Hub's fit to be 7th in fitness survey

9 January 2004

Remember that New Year's resolution from a year ago? The one where you promised to lose weight, eat right and get in shape?

Well, apparently it worked.

According to the February issue of Men's Fitness magazine, Boston is the seventh "fittest" city in America. That's a big step up; last year we were 12th. Sure, one can raise questions about the magazine's methodology (does the number of sporting goods retailers listed in the Yellow Pages really correlate to health?), but we should take good news wherever we can find it. It's been a tough few months for the city.

Property taxes are through the roof, we seem to have forgotten how to plow our streets and Mayor Thomas Menino is besieged, yet again, by city unions. Every think-tank and interest group around seems to have gotten into the "what's wrong with us" caterwauling.

The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce claims young people no longer want to live here. MassINC says the middle class is fleeing the state. And the Commonwealth Housing Task Force worries that even if they all stayed, there isn't any housing around anyway.

Who cares? We're lean, mean and getting better.

Men's Fitness was founded by Joe Weider, the same guy who used to make fun of comic book readers with his "97-pound weakling" ads (and, in a political twist of fate, the same guy who lured unknown bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger out of Austria and to the United States). For the last several years, the magazine has been issuing its annual ranking of the fitness levels of the country's 50 largest cities. There are two lists: the 25 "fittest" and the 25 "fattest."

Boston has always been pretty good, consistently ranking among the fittest. Until this year's big turnaround, however, our numbers had been slipping.

The magazine's editors looked at a variety of criteria, such as whether we eat our vegetables, how many of us are obese, the number of fast-food restaurants per resident and Nielsen rankings about how much television households watched.

Boston did well in a lot of things. We get a solid grade of B for participating in sports (perhaps due to the L Street Brownies' midwinter ocean dip). We're less fat than the rest of the nation (although that's not saying much; half of us are still overweight). Our air quality improved this year (going from a C to an A), mostly because of Boston's indoor smoking ban. We don't watch a lot of television (as one friend sarcastically explains, "Instead of watching `Sex and the City,' we're living it.") And, no question, we have the best hospitals around, even if we can't afford them.

We didn't do well on everything, however. Boston got an F for the length of its morning and afternoon commutes. And despite the newly opened tunnel and promises by the mega-project's proponents (a 1998 Big Dig ad showed a mock traffic reporter post-construction: "Nothing to report!"), it's a safe bet that won't change much.

So what does all of this mean? Like most locker-room comparisons, the real issue isn't about us. It's about everyone else.

And it's here that Boston has bragging rights.

First of all, everyone else that ranks above Boston won by luck of the geographic draw. The fittest city? Honolulu. That's hardly a surprise. If Bostonians had 80-degree year-round temperatures, warm waves at their doorstep and spent the entire day in floral-print bathing suits, I imagine we'd all have of abs of steel as well.

Other cities that beat Boston are similarly blessed - residents of San Francisco, Virginia Beach and Seattle rarely worry about being stuck inside for three months straight because the wind chill never rises above a negative number.

Moreover, when it comes to places that match up with Boston on climate and geography, we win.

In fact, Boston is the healthiest northeastern city by far; no city within 500 miles of us even ranks in the top 25 fittest.

All of our competitors along the Northeast corridor are on the "fat" list: Washington, D.C., is 25th fattest, Baltimore is 23rd, New York is 21st and Philadelphia - the home of the cheese-steak, the city where everyone looks like the Liberty Bell - is a hefty seventh fattest. (Detroit is THEfattest, by the way.)

All of which should leave us feeling pretty good about ourselves as we head into the summer and July's Democratic National Convention.

The GOP will be meeting in portly New York while the Dems are battling it out in fit and trim Boston. And Republican states, dominated by Texas, should feel right at home in the Big (emphasis on "big") Apple: An astounding five of the top 10 fattest cities in America are located right in George Bush's Lone Star State.

Sure, Democrats may not be able to win a race this year. But there's some consolation: At least we can run one.

Talk back to Tom Keane at TomKeane@TomKeane.com.