Read an Excerpt

What Makes Colorado Special?

CHAPTER 1

WE'RE FREQUENTLY ASKED BY the media and by people we meet at parties why America is getting so fat. Is it because we spend too much time sitting in front of the TV? Is it because we drink those huge sugary soft drinks or that junk food advertising is often geared toward kids? Everyone has an opinion: Healthy food is too expensive. Schools are the problem, since most did away with recess and serve unhealthy food. Our portion sizes are too big, and we're eating too many wheat-based products. The list is endless. People want to blame someone or one specific thing--and everyone wants a simple solution.

There's no doubt that overweight and obesity are huge health problems in our country. Americans have been gaining weight year after year since the early 1980s. In fact, we published a study in Science in 2003 showing that the average weight gain in adults is about 2 £ds per year. This may not seem like a lot, but it adds up to 20 extra £ds in a decade!

What has caused this increase in weight gain? The American lifestyle has changed so much in the past 30 years--nearly everything about the places we live, work, and play is different--that it's impossible to assign blame to any one, two, or even three things. More important, though, we don't believe that "Why is America getting so fat?" is the right question. There are people who are lean and healthy. Some of them have always been this way; others have managed to lose weight and keep it off for a very long time. We've been asking, "How do these people do it?" With the Colorado Diet, our focus is on what people have done right.

Colorado is a perfect learning laboratory in which to study what's effective and what isn't for weight loss because there are many, many people here doing it right. While the rest of the nation has been packing on the £ds, Coloradans have avoided the high rates of obesity seen elsewhere. The state has the lowest obesity prevalence in the nation, about 26 percent below the national average. However, not everyone in Colorado is lean--just being a Coloradan doesn't give you immunity against the factors that contribute to obesity. You have to live the Colorado lifestyle actively.

In studying the Colorado lifestyle, we discovered six key factors that make healthy living easy and are necessary for developing a Mile-High Metabolism (we describe this in greater detail in Chapter 2). We think they explain why Coloradans are the leanest people in the nation. What's more, in comparing the habits of lean Coloradans to those of the participants in the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), we determined that you don't need be a Colorado resident to adopt this lifestyle. Those people live across the country, proving you can be a weight-loss success story anywhere. In the chapters that follow, we'll go into greater detail about each one of the factors and show you how to incorporate them into your daily life. But for now, we wanted to give you an overview.

1 / Be Active Every Day

A few years ago, we worked with Harris Polls to research the walking habits of people across the United States and published the results in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. Participants wore pedometers to count the number of steps they took each day. Turns out that the national average was about 5,500 steps (about 2 to 21/2 miles), but Coloradans took 1,000 additional steps. We weren't surprised to find that obesity rates were correlated to the number of steps taken. In Arkansas and Tennessee, where obesity rates are among the highest in the country, residents took only 4,500 steps per day.

There's no getting around it--to stay lean, you must be consistently active. Without regular movement, your metabolism becomes slow, sluggish, and inflexible. And an inflexible metabolism makes weight gain inevitable and lasting weight loss next to impossible. Whether it's a walk with the dog, a hike with a friend, a bike ride, or a workout at the gym, movement is a priority in Colorado, not another dreaded task on the to-do list. Some of us get up early, others fit it in between obligations, but the key is we always find a way.

If this feels foreign and seems daunting to you now, don't despair. In Chapter 4, we help you discover the joy of movement and show you how to make it part of your life.

2 / Fuel Up on Real Food

With all that activity, Coloradans love to eat, but we're selective about our food. We look for fresh and local fare, sustainably grown and harvested, where possible. Just about every neighborhood has a farmers' market, and health and organic food stores are very popular, too. (In fact, several major health food chains originated in Colorado.) The majority of our calories come from minimally processed foods that deliver the most flavor and nutrition so our bodies perform at their best. We don't waste our calories on foods with low nutritional value, although we do love our occasional indulgences.

A passion for adventure and new experiences is common here, and food is no exception. Many Coloradans identify as "foodies" and love to cook and seek out inventive restaurants that serve fresh, delicious meals. At restaurants and at home, the emphasis is on quality, not quantity. A healthy-size portion of a great-tasting dish is better than a huge serving of fare that's filled with refined carbohydrates, fat, and sodium--even if that big portion costs less money.

Our friends Debbie and Tim exemplify the Colorado Diet philosophy we discuss in Chapter 5. They love to cook, and even though they live in downtown Denver, they grow their own vegetables in the neighborhood community garden. On a typical Sunday, they might walk or bike to the grocery stores in their neighborhood to pick up a few ingredients for dinner. Debbie prefers making simple meals with fresh ingredients. One of their favorite dinners is sauteed vegetables and herbs tossed with pasta and topped with a little Parmesan cheese--it's tasty, and Debbie can put it together in just a few minutes after work. The couple joined a local farm share program that provides them with a box of fresh, locally produced foods each week. They are both lean and active and readily admit that a major reason they are active is to be able to enjoy the food they love.

3 / Create Your Own Healthy Environment

Colorado is famous for its beautiful scenery and ample opportunities for outdoor recreation. Active people are drawn to our state because of our weather (more than 300 days of sunshine a year), mountains, walking and biking trails, and lots of parks and open spaces. It's hard to stay inside. Of course, it's easier to be active when you're in this kind of environment.

But the typical Coloradan doesn't hike a tall peak before breakfast every day--or even once a month. It's our communities and immediate surroundings-- the plethora of parks, the bike paths in our neighborhoods, and our friendly walking groups--that provide an important nudge for healthy living.

