Penguin Speakers Bureau
Biography
Joe Piscatella is one of the country’s most respected experts on how to commit to living a healthy lifestyle in the real world.
Joe knows more than a little about commitment and defying the odds. At age thirty-two, a successful businessman with a young family, Joe underwent emergency coronary byp …
Read moreJoe Piscatella is one of the country’s most respected experts on how to commit to living a healthy lifestyle in the real world.
Joe knows more than a little about commitment and defying the odds. At age thirty-two, a successful businessman with a young family, Joe underwent emergency coronary bypass surgery. The prognosis was not good, with doctors predicting he would not live to be forty. But Joe’s philosophy was: “You can’t change the cards you were dealt, but you can change the way you play them.” And he did. Joe recently celebrated his 32nd anniversary of that heart surgery, making him the longest-lived survivor of cardiac surgery in the U.S. He is living proof that with a positive mind-set and the right information, sticking with a balanced lifestyle for optimal health is possible.
A high-energy speaker, he is a man with a visionary message and the extraordinary skill to tell it. He uses the art of storytelling, contagious humor, and decades of experience to deliver a powerful, practical message that moves audiences to live healthier lives. Over 2 million people have attended Joe’s powerful keynote speeches and breakout sessions steeped in humor, insight, and practical “how to” tools. He knows the science of balanced living. More important, he understands the practical application of that science for today’s busy lifestyles. With his energy, sense of humor, and decades of experience, Joe captivates and motivates audiences, inspiring them to take action for their health. “Joe Piscatella knows more about healthy living than anyone I know,” says Dr. William C. Roberts, editor in chief of The American Journal of Cardiology.
Joe is a bestselling author. His work includes Don’t Eat Your Heart Out Cookbook, Take a Load Off Your Heart, and The Road to a Healthy Heart Runs Through the Kitchen. His newest is Positive Mind, Healthy Heart.
Joe’s position as a thought leader and the practicality of his advice is recognized nationally. He is a frequent guest on The Today Show, CNN, Good Morning America and Fox News. He has hosted three PBS television specials on lifestyle and health, and is in preproduction for a program on the health of children. He is the only nonmedical member of the National Institutes of Health Expert Panel on Cardiac Rehabilitation. Time magazine says, “Joe skillfully weaves humor, a fresh approach, and common-sense ideas into an energized presentation that delivers outstanding results.”
He is the Founder and President of the Institute for Fitness & Health, an organization that consults on worksite and community health programs. Clients include the Boeing Company, Raytheon, Exxon/Mobile Pipeline Company, Sprint, the U.S. Naval War College, Cleveland Clinic, the Federal Reserve Bank, Starbuck’s, and GE Asset Management Company.
Says Sally Hass, Benefits Education Manager for the Weyerhaeuser Company, “If companies want their people to live healthier, they have a responsibility to help them develop positive skills. Joe Piscatella supplies knowledge and motivation. He is a bridge to those skills.”
Check out Joe’s website here.
Speaking Topics
Corporations & Associations- Take a Load off Your Heart: Successful Strategies for Managing Stress in Bailout Times
In this era of too little time and too much to do, of increased career and family commitments, of crawling traffic and never-ending e-mails, Americans are living with chronic stress. Indeed, 89% of us say that the stress in our lives is overwhelming. The result is often high levels of frustration, anxiety, and anger. In this presentation, Joe examines the impact of chronic stress on health, productivity, and quality of life. He helps audiences understand that the secret to a balanced life is not to avoid stress, but to manage it; not to react to stress, but to respond to it. His program not only examines the sources of stress in modern life (including Type A personalities), but it provides audiences with a variety of mental and physical tools to successfully manage stress every day.
- Make Your Health Last as Long as Your Life: Maximize Health Span and Longevity
Just because you can afford retirement doesn’t mean that you will have the quality of life to enjoy it. While a financial plan is important, a good health plan is critical. There is a difference between longevity (the amount of years you live) and health span (the number of years you live in good health). Two people, for example, each live to age eighty-five. But while the first spends the last twenty years of his life in a golf cart, the other spends those years in a wheelchair. Their respective longevity is the same, but their health spans are drastically different. In this timely program, Joe examines the eight lifestyle habits found in societies all over the world where people not only live longer, but also have extended years of good health. Learn what you can do now to maximize your “health span” and increase the number of years you will have good health.
