Gig Harbor’s Joe Piscatella, a best-selling author and renowned authority on healthy lifestyles, says a person can change to healthy habits in six months. As the presenter at a Bainbridge Island event recently, he was told by a man who read one of his books 10 years ago that he followed his advice after a doctor gave him three months to shape up or take medications for the rest of his life.

A frequent speaker at hospitals and health seminars around the country, Piscatella often hears testimony like that from people who turned their lives around. But perhaps the best testimony is Piscatella himself. At age 32, he underwent an emergency open-heart bypass surgery and was predicted by one doctor to have less than 10 years to live. That was in 1977, and Piscatella has defied the prognosis by not only living to see his children graduate but by becoming one of the most sought-after speakers and consultants on maintaining a healthy heart and a healthy life. Author of books including “Don’t Eat Your Heart Out,” “Choices for a Healthy Heart,” “Fat-Proof Your Child” and others, he has hosted series specials on PBS and has been featured on shows including “Good Morning America” and “The Today Show.”

It all started with his personal journey. After his diagnosis, Piscatella began researching his options, interviewing a couple of dozen experts around the country during a time when the word “cholesterol” was not widely understood. “I couldn’t change my genetics,” he said. “My decision was to do the research and everything I could to get to head in the opposite direction.”

When he published his first book describing what he learned, in 1982, he says “it skyrocketed because nobody had that information, it was new even for a lot of doctors.” These days, people are much better educated about lifestyle impacts on their health, and anyone knows the high cholesterol is bad for you, but the trouble with living in a fast-paced environment is finding the time and the enthusiasm to follow through.

“I felt that after 20 years Americans have changed in that they know a lot about diet and exercise, but the question was, why don’t they do it?” he said. Piscatella, the only non-medical member appointed to the National Institutes of Health Cardiac Rehabilitation Expert Panel, created the Institute for Fitness and Health (www.joepiscatella.com) about two decades ago to help organizations and companies motivate employees in maintaining healthy lives. He is also called upon by hospitals and other health-care organizations to present public health workshops or hold training workshops for staff.

“When you have employees with a lifestyle that puts them at risk, you’ll pay for it one way or another,” he said. “Employers are finally looking at how they can help employees improve their lives… We find that information alone does not move people to make changes — you have to motivate them.”

He says many companies now strive to build a corporate culture where employees know how to manage stress effectively and are encouraged to have a balanced life. Every time an employee has major surgery or other major medical expenses, it impacts the company’s expense account — so the money spent on preventative health and lifestyle programs could potentially save much more in insurance payments.

“Companies that don’t make an effort to make that happen will not remain competitive because they have to use that money on insurance rates instead of marketing or research and development,” he said.

Piscatella’s debut book, “Don’t Eat Your Heart Out,” has become a foundation for his philosophy, and he stresses that changing eating behavior alone will not work. Lifestyle means food, exercise and many other habits like smoking — and you have to look at them all if you don’t want to be in the situation he was nearly 30 years ago.

And if your idea of becoming healthy is losing a few pounds with the help of a fad diet or skipping the bun and the cheese on the fast-food burger, he has this to say: “We’ve had quick weight-loss books for 50 years. If cabbage soup had worked, if any of (the diets) had worked, we’d be the skinniest folks on Earth. But they don’t work. We are the fattest nation on the planet… It’s about diet patterns, not diets. Don’t tell me how you want to eat for two months, tell me how you want to eat for the rest of your life.”.