And if you're looking for someone to join you on a hike or a bike ride, you don't have to look far. In Colorado, you're likely to rub elbows with a triathlete or trail runner or hiker at a movie, party, or neighborhood event. Your neighbor may be the local running club coach or the organizer of a local charity walk. It seems like everyone owns a bike and a dog. It's not uncommon to begin conversations by talking about the last race you walked or ran rather than what you do for a living. These interactions make living an active lifestyle the norm. This "social circle effect" is exemplified by research done at Harvard University that found that people in the same social network (i.e., groups of friends) tended to have similar body mass indices (body mass index is a measure of obesity). If you're surrounded by friends and family who are overweight, you're more likely to be overweight. Now, this doesn't mean that obesity is contagious; rather it's just that you're likely to engage in the same eating and physical activity patterns as the people you spend most of your time with. And it goes both ways--surround yourself with active people and you become more active, too.

4 / Stay True to Your Purpose

We all have an inner purpose (what we want to accomplish with our lives), but you may not have ever connected your purpose with weight-loss success. Consider this: Is the way you are living your life consistent with what you want to achieve? For Coloradans, being in good shape physically gives them the energy and confidence to do the things that are most important to them, whether it's about providing for family, achieving professional success, or pursuing what they've always wanted to do in retirement. If you recognize how losing weight and keeping it off will help you better reach your goals in life, you will have a powerful motivator to succeed. Making that connection is what spurs you to get up early to hit the gym--even if it's icy cold outside--or gives you the willpower to pass on the second portion at dinner. Living healthfully then becomes a key value in your life and provides motivation for everything you do--and that makes it much more likely that you will enjoy the Colorado lifestyle. Finding your purpose and connecting it to your weight loss goals is an essential factor for success. It's part of the Colorado mind-set we discuss in Chapter 3.

5 / Believe You Can Succeed

During your weight-loss journey, you will face many challenges and small setbacks. Dealing with them in a way that doesn't derail your plan requires keeping a positive mind-set. Your mental outlook can determine how effective you are in making permanent changes in your life. If you believe you can't do something, you probably won't. For you to succeed in losing weight and keeping it off, you have to have faith in your power to change and not get caught up in thinking you're a victim and have no control over the things you perceive as barriers to success. It sounds simplistic, but the idea that having a positive attitude can help you achieve amazing results is backed by science. Research psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, PhD, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a leader in the field of positive psychology, has shown that cultivating a positive mind- set can enhance relationships, improve work performance, reduce depression, and contribute to better health. In general, Coloradans have an upbeat attitude. It's not that everyone is running around happy all the time. It's more a sensibility that you are responsible for your own happiness. Instead of saying, "I'll believe it when I see it," Coloradans tend to have the mind-set that if you believe it, you will see it. (Chapter 3 discusses this concept in greater detail.)

It's our experience that people who choose to see a lifestyle change in positive terms do much better than those who don't. Consider Melissa, who came to our weight-loss clinic with a negative mind-set. She was constantly talking about all the foods she couldn't eat on her diet plan. She bemoaned the absence of a chocolate dough-nut every morning and complained that Sunday football was just not the same without chicken wings, pizza, and her favorite cold beer. She had to exercise every day, and that meant getting up earlier--and she hated getting up earlier. She was losing weight but struggling and even told us we were making her life miserable. You could feel the negative energy when you were in the room with her.

To turn things around, we made it a priority to get her to concentrate on what she liked about her new lifestyle. Each time we met, we asked her to tell us two things she really enjoyed that week and two things she was grateful for. Over time, her mind-set shifted from feeling like a victim to feeling empowered by her ability to create a new way of living. She began to appreciate the opportunities and not chafe against the requirements of her new lifestyle. Melissa not only lost 40 £ds but has kept them off for over a year. We even overheard her telling a new patient that you have the power to make this a great experience or a terrible one--it's your choice.

PARACHUTING INTO WELLNESS

In September 2011, our colleague John Peters, PhD, moved to Denver from Cincinnati to join our group at the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center. He didn't come here seeking to lose weight. Instead, it happened accidentally. We'll let him explain.

I'd visited Colorado many times over the years and always felt drawn to its natural beauty--the Rocky Mountains, the intense sunlight, and the infinite blue sky. When I decided to move here from Ohio, I felt as if I'd literally parachuted into wellness.

One of the first things I noticed in Colorado was the bicycles--they were everywhere! I've always been a cyclist, but until I relocated to Denver, I had to put my bike on the car roof and drive somewhere to ride. Now, in my neighborhood, I'm only a half mile from the High Line Canal bike trail. I hop on my bike at home and ride to the trailhead. There I can connect to a large network of trails that can take me practically anywhere I want to go!

When I first moved in, I assumed my neighborhood was some sort of planned fitness community. People were out walking at all times of the day and night. But eventually, I realized that all this walking is perfectly normal in Colorado--whether there's a foot of snow on the ground or it is 100 degrees outside, people are outside doing something active. A park across the street from my home has a 2-mile-long trail around it. The first month that I moved in, I signed up for a 5-K in my neighborhood park in hopes of meeting some new people. In a single weekend, I made connections with an entire group of people I could meet up with for outdoor activities.

My eating habits changed, too. My neighborhood has a farmers' market about 2 blocks away and a natural food store a few miles away, and both of them are on my Saturday grocery route. Surrounded by healthy food, it was much easier to eat well, no willpower required.