Bill Kuehl, director of admissions

What does wellnes mean to you?
 Wellness means making a conscious effort and commitment every day to live a healthier, longer, more balanced life. Wellness means educating yourself on healthy living practices and incorporating what you enjoy and what works for you into a routine. It means listening to what your body is telling you and responding to its needs with proper diet and exercise.

What do you do to stay well?
   Personally in the past six months, I have made a conscious lifestyle change that allowed me to lose 42 pounds. My wife started eating healthier and I saw what she was doing and something just clicked and I jumped into it 100 percent. There is no magic formula to it, because I’ve tried a variety of diets and they only seem to work for six months or so.

My current success came from re-educating myself on eating healthy and incorporating what worked from each diet into my overall lifestyle. Basically, it involved cutting out sugars, eating salads, fruits and vegetables, watching my fat intake, eating smaller portions, and replacing drinking sodas with water. For exercise, I coached baseball over the summer and I love to spend time with my eight-year-old son throwing the football or baseball after work

How do you work wellness into your day?
 The funny thing is that I used to joke about my health, but now I really take it seriously. I’ve tried to eat healthy and exercise in moderation to take the weight off gradually. Instead of eating three square meals, I eat four to five smaller meals a day.

I drink coffee and eat a banana for breakfast; have a banana for a snack, eat a salad or sandwich for lunch; and have a well-balanced dinner involving a meat, salad, and vegetable, and a fruit or yogurt for dessert. After I get home from work, I might walk on my treadmill for 15 to 20 minutes at a rate that really gets my heart going or my favorite thing to do is to incorporate family time and exercise into one.  My son is the real motivator because he is always asking me if we can throw around the baseball or football, and that is truly the type of exercise I enjoy.

What are your biggest struggles for maintaining wellness?
 The biggest struggle is all of the temptations out there from cookies to candy. However, the funny thing is that I actually crave healthy foods now! Of course, though, I find it important to give into temptation every now and then. It’s important to not force yourself to avoid your cravings because in moderation, it can be okay. Restricting these foods completely out of your diet is an extreme, and any extreme can lead to over-eating or falling off the wagon completely. If I do give into a craving once in a while, I usually follow it up with a healthier eating behavior. Again, a healthy lifestyle is not about restriction, but balance and moderation and understanding what works best for you.

How do you find time to workout?
I don’t find time to “workout” and if I had to make time to do it, it probably wouldn’t be at the top of my list. However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t get any exercise. I take the concept of working out and insert it into other lifestyle behaviors I do enjoy. Because I want to spend quality time with my son and not miss his growing up years, playing baseball and football with him is the most rewarding exercise there is.

Why is being well important to you?
 It’s important to be healthy for my family so they can continue to have me around. It’s also been rewarding to have influenced my parents to start being more conscious of what they eat. I’m very pleased with the changes I’ve made and I like myself better because of the increased amount of energy I have to do the things I love.

Do you have any recommended resources for wellness?
 Basically my advice is to pay attention to everything you see and read and find what works best for you. This could be anything from reading labels on food to taking different aspects of separate diet approaches and making it into a lifestyle you can live with. Education is key and a useful resource for this is Northwestern’s HealthyU Web site.