The author of Blue Zones offers his personal guidance to a select group of unhealthy beach city residents on how to live longer and happier
What if I could show you how to be two years younger and weigh 10 pounds less by the end of the year?
For the past decade, I’ve been working with National Geographic, studying parts of the world where people live the longest, happiest lives. In my book, Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, I explored long-lived cultures in Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia Italy; Ikaria Greece; Nicoya, Costa Rica and — about 60 miles east of here — Loma Linda, California. Each of these locations have several things in common, the foremost of which is a population that is living up to a decade longer — with fewer diseases — than people living in the Beach Cities. How do they do it?
It’s not genes. With the exception of Sardinia, people in each of these places live in a melting pot of sorts: lots of people of different origins intermarrying. On a whole, they have the same mixed-bag of genes that the rest of us do.
It’s not diet. None of the 250-plus centenarians I interviewed ever tried to limit their calories, eat fortified foods or avoid fat. They ate the foods around them in a way that made them taste good. The problem with diets is that while they may be well intentioned and some may even have strong scientific underpinnings, we don’t stick with them. Research shows that of 100 people who might start a diet today, in nine months only 10 will remain and in two years, only three people will stick with it.
Not exercise programs. The longest-lived people don’t run marathons or pump iron. They live in environments that nudged them into more physical movement than our environments do, and as a result, burn about five times more calories for non-exercise physical activity than we do: They live in communities where it is easy to walk to the store, to their friends’ houses and their places of worship. They grow gardens so almost every day for most of the year, they are planting, weeding, watering or harvesting. They don’t have exercise programs. An exercise regime — like signing up for Jazzercise or resolving to run marathons — does not work for most people long enough to make a difference in their life expectancy. The average person burns about 100 calories a day in “exercise.” This is not enough to overcome the calories we eat every year. (For the past decade, Americans have gained on average, about two pounds every year.) With that math, we can’t win the longevity battle.
A centenarian no more knows how he or she lived to be a 100 than a tall man knows how he got to be tall. They lived in an environment that nudged them into the behaviors that enabled them to live long, healthy lives. These behaviors include eating a plant based diet, spending time with people who positively influence health behaviors, clearly knowing — and being able to articulate — your life purpose and moving constantly throughout the day. They don’t consciously maintain this lifestyle but rather live it automatically. They experienced mindless longevity. And it has worked for centuries (see sidebar Lessons from the Blue Zones).
Over the next four months, I’d like to invite a few people from the Beach Cities to join me on a Blue Zones Makeover. Inspired by the lifestyles of the longest-lived people, I’ll show you how to set up your life and optimize your surroundings so you mindlessly do the things that will help you lose weight, move naturally, eat better, socialize more and-at least theoretically–grow younger.
I’m looking for a few people who are ready to change. Are you overweight of just feeling unhealthy? Maybe you’ve suffered a heart attack, a painful divorce, or you’re just feeling lonely or isolated. Maybe you’ve tried the diets and exercise programs and are ready for something new. Here’s what we’ll be doing:
1. I’ll meet with all of you and show you how people in the Blue Zones live. We’ll explore each Blue Zones culture and I’ll share their secrets.
2. We’ll see how long you’re going to live right now using the Vitality Compass, a life expectancy calculator we developed with the University of Minnesota. We’ll calculate how many more years you have and what your healthy life expectancy is and we’ll give you a few customized tips on what you can do to live longer.
3. We’ll “Blue Zone” your home. We’ll use an evaluation tool that will engineer more physical activity into your day and nudge you away from the things that are associated with obesity.
4. We’ll “Blue Zone” your kitchen. I’ll show you how to set up your kitchen so you consume 50 fewer calories every day. This may not sound like much but avoiding 50 calories a day means losing up to six pounds over the course of a year.
5. We’ll help make sure you get the right amount of sleep. Using another tool, we’ll go through your bedroom and set it up so you’re more likely to get the amount to sleep you should. The happiest, longest-lived people in the world sleep between seven and eight-and-a-half hours a night. We’ll help you get that.
6. We’ll optimize your social life. For this we have two tools. The first tool helps you assess your immediate social circle and see how they’re impacting your life. Did you know that if you’re best three best friends are obese, there’s a 150 percent greater chance that you’ll be obese too. Bad habits are as catchy as a cold. Smoking, drug abuse, and unhappiness are all contagious. Once you know how your friends are influencing you, we’ll help you increase or create a Blue Zone tribe around you by increasing your social circle in the right way. We’ll actually introduce you to some new friends.
If this sounds like something you’d like to try, send me a note. I want to hear what you’re struggling with in your life right now and what you’d most like to change. The more you tell me, the better.
On September 8, I’m hoping to meet those of you who are interested. There’s no charge, but those who are selected, I’d hope will take this seriously. I’ll then work with you for the rest of 2011. If you do the things I suggest and build your surroundings to mirror what people do in the Blue Zones, I can assure you you’ll add quality time to your life expectancy and shed pounds from your mid-section.
I’ll be picking only a handful of people to work with personally for this makeover. However, everyone in the Beach Cities is invited to participate in the Blue Zones Makeover through the Healthways-Blue Zones Vitality City Initiative and the Beach Cities Health District. ER
Blue Zones Makeover application
To request participation in a free Blue Zones Makeover, personally supervised by Blue Zones author Dan Buettner, send an email to contact@bluezones.com describing what you are struggling with in your life and what you would like to improve.
To sign up for the community-wide, Healthways-Blue Zones Vitality City Initiative visit vitalitycity.com. For more information call 888-666-0023.
