I have just spent the best 25 days of my life in Colorado since just before Christmas. As a Texas girl who has lived in the state of bigger is better and has reversed Type 2 Diabetes it was an eye opening experience to say the least. In the 25 days I was in Colorado I can count on my two hands the number of junk food restaurants. The minute we crossed into Texas the first town had 10 in a row on the same street. Within days of arriving in Colorado I got a Facebook notification of the biggest and leanest states and guess who was the leanest? Colorado. They proposed the question was it altitude or attitude. I can say from living there on vacation for almost a month it is more about attitude.
Most places we went there were no fast food restaurants, just local home cooked establishments. The bigger cities had them but not as many as we have here in Texas. At every place regardless of the size of the town there was a vegetarian/vegan option and often many. Even the Denver mall food court was a healthy assortment of food selections as well as strictly healthy foods and juices. After losing 40 pounds myself and being a size 4/6 the last two years I felt fat as I walked through the mall with a sea of healthy, skinny people.
If altitude has anything to do with it that would explain my one pound weight loss during my trip. Truthfully I believe it’s the attitude. They are active people, they eat healthy and they exert lots of energy walking and playing in the high altitudes. Let’s face it where else can someone decide rather than going to work they would rather hike Pikes Peak for eight hours to an elevation of over 14,000. This is a story a lady shared with us while we were in the mall waiting to see Santa. How wonderful it would be to be able to do that whenever you wanted. The hard reality is in Texas it’s too hot to do anything outside most of the year. In some of the northern states with their abundance of snow and brutal cold there isn’t much of an opportunity to do much either.
I have to say the mountains and that lifestyle suits me to a T. For the first time since reversing my diabetes I could go out to eat with my family and know wherever we went there would be something for me to eat. I didn’t have to watch them eat or make them go to a place I could find something on the menu. I am going to miss that so much. The availability to have healthy, clean food at my disposal around the clock with no effort on my part.
So what do you think? Is it altitude or attitude? I will take both!
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