Frank Ghery. Daniel wants to struggle against improbabilities and sees his designs as a triumph of optimism over pessimism. A bold vocabulary for big ideas.

Shai Agassi presented his Better World electric car program. He wants to provide all the new cars for entire countries with replaceable batteries and projects a 2 cent a mile future. A charismatic speaker with a big following, but his numbers don’t add up even as his investors get in line to prove the critics wrong. Thank heavens for the big thinkers even those with unlikely ideas. They said man couldn’t fly too. At least one speaker was just plain wrong. Take respected Columbia professor Dickson Despommier’s scheme to build practical food farms in 30 story buildings in places like midtown Manhattan. I am very familiar with the costs and problems inherant in tall buildings and I can find no way into this idea. He gets very good press but like other technical schemes with crippling debilities the desire to make it so is not enough.

Jill founder of SETI was another TED prize winner. She and her team are scrubbing the cosmos for signs of life. Intended or unintended she is pursuing global harmony. A simple formula. Find intelligent life elsewhere and we feel as one here on Earth. Bonnie Bassler talked about bacterial communication. Those little buggers are communicating using a system called quorum sensing. They chemically twitter each other and we are beginning to understand their language. Nicholas Negroponte of MIT brought out his little green laptop that was a twinkly eye mote 3 years ago and now accounts for about half the laptops in the world. Talk about an idea worth spreading.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat Pray Love to huge acclaim and asked us to ponder what it might be like to be a creative person who might have her best work behind her. Elizabeth, no way kid! Jay Walker sang the phrases of the very flexible English language and showed us a video of 5,000 Chinese students learning to speak it in a single gigantic classroom. Scary and lovely. Other presenters included Sarah Jones who with her 14 NYC characters had us dying with laughter.

Small ideas, big ones, bigger ones and 1300 of my close friends. This is TED to me.