An Excerpt from The Blue Zones
Lessons for Living from the People Who've Lived the Longest
Your Personal Blue Zone
Putting the Blue Zones Lessons to Work in Your Life
You've just read stories about the remarkable people of the world's Blue Zones. You've taken the time to get to know them and perhaps feel inspired by their experiences. Maybe you've noticed that the world's longevity all-stars not only live longer, they also
tend to live better. They have strong connections with their family and friends. They're active. They wake up in the morning knowing that they have a purpose, and the world, in turn, reacts to them in a way that propels them along. An overwhelming majority of
them still enjoy life. And there's not a grump in the bunch. But what does all this mean for you?
If you live the average American lifestyle, you may never reach your potential maximum lifespan. You might even fall short by as much as a decade. But what if you could follow a simple program that could help you feel younger, lose weight, maximize your
mental sharpness, and keep your body working as long as possible? Indeed, what if you could get back that extra decade of healthy life that you may unknowingly be squandering?
This chapter presents the “Power Nine”—the lessons from the Blue Zones, a cross-cultural distillation of the world's best practices in health and longevity. While these practices are only associated with longevity and don't necessarily
increase it, by adopting them you'll be adopting healthy habits that should stack the deck in your favor.
First Steps
Start down the road to longevity
To begin, go to the Blue Zones website at www.bluezones.com. There, you'll find the Vitality Compass™, a tool that asks you 33 questions and, based on your answers, calculates
1) your potential life expectancy at your current age, 2) your healthy life expectancy—the number of good years you can expect to live, 3) the number of extra years you're likely to gain if you optimize your lifestyle, and 4) a customized list of suggestions to
help you with that plan. Completing the Vitality Compass™ is the first step to figuring out where you are on your personal longevity journey.
The second step is to create a pro-longevity environment—your own personal Blue Zone—in your home. The goal will be to make positive behaviors convenient and,
in some cases,
unavoidable. Our strategies will put you in the way of pro-longevity practices so that if you make the effort now, you won’t have to think about it later. We’ll recommend
nine
deceptively simple but powerful things you can do today to create a lasting Blue Zone in your own life. They’re designed to reinforce the lessons you’ve learned in this
book without
your having to keep track of anything.
The Power Nine covers the following life domains: What to do to optimize your lifestyle for a longer, healthier life; how to think; how to eat; and how to
build social relationships that support your good habits. These lessons are patterned after the lifestyles of Blue Zones centenarians but modified to fit the Western lifestyle.
Research shows that if you dedicate yourself to a new practice for as little as five weeks, the practice is more likely to become a habit. (Another school of thought, called Relapse Prevention, suggests that for indulgent or addictive
behaviors—overeating, gambling, drug use—the first three months of the initial change in behavior are crucial. If you make it past those first 12 weeks, your chances of relapse are greatly reduced.) So there's probably a time frame for behaviors to
become habitual that ranges from 5 to 12 weeks.
Dr. Leslie Lytle of the University of Minnesota, a registered dietitian with a Ph.D. in health behavior, says that all of the habits we’re recommending are relatively easy to
adopt once
you commit to making them work. She offers this advice to help you succeed: Pick the low-hanging fruit. All nine lessons offer the chance to gain more good years, so pick the ones
that are easiest to do first. For example, try something you may have been successful at doing in the past. If you could do it then, focusing on it now might be easier. Another tip:
Don’t try more than three secrets at a time. If you work on all nine once, you’ll be more likely to fail. Start with three that have the best chance of success, and then
gradually add more
as a pattern of success emerges. Lytle also recommends that you enlist a friend or family member in your program. If you hold each other accountable to a 12-week goal, you’ll
have a
greater chance of succeeding. Remember to reward yourself, she says. Don’t focus on your slip-ups; behavior change is hard at first. Focus on your small victories and celebrate
them!
At first blush, this à la carte approach may seem too easy to work. But it reflects what current research tells us about effective long-term behavioral change. We’re
not proposing a
timed program in this book because many people find it difficult to follow a highly prescriptive plan. Our lives are busy and often complicated, and a rigid plan with weekly goals may
be too difficult to follow.
Early successes help keep us motivated, while early failure can make anything too difficult. If a nine-week program demands that you do something as simple as walk ten minutes a
day during the first week, but you know you have trouble walking or you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel comfortable, you may not be able to succeed at that small
change,
and the whole plan may fall by the wayside. Even if we are committed to change, failing early can lead to discouragement and quitting.
Our approach allows you to pick and choose among the strategies that most appeal to you from the start. We emphasize changing your environment to help shape good habits.
See where you can make small changes that will help create your Blue Zone. It’s much easier to maintain healthy habits if your environment is set up for them.
Read more of the excerpt.
Reprinted with permission of the National Geographic Society from the book The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the
Longest by
Dan Buettner. Copyright © 2008 Dan Buettner. Available where all books are sold.
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