Vitality City ‘Walking Moai’ takes off
Redondo residents take part in the Walking Moai kick-off Monday night. Photo
The Vitality City poster child for the beach cities has been found.
Tuesday afternoon, Vitality City director Joel Spoonheim was visiting Jefferson Elementary when he was accosted by a youngster. Vitality City organizers had been equipping students with pedometers, and this particular boy had taken to his with genuine zeal. He showed off his pedometer – which was at 28,000 steps for the day already – and then did a vitality demonstration for Spoonheim. He ran in place, he walked backwards, he walked forwards. And then he ran in place again, kicking his legs high. Just like that, he hit 30,000 steps.
“I loved that kid,” Spoonheim said.
Later that night, the rest of Redondo Beach joined in, as 544 people went out for a short walk as part of the kick-off of the Vitality City “Walking Moai” program. The term is taken from Okinawa, a Japanese island known as “ground-zero” for human longevity, where the young are matched at age 5 with a “Moai” consisting of five children who form a lifelong group friendship.
The goal of the “Walking Moai’s” is to foster healthy habits and more connections within in the community by getting people out walking together several times a week. Vitality City is a public health initiative that taps into the “Blue Zones” research conducted by National Geographic of the five areas in the world – including Okinawa – where people live the longest and healthiest lives.
Author and Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner was on hand Monday night to help launch the Moai’s. Buettner, who spent extensive time with centenarians in the Blue Zones (including one Moai consisting of five 102-year-olds who’d been together 97 years), said the research revealed “deceptively simple little strategies” for living longer and healthier. The secret, he said, is not simply genetics.
“So much of how we live is really dictated by our lifestyle and our environment,” Buettner told the nearly 80 people at Lincoln Elementary School, one of the six RBUSD elementary schools that served as gathering points for the kick-off. “…If you have three obese friends, there is a 150 percent greater chance that you are obese, too.”
What Buettner said the Blue Zones study showed were the many “nudges” towards healthfulness that exist in such areas, where people exercise as a natural part of their lives, usually live within walking distance of their friends and family, eat more plant-based diets, and have outlets to relieve stress.
“They know how to shed their stress,” he said. “There is religion…there is also meditation. There is also happy hour.”
Buettner recalled visiting a 107-year-old named Rafaella in Sardinia. As he knocked on her door, he heard a rustling behind him and turned around to find her climbing a tree to pick a piece of fruit. He talked to her about how she still felt needed by her family. “I know I am loved,” she told Buettner, who said she then raised “a boney finger and added, ‘And I know I am expected to love.’”
“They have a respect for older people we don’t seem to have in America,” Buettner said. “In America, we worship youth.”
Vitality City extrapolates lessons from the Blue Zones and applies such “nudges” to the local environment. The project is headed by Healthways – a leading national company that works with corporations to improve the health of their employees – and the Beach Cities Health District.
BCHD competed with 55 communities nationwide to become a Vitality City after a nine-month pilot project in Albert Lea, Minnesota achieved remarkable results, including a projected increase in participants’ longevity of three years, an average weight loss of almost three pounds, and a 32 percent reduction in health care insurance claims among city and school workers.
The Vitality City project locally will last three years; the Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index poll will measure its impact.
Manhattan Beach Mayor Richard Montgomery, who was in attendance Monday, said this data-driven approach was one of the keys to why his city supported the project, which also received unanimous support from every council and school board in the beach cities. Montgomery said that he hoped the Moai program would help introduce neighbors who may never have met each other, particularly in some of the more newly constructed areas of his city.
“The advantage is health,” Montgomery said. “People can live better, sustainably….and we can know each other better.”
Several residents in attendance Monday night came away impressed. Susan Hink said she and her friends already walk together in the neighborhood but see this as a way to stay motivated.
“We came to see what Vitality City is all about,” Hink said. “It’s great. It motivates you to walk and exercise more.”
Carlton Bonner said he learned of the project through his employer, Amcom, and after researching it realized that he had a model within his own family – his 95-year-old grandmother, who embodies many of the Blue Zones lessons.
“She does all the same things,” Bonner said. “She’s active and she is loved.”
Body Glove International, which was the first employer locally to sign up for a free Vitality City workplace assessment, turned out a Walking Moai team of 14 employees. Body Glove’s Jim Miller said many employees have to look no further than to their founder, Bob Meistrell, for an example of how to live vitally. The 82-year-old Meistrell dove more than 170 feet deep with three generations of his family on a recent birthday.
“He’s naturally active – he doesn’t have to go to the gym – and is still totally productive and has a real mission in life,” Miller said. “He is surrounded by family and he eats healthy. He’s an example for all of us…He is Mr. Vitality City, really.”
Amcom owner Steve Diels, who is also a Redondo councilman, said he has committed to installing standing and walking workstations (the latter which involve slow-moving treadmills) at his company. He said Vitality City represents a great opportunity for employers.
“In addition to the obvious health benefits, it’s also a tremendous team-building opportunity,” he said.
Resident Karen Rook said she is a stay-at-home mom who sees this as an opportunity to get involved and get active. She said the free pedometers didn’t hurt, either.
“It’s exciting,” Rook said. “It’s fun. And we get all this free stuff…It’s just a win-win.”
The project, if successful, is expected to be a model that will spread nationally.
“We are building this airplane to take off,” Buettner told the gathering. “What you are doing here tonight is hugely important.”
See www.vitalitycity.com for more info. ER