Restack: A New Approach to Dismantle the Blocks Holding You Back

Do you have Mental Blocks keeping you from your goals? Have you tried multiple times to eat healthier, exercise more, decrease your stress, and get restful sleep, but the behavioral changes didn't stick? Restack is a book that embraces our humanness, with our quirks and imperfections, and provides tools and practical suggestions to Restack ourselves in a way that's psychologically freeing.

To Restack is the process of identifying our Mental Blocks and then categorizing and tweaking parts of ourselves we want to keep, as well as what is no longer serving us. The aim is not to create an idealized version of a perfect human, but to Restack the metaphorical tower of our blocks to end up with a new and reinvigorated Restack of ourselves.

Restack explores lifestyle interventions, backed by science, to propel us forward on our journey of both mental and physical health. The concepts presented are a part of the big puzzle of brain health-each piece of the puzzle affects our overall physical and emotional health, and how we can manage this impact through lifestyle interventions. The book contains multiple tables and figures, as well as "self-help prescriptions," all serving as tools to provide guidance and help you achieve your goals. Additionally, Gia Merlo, as a practicing psychiatrist, shares her journey through her imperfections, mistakes, and Mental Blocks to come to a place of self-acceptance and healing.

The ultimate goal of this book is not to be 100% healthy or 100% perfect, but to feel 100% human - actualizing our full human potential.

Dr. Gia Merlo is a clinical professor of psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, associate editor of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, founding chair of the Lifestyle Psychiatry Caucus of the American Psychiatric Association, and a fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She is a part of the Faculty Group Practice at NYU Langone Health in New York City. She completed her Master of Education in Health Professions at Johns Hopkins University School of Education in August 2022 and is currently an Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins helping students in the program complete their capstone projects. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, chapters in books, and published three academic books for healthcare professionals with Oxford University Press and Taylor and Francis.Merlo has been curious about and interested in lifestyle interventions, especially concerning the overlap of mental and physical health. She is thrilled to write a self-help book that is firmly grounded in science. In this book, the science is drawn from psychology, psychiatry, and lifestyle medicine and her personal narratives are sprinkled throughout in an accessible and helpful way.In her spare time, Dr. Merlo enjoys playing tennis, not taking herself too seriously as she re-learns how to play violin (after many, many years) in a community orchestra, and hiking in New York and New Jersey. She finds great joy watching a good comedy that allows her to fulfill her daily health prescription dose of laughing out loud.