- Eating Healthy in a DoubleBurger.Com World: A Step-By-Step Guide to Healthy Eating in the Real World
A balanced diet is critical for good health and increased performance. But how do you sort out what is balanced in a world of conflicting claims, where fat and carbohydrates see-saw being in, then out; where a tablespoon of ketchup can contain a teaspoon of high-fructose corn syrup; where food supplements claim to be healthier than food itself, and where new weight-loss diet books appear weekly? In more than three decades of successfully managing his heart disease, Joe knows fad diets from real science. His sensible, realistic program offers basic principles for healthy eating, including cutting-edge methods on how to control your fat tooth. (That’s right—fat tooth, not sweet tooth!) More importantly, he gives nutritional science real-life application. Audiences will learn how to read food labels to make smart choices at a grocery store, what the secret is to cooking healthy food at home (and having your whole family enjoy it), and how to handle eating in the company cafeteria or in a restaurant.
- Raising Fit Kids in a Fast World: Strategies for Overburdened Parents and Caregivers
Raised in a world dominated by fast food, television, and computer games, kids are more sedentary, overweight, and out-of-shape than a generation ago. The typical twelve-year old today weighs 11.7 pounds more than his or her counterpart in 1973. In the last decade, the obesity rate in white children has increased by 50%; in Hispanic and African-American kids, it has doubled. The result: a generation of children with elevated cholesterol, higher blood pressure, and more Type 2 diabetes. This may be the first generation not to live as long as their parents. What are parents to do? This seminar offers practical and easy-to-implement strategies for teaching children healthy exercise and eating habits that will last them a lifetime.
Hospital & Medical
The following programs are available in CME & CMU presentations
- Increasing Patient Dietary Compliance: Helping Patients to Eat Healthier
Dietary habits have a great impact on a person’s health. According to the Surgeon General, six of the ten leading causes of death are linked directly to diet. That is why so many patients look to their doctors for help. Unfortunately, many doctors are not in a position to do so. According to NIH data, 85% of physicians state that they are not effective in helping patients make healthy dietary changes. This program looks at why patients are unable to stick to balanced eating patterns, and it provides the most current science and tools for health professionals to better help patients institute and maintain a healthy diet. Joe examines fad diets, from “no fat” to “no carbohydrates.” He also provides a critical look at dietary counseling techniques and demostrates how the current standard-of-care may be setting up patients for failure. The program will examine the role of food cravings, physiologically identified as a “fat tooth,” on dietary habits. Joe also examines the impact of chronic stress on dietary habits. Attendees will gain the information, insight, and tools needed to help their patients make healthy dietary changes.
- Take a Load off Your Heart: Successful Strategies for Managing Everyday Stress
Medical staff today—nurses in particular—are usually handling double stress. The first is the stress that their patients feel just from being in a hospital. Nurses and doctors are called upon to help patients and their families manage very stressful situations. The second is the stress they themselves feel in performing their duties. Short-staffing, extended hours, and multi-tasking often subject medical professionals to chronic, overwhelming stress that can negatively impact their patient’s care, not to mention their own health In this CEU program, Joe provides cutting-edge information on the sources of stress, its impacts, and, most importantly, the tools for coping with chronic stress more effectively.
- Women and Heart Health: A Heart-Healthy Lifestyle for Females of All Ages
Contrary to popular belief, men are not the chief victims of heart disease. The truth is that heart disease is an equal opportunity affliction. While about the same number of women as men have heart disease, it is by far the number one killer of women. Indeed, over 250,000 women die from the disease each year, more than the next fourteen most likely causes of death for females combined. In this presentation, Joe examines how primary cardiac risk factors—such as cholesterol, triglycerides, coronary inflammation, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and others—impact women, and he helps attendees to calculate their personal risk. In addition, he covers women-specific topics such as hormone replacement therapy and signs of heart attack. With a heart-healthy lifestyle, women can prevent, stabilize, and even reverse heart disease.
Featured Book
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Take a Load off Your Heart
"Finally a book to tell us not just what to do—but how to do it. It’s an incredibly readable, comprehensive and up-to-date guide that belongs in every home library." —Kathy Berra, MSN, NP, Standford Center for Research in Disease Prevention 
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