The Nation’s Fittest City Is an Unassuming Place
By JIM BELSHAW Of the Journal
It’s good that Men’s Fitness magazine says Albuquerque is the fittest city in 2007. The city has reason to be proud, but we ought to exercise a little humility about it. We have a long history with lists, and we know you’re never more than one Google away from another opinion.
Men’s Fitness may say we’re No. 1, but Men’s Health magazine says we’re No. 39.
Men’s Fitness says San Jose, Calif., is the No. 10 fattest city in the country.
Men’s Health says the No. 1 city in America for “health, happiness and abs” is … San Jose, Calif.
Men’s Fitness says the No. 1 fattest city is Las Vegas, Nev., not too surprising given that it is the center of the casino buffet universe.
Men’s Health says Vegas is No. 33 for happy abs.
I suspect the measurement criteria are different, but I think somewhere in all of this is confirmation of Dick’s Natural Weight Theory, a flexible and egalitarian approach to a healthy diet.
Dick is a founding member of the weekly poker game now in its 32nd year. Long ago, when a well-meaning wife put out a bowl of carrots that gathered a fine coating of dust by night’s end, the subject of weight came up.
That’s when Dick proposed his Natural Weight Theory, which went like this: Eat whatever you want and what you weigh is your natural weight. Something like that.
Somewhere in Dick’s Natural Weight Theory is the philosophical ground rule that allows for San Jose to be at once the fattest and also the best place for happy abs.
Men’s Fitness sent a Valentine to the mayor when saying that Albuquerque was No. 1, pointing out that the mayor had pushed programs encouraging healthy diets and exercise and got thousands of people to sign pledges to improve their health through such good habits.
But I didn’t see any mention of the most compelling reason Albuquerque is a healthy place to live — we don’t talk about it too much; we don’t bludgeon people with it.
We might have a population of runners and bikers and walkers, but we’re not given to yammering on endlessly about it. We don’t corner the innocent on the bosque trail and demand that they swoon at our pulse rate in repose.
I’ve always liked that about Albuquerqueans.
Last year, I wrote about two regular exercisers who now serve as my fitness poster boys — Ted and Fred, one 75, the other 69, who regularly bike 11 miles to The Barelas Coffeehouse, enjoy a 2,000- calorie breakfast and then bike back home.
This strikes me as a wellbalanced fitness regimen.
Not that I’m adverse to exercise. It’s good for you, even if you have to muster the kind of intestinal fortitude you never dreamed you had.
A few years ago, before my back blew up, I was a swimmer. I’d go up to the pool in the dark of morning and swim laps. I shared the pool with a high school swim team that worked out each morning at the health club because they didn’t have a pool at school.
They were good kids, and I’ve been grateful for it. They never snickered, never gave me a hard time when I was in the pool with the swim team and it looked like 12 Cigarette boats and the Exxon Valdez.
No one ever said being No. 1 doesn’t take grit.
Write to Jim Belshaw at The Albuquerque Journal, P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, NM 87103; telephone —
823-3930; e-mail —
jbelshaw@abqjournal.com.
(c) 2007 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.