Betty Sternberg
Title: Associate commissioner, Connecticut Department of Education
Age: 49
First Visit to Canyon Ranch: 1998
Betty Sternberg had long pushed the envelope. At age 22, she was closing in on a joint PhD in education and psychology from Stanford -- while teaching school full-time and writing four math textbooks. By her mid-thirties, she was helping to engineer school reform for the Connecticut State Department of Education -- while raising two children as a single parent. "I believed I was doing important work for society." says Sternberg, now an associate commissioner in the department. "But I knew that my kids were more important. I always felt like I was cheating one side of my life or the other."
Actually, she was cheating herself. She slept as little as four hours a night. And when a string of crises hit -- divorce, high blood pressure and diabetes, her mother's terminal cancer -- she began to experience constant emotional conflict. Although each emergency got her attention, Sternberg couldn't bring herself to change her Work habits. The resulting stress led to chronic overeating.
Last year, when she arrived at Canyon Ranch, her goal was to lose weight. But she soon realized that getting serious about a healthy diet and regular exercise meant getting serious about her work routine. So, instead of getting to the office by 8 a.m., she began staying home to jog on her treadmill and to lift weights. To manage her diabetes, she started bringing snacks to her meetings and eating regularly throughout the day.
Those changes represent a departure from her old work pattern. "I used to schedule people back-to-back, like a doctor's office. Now I know that it's okay to stop." Now that her son and daughter are in college, Sternberg is tempted to fill her extra time with work. But she's determined to stick to her new priorities: exercise, "mindful I eating," and hobbies. "I know that I could drop dead any minute," she says. "So I'd better live my life the way I want to live it."
Mel Zuckerman
Title: Founder, Canyon Ranch Health Resort
Age: 71
First Visit to Canyon Ranch: 1979
He had built one of Tucson's top residential-real-estate development operations from scratch. But Me! Zuckerman was a mess. He had high blood pressure, and he was50 pounds overweight. His doctor told him that he had the body of a man who was pushing 70-when, in fact, he was not yet 50. It was 1977. Zuckerman's father had just succumbed to cancer, Haunted by his father's death and worried about ignoring his own health, Zuckerman checked into the Oaks at Ojai spa, in Ojai, California. For the first time in his life, he started exercising regularly. He lost weight, and before long, he felt better than ever.
Out of that experience, Canyon Ranch Health Resort was born. Zuckerman decided to build a "vacation-lifestyle resort" that would focus not simply on dieting but on attitudes as well. Lenders wouldn't touch the idea. So he liquidated nearly everything he had, putting up $2 million in savings and $5 million in real-estate holdings. Although the ranch lost $l million in its first year, it soon garnered some travel magazine write-ups and developed a growing clientele. Zuckerman later opened a second resort, in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, and a third facility will open in Las Vegas this summer.
Now Zuckerman and his wife, Enid, live at the Tucson ranch full-time. He's up at 4 a.m. to watch CNN Headline News in his Jacuzzi. Then he exercises in his home gym for an hour and a half. After holding a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting with his management team, he works until 4 p.m. Then it's time for his daily massage.
At 71, Zuckerman remains intensely active both in his business and in philanthropy -- and his doctor says that he has the body of a man 30 years younger. That's progress. "I don't really like the term 'personal transformation.' That's too 'la-la land' for me," he says. "It's a process, you know: As the Chinese proverb says, 'The 1,000-mile journey begins with a single step.'"
Brandon Coleman Jr.
Title: President and CEO, Coleman & Coleman
Age: 43
First Visit to Canyon Ranch: 1993
He couldn't stop. Brandon Coleman Jr. was immersed in work that he loved -- building the Houston-based branding and marketing firm that he had founded at age 23. He was father to three children, and he reveled in coaching their sports teams. He attended church-board meetings and charity events. It was John O'Neil's book, The Paradox of Success (Putnam, 1993), that persuaded him to take a time-out. "All of a sudden, it hit me," Coleman recalls. "This was too much." He headed to Tucson: "At first, I wondered, 'I can afford to drop everything and do this?' Then I thought, 'Can I afford not to?'"
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