Here’s your first chance to read a hefty excerpt of my third book, Wellness by Design: A Room-by-Room Guide to Optimizing Your Home for Health, Fitness and Happiness, which just published September 1. The Home + Garden editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune chose home fitness as the section she wanted to feature, given how important it is to our well-being, and how many of us have had to come up with alternative arrangements when our gyms closed earlier this year. Even if your gym has reopened, it is still a high risk space in terms of catching the virus that causes Covid-19. When my gym shut down in March, I reached out to a trainer friend with experience in endurance sports to adapt my Kilimanjaro workout from gym equipment to something I could do at home without machines. With three dumbbells, two resistance bands and a Wi-Fi connection, he crafted customized workouts I’ve been doing in my living room ever since. They’ve actually worked better for me than what I was doing at the gym before!
Perhaps it was the excerpt, or perhaps the overall high interest in making our homes healthier at this critical time, but the book is now #1 in Amazon’s Home Design & Construction category. Yay! You can order it from Amazon in several formats, or from other booksellers, including independents, here on my publisher’s page. It’s also available through numerous library systems — check to see f it’s available at yours, or request that it be added if it isn’t already.
If you buy or borrow and like the book, would you please share a quick positive review on Amazon or Goodreads? I’d really appreciate it! If you need a little help creating one, I’ve shared a fillable form on my website here. (You might need to download it to your device, depending on your browser and operating system, to use it.)
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You can keep up with all of the writeups and reviews of the new book on my new Book Reviews and Writeups page.
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Are you struggling to stay motivated with your fitness program? I know what that’s like! I long ago discovered that having a goal, like completing my first Spartan or marathon, was much more motivating to me than just exercising. It’s tough to do that now with so many races and events being postponed for 2020. I shared some tips on that front with one of my favorite charities, Fisher House Foundation, as their supporters face the transformation of the 2020 Marine Corps Marathon into a virtual event. Imagine the rigor of running 26.2 miles without cheering crowd! Here’s a link to that Marathoner Finds Motivation in Fisher House Fundraising post.
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I returned for another guest spot on the Revolution Radio vodcast to share timely wellness design tips with hosts Alex Guthrie and Poonam Patel. You can catch that segment at 28:00 here.
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I also shared thoughts with the Well blog on the importance of wellness design for everyone, not just the well-to-do, and with Business of Home on the importance of the 30th Anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
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Are you in the design industry? If so, be sure to catch next week’s KBTribechat, where I’ll be sharing how home organization fits into wellness design. That will take place next Wednesday, September 16, from 11 AM to 12 PM PST/2 PM to 3 PM EST, and is sponsored by Rev-A-Shelf, one of the manufacturers whose images grace the pages of my new book. In fact, now that I think about it, this American company has had images in all three of my design books! How cool is that?
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Design pros can also catch a recording of the Coverings Connected Healthy Buildings, Healthy Homes tile and stone webinar that debuted on August 26 here. They ran into a technical snafu so you can see the slides, but not us presenters! (And I was having a really good hair day too.) You can also catch my design industry article on tile trends from my latest Kitchen & Bath Design News Trend Spotting here.
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