Book excerpt: Building Health, Building Wellness offers a commonsense guide to achieving your personal best in health and wellness. Relying on over twenty years of experience as a family physician and public speaker on health and wellness topics, author Gregory W. Pierce, MD, has compiled information on a range of topics, both common and uncommon, that have the potential to directly and even indirectly affect your personal health and wellness. From how you approach your weight loss goals to how your family, friends, and environment affect your routine, Dr. Pierce has brought to light a number of potential stumbling blocks to better health and wellness. He then shares ways to turn those barriers into stepping stones. He even describes how you can turn your previous failures into success! Built upon easy-to-understand principles, Building Health, Building Wellness can help you to learn how to assess your own typical health profile and transform it into your ideal health profile.