Pavlov's Hot Dog

So I watched St. Paul-born Dan Buettner talking with Dr. Oz and Oprah about Blue Zones, places in the world where people live long, healthy lives. I've admired Buettner's work for some time, especially the way his work/mission/lifestyle all intersect, as they have in my life since Alexis and I began publishing our fitness journals.

Dan talks about the importance of social support networks and getting together with friends and people you've known all your life and that reminds me I grew up with some Buettners in South St. Paul but I would never give them a call to see if they're related because that's not what we do these days.

Not much of what popular culture does these days resembles what people do in the Blue Zones, except for, maybe, drinking red wine, a health habit a lot of people seem happy to oblige.

Many people in Blue Zones garden and harvest the majority of their own food, which might catch on a bit more in the U.S. depending on how the recession goes. One of my seed catalogs is promoting again the idea of a Victory Garden, but even seeds and gardening supplies may be out of the budget range of many middle Americans, whose fortunes have changed very rapidly.

Just the other day a Colorado farmer opened up his already harvested land to anyone who wanted to glean what was left of the potatoes, leeks and carrots. An astounding 40,000 people showed up and dug in the dirt and picked the fields clean. For vegetables! That's stiff competition for even the dollar menu at McDonald's, and much healthier. (Unless people were planning to make greasy fries from their bounty. Not much you can do to make a carrot unhealthy.)

As much as I adore and would like to promote gardening for fitness (in 1990, I zoomed down to my pre-baby weight by installing seven perennial gardens at a rural conference center), changing people's habits through economic collapse is not what I had in mind. Seeing so many people motivated by a fear of hunger sent shivers up my spine and put a tear in my eye at the same time. And I'm rather stoic.

But back to what we learned from the Blue Zones.  Get regular, moderate exercise. Eat less meat, more nuts. Get some sunshine every day so that your body makes vitamin D. Eat a plant based diet. According to Dr. Oz, do squats for your quadriceps because once they go, you're not long for this world. All good stuff we SHOULD do. But easier said than done because we live in a HOT ORANGE ZONE where all the cultural cues and most of our friends invite us to stuff ourselves on unhealthy over-processed foods for which we expend little to no physical effort.

Barring a complete economic meltdown that has us all out gleaning in the fields for a subsistence, how do you tune out all the modern temptations and distractions and live like you're in a Blue Zone?

Well, you know what I'm going to say. Take advantage of any social support you can find that encourages healthy habits. But for the rest, turn inward through fitness journaling or a food diary. Negotiate with yourself to set small goals to practice the healthy suggestions from the Blue Zones book long enough for some of them to become habits, a normal, natural part of your lifestyle.

As you do this, your lifestyle will rub off on those around you, to help create a mini Blue Zone, in your home, your workplace, your community.

Of course we think that the best way to journal some Blue Zone into your life is to color one of our ColorCode Mode journals or food diaries in any of the colors you choose to denote your healthy actions each day. Green, yellow, blue. It's quick and easy and all up to you.

And because we were so excited about Dan's Blue Zones story on Oprah, we created some red-hot coupons to help you save on our Lean Mode, Color Code—Not Your Usual Food Diary eBook. This is a tool that can help you make good on all your good intentions after seeing Oprah's show. With all due respect to Maya Angelou, when we know better, we don't necessarily do better.

From the previews I think Oprah is going to be broaching her weight gain and struggle this January. But she needn't beat herself up. Sometimes we just need to change things up. Oprah may have hit the wall where outside forces no longer motivate her. Sometimes we need a tool that helps foster our fitness self-motivation, self-control, self-reliance. That's something a trainer alone can't do for us.

The people who have been using our journals regularly (some since 2004!) have been very actively ordering more this past week. That gives us a chance to practice one of the other Blue Zone habits: gratitude.

We are always thankful for the people who use our journals year after year to create healthier lifestyles. We just wish we had more of you.

And so this Thanksgiving week, we will give thanks for our many blessings, and also add our perpetual prayer to be blessed by the Oprah effect. She's featured Bob GREEN and the BLUE Zones, and could now pull together those colors nicely for people (and herself) by getting into COLORCODE MODE—where ANY color goes, as long as you 1) only color in positive things you do, and 2) color in something good every day.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!