The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado. For locals, by locals. Sign up today!
As we’re now in week two of 2017, it’s an appropriate time to ask: Have you broken your New Year’s resolution yet?
If that seems a little harsh, consider that a few of you would already have to answer yes.
The unfortunate truth is that 75 percent of “resolutioners” will have abandoned their personal pledge by the time the New Year’s Eve hangover has subsided. Almost two-thirds will bag it after a month, and that resolution will be a fond memory for 46 percent of us by summer. When the ball drops next December 31, a mere 8 percent of our New Year’s self-promises will have been fulfilled.
But Coloradans shouldn’t feel too disheartened, because there may be no better place than the Denver Metro area to keep one’s eyes on the resolution prize. Care.com—a global network of care providers for seniors, children, and even pets—has released a ranking of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs, more commonly known as cities) where it’s easiest and toughest to keep your New Year’s resolutions.
Denver, unsurprisingly, ranks second in the nation thanks to our winning combination of healthy diets, environment, bodies, and minds. (Four of the five most common resolutions are health related.) In fact, we’re the only metro area in the nation that ranks in the top 10 in all four categories—our lowest ranking is 6th for healthy bodies—and even though the San Jose area, which includes Silicon Valley, ranks number one, we top them in three of the four categories. (Colorado Springs ranks 15th overall, the only other Centennial State city on the list.)
Each of these categories is evenly weighted, with the results reflecting the percentage of each region’s population that, for example, has access to amenities such as gyms, healthy food, and walkable neighborhoods; and lifestyle qualities such as rates of depression, obesity, and binge drinking. The results were then normalized on a scale of 1 to 100.
So given extraneous factors such as traffic, pollution, cost of living, and overall quality of life—all of which are endemic to the Bay Area—we’ll just go ahead and claim that top spot and say, if you want to make and keep a New Year’s resolution, there’s no better place than Denver to do it.
Follow 5280 editor-at-large on Twitter at @LucHatlestad.