AS WEIGHT-LOSS RESEARCHERS WHO’VE published hundreds of scientific papers and helped thousands of people lose weight, we’ve seen diet trends come and go—some of them more than once! Frankly, diets don’t work (that’s why there are so many of them). So why, then, are we writing a diet book?
Well, State of Slim isn’t really a diet book. Yes, we give you a step-by-step plan for eating and exercising the healthiest way. And yes, you’ll lose weight—quickly and safely. But we think you deserve more.
Typical diet books contain quick-fix plans designed to help you fit into your skinny jeans or look thinner for a one-night class reunion. They lure you with promises of dramatic results (drop 15 pounds in 15 days!). And it’s true, you can lose weight with any one of these plans—but you probably won’t keep it off. Even though you’re trying to do all the right things, the pounds inevitably will creep back on, and you won’t have a clue how to stop them. You’ll probably assume that the weight regain is your fault, feel terrible, and repeat the whole sad process with the next new diet book.
You deserve to know the real deal: Dropping pounds is only part of the picture. You aren’t overweight simply because you eat too much and therefore must “diet” to slim down. Lack of movement has played an important role as well. In fact, overeating is just as much a consequence of being overweight as it is a cause (we’ll explain this startling fact later on). Keeping weight off is a different challenge than losing weight and requires a different strategy. Our approach, which we call the Colorado Diet, tackles both aspects. It is a complete and permanent solution to your weight problem.
By now you must be wondering why we call the State of Slim plan the Colorado Diet. We both live in the Denver area, and we run the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado. But that’s not the only reason. At a time when two-thirds of the American population is overweight or obese, Colorado has bucked the trend: It’s the leanest state in the nation. Colorado has an overall obesity rate of 21 percent, and some counties have obesity rates below 15 percent. Compare this with the national average obesity rate of 28 percent, and 35 percent in the heaviest state. How do those statistics help you if you live in New York, Texas, or Iowa? Our Rocky Mountain state is beautiful and inspiring, but it’s not magical. Colorado just happens to provide an opportune place and supportive environment for people to live a lean lifestyle naturally. And our work with our patients—as well as our research with people from all 50 states—has shown that you can adopt a Colorado lifestyle no matter where you live.
Neither one of us is originally from Colorado. When our careers brought us here and we each settled into the Rocky Mountain lifestyle, we found ourselves skiing, hiking, biking, working out, and eating a healthy diet—like many of our colleagues, neighbors, and friends—and feeling healthier. (Holly’s story on page xvi will likely resonate with many of you.) At the same time, we were both involved in a research project that Jim cofounded. Called the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), it’s a scientific database of more than 10,000 people from across the country who have dropped at least 30 pounds and maintained the loss for a minimum of a year. The average NWCR participant has lost 70 pounds and kept them off for 6 years. By studying this group, we’ve identified some key strategies that are essential to successful weight loss and maintenance. And as we learned more about what keeps people lean, we realized that our friends, neighbors, and families were intuitively following those key strategies. That’s when it dawned on us: Colorado is the sweet spot where research lab meets real life.
As scientists, we performed many research studies to examine metabolism and obesity. And the top complaint of patients in our weight-loss clinic is “My metabolism isn’t working!” When we first began our research, though, we didn’t find anything wrong with the metabolisms of overweight and obese people; their bodies burned calories at the exact rate they should. But eventually, we discovered that our patients were right. Overweight people burn calories at a normal rate, but their metabolisms are stuck in a fat-storing mode. We’ll explain this more in Chapter 2. For now, know this: You can lose weight with a broken metabolism, but you cannot keep it off.
A Colorado lifestyle creates what we call a Mile-High Metabolism. Denver is known as the Mile-High City because it sits at an elevation of 5,280 feet—exactly a mile above sea level. And with our plan, your metabolism will reach new heights.
Coloradans’ lifestyles keep their metabolisms in tip-top shape—revved up and able to easily burn whatever they eat. It all starts with physical activity. For many Coloradans, it’s not a matter of deciding whether to exercise—it’s choosing what to do, when, and with whom.
When you stop moving your body, your metabolism slows, your appetite goes haywire, and you begin eating too much of the wrong kinds of foods. The result? You gain weight and have difficulty losing those extra pounds. You just can’t be healthy and slim without regular physical activity—and we say that with decades of research behind us to prove it. We’ll show you how to incorporate an achievable, enjoyable amount of physical activity into your life—in effect, creating your own Colorado lifestyle—so that your body’s metabolism works with you to stay at a healthy weight.
Of course, what you eat is also important. Colorado cuisine can be described as fresh, flavorful, and seasonal. We eat smarter, not less. And the foods we choose to eat help keep our metabolisms revved instead of bringing it to a near stop.
In Colorado, when friends get together, they’re more likely to meet up for a hike, a bike ride, or a day on the slopes than they are to go out to a restaurant together. Certainly, exercising is easier when everyone you know is doing it and you have lots of options year-round. But it’s not just about living in the right location. It’s about attitude and approach. No matter where you live, we’ll show you how to tweak your physical and social environments and develop healthy routines and rituals so that it becomes easy to create and maintain this lifestyle forever.
I spent my childhood in a small town in Tennessee before going off to college and then graduate school. I’ve been studying obesity and weight loss since 1981. The first research I ever published showed that if you give rats a high-fat diet, they get fatter than if you feed them a low-fat diet. The same study also revealed that rats who exercise don’t get as fat as the other rats, even if they gobble fatty food. I wanted to know if the same things happened in humans (they do), so in the late 1980s I began conducting weight-loss studies with people. In my research, I have found that there are many ways to lose weight but that most people who lose it are not able to keep it off. It seemed to me that for a weight-loss program to be effective, it has to work for both losing weight and keeping it off.
One evening in 1993, while attending a research conference, I went out for a drink with Dr. Rena Wing, a psychologist now at Brown University and one of the leading weight-loss researchers in the world. As we sat at the bar and nursed our drinks, our conversation turned to a curious fact. The media at the time made it sound as if no one ever managed to lose weight and keep it off. Scientists were so busy studying the people who failed that no one had bothered to look at the people who were succeeding, to figure out how they did it. It was a eureka moment. We looked at each other and realized that we’d stumbled upon something big. We decided then and there that we would find people who’d successfully slimmed down and discover their strategies and secrets. That evening, the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) was born.
In the 18 years since we launched it, the NWCR has become a primary source of information about how successful weight-loss maintainers behave. We now have more than 10,000 people in the registry, all of whom have kept off at least 30 pounds for a minimum of 1 year. The average person in the NWCR has lost around 70 pounds and kept it off for about 6 years. These stories of triumph have taught us important, and sometimes surprising, lessons about what it takes to succeed.
In 1992, I moved to the University of Colorado to develop the world’s premier research group studying nutrition, weight management, and physical activity. Our group has conducted many research studies aimed at better understanding how to lose weight and keep it off. We knew that Colorado is America’s leanest state, but it’s only in recent years that Holly Wyatt and I realized that a few crucial lifestyle factors explain why and how so many Coloradans stay slender. This was my second big eureka moment. I recognized these key factors right away, because I’d seen them before. What now seems obvious came as an epiphany—participants in the NWCR live like Coloradans. And that’s exciting, because people in the NWCR live all over the country. Colorado made lean living famous, but participants in the NWCR prove that you can adopt the Colorado lifestyle anywhere.
Growing up in Houston, I was always a little thicker (okay, fatter) than the other kids. I was an A student but lacked even an ounce of natural athletic talent. I hated PE class. The annual Presidential Physical Fitness Test reduced me to tears every time. For the life of me, I could not master the bar hang. I never passed the test. Despite my lack of natural ability, I tried out for the drill team during my freshman year of high school. I struggled to learn the dance moves, but I made the team. Then came the dreaded weekly weigh-ins. Every Friday, I was required to step on the scale. If the number read 133 or less, I was allowed on the field to perform with the team. If the scale hit 134, I was relegated to the sidelines. I started fixating on my weight and wondering why the other girls on the dance squad could eat so much more pizza and candy than I could without worrying about weigh-in time.
During my premed studies at the University of Texas, I stopped dancing and gained the fabled “freshman 15.” My weight continued to climb over the next 4 years. When I got to medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, I started experimenting with different diets. The demanding hours of residency left me no time for exercise, and my weight proceeded to fluctuate up and down. With each new diet, the outcome was the same: I’d lose weight, but it always came back.
I continued bouncing from one diet to the next during my residency in internal medicine at the University of Colorado. One day, my attending physician spied me eating four hard-boiled eggs after my rounds. He asked me what I was doing, and I explained that I was on one of the high-protein diets popular at the time. He told me I was going to rot my kidneys and suggested I talk to an endocrinologist who studied obesity. His advice that day began a cascade of events that changed my career path. We didn’t learn about obesity in medical school, and until then, I’d never realized that metabolism and obesity were things I could specialize in and study scientifically.
Against the advice of some of my advisors (who insisted I needed to study under a physician, not a PhD scientist), I selected Dr. Jim Hill as my research mentor. Jim had recently started the NWCR, and I recognized immediately that the registry would provide the perfect resource for testing ideas and strategies for weight loss. Jim shared everything he knew and taught me the nuts and bolts of how to do research. That was more than 15 years ago, and we’ve been collaborators ever since.
Jim has shaped my thinking on weight loss, but some of my most important insights have come from my patients and my own experiences as a serial dieter. Early in my practice, I noted that many people who came to my obesity clinic insisted that something was wrong with their metabolisms—they couldn’t eat the same things their spouse or sister or best friend could without gaining weight. Initially, I dismissed their stories. The science at that time didn’t offer any evidence to back up the idea that their metabolisms were faulty. In fact, one of the first studies I did with Jim showed that people in the NWCR had perfectly normal metabolisms. But our research since then has proved those frustrated dieters correct. Our obese patients do have metabolisms that are stuck in a fat-storage mode, and losing weight alone won’t fix them. Because metabolism drops along with the pounds, people who have been obese have to work much harder than normal-weight people to prevent weight gain. That’s the discouraging news, but we’ve found good news, too. The fact that people in the NWCR had normal metabolisms wasn’t proof that their metabolisms were never broken; instead, it was evidence that these successful dieters had managed to fix the problems that obesity had inflicted on their metabolisms. Our research has not only proved that it’s possible to repair a broken metabolism, but it showed us how. I’m one of the “easy gainers” we describe in Chapter 2, but the science I’ve learned working with Jim showed me how to end my weight woes for good. Now we’re sharing what we have learned with you.
To help you achieve a Mile-High Metabolism, we first give you an understanding of the skills you need to keep your weight off. Most diets aim to stop bad habits. Ours focuses on instilling good ones. The difference may seem subtle, but our research suggests that it’s anything but.
Remember how we said that losing weight requires a different approach than maintaining that loss? While you are losing weight with the Colorado Diet, you will be preparing yourself for long-term success even before you start—something no other plan does for you. There are three phases. Phase 1 will reignite your fat burners so you lose weight quickly—typically 8 to 10 pounds. Phase 2 will rebuild your metabolism. You’ll continue to drop pounds and strengthen your metabolism while your diet variety increases. In phase 3, you’ll reinforce your metabolism by finding a pattern of physical activity that keeps your Mile-High Metabolism stoked and fueled by a smart, healthy, satisfying diet. You’ll now be ready to live the Colorado lifestyle we outline in Chapter 9—forever.
We’re tired of watching people succeed in losing weight, only to regain it all within a few months. We’re tired of seeing people sentenced to a life of food restriction and deprivation. As scientists and researchers, we haven’t just theorized about the right weight-loss strategies, we’ve tested them in our clinic to see if they really work—and they do. Isn’t it time to not just lose weight but fix your metabolism so you can join the ranks of those who have succeeded?
