Ted英语演讲： 一个“肥胖”的城镇如何‘瘦身’100万磅
美国俄克拉何马城——曾是全美肥胖症最普遍的城镇之一。市长米克·科内特分享市民全民瘦身累计100万磅的经历。
Mick Cornett: How an obese town lost a million pounds
一个“肥胖”的城镇如何“瘦身”100万磅
How many of you have been to Oklahoma City?
在座的各位有多少人去过俄克拉荷马城?
Raise your hand. Yeah?
请举手。
How many of you have not been to Oklahoma City and have no idea who I am? (Laughter)
又有多少人没去过，而且从来没听说过我？（笑声）
Most of you. Let me give you a little bit of background.
看来大多数都没有。我来提供点背景知识吧。
Oklahoma City started in the most unique way imaginable. Back on a spring day in 1889, the federal government held what they called a land run. They literally lined up the settlers along an imaginary line, and they fired off a gun, and the settlers roared across the countryside and put down a stake, and wherever they put down that stake, that was their new home. And at the end of the very first day, the population of Oklahoma City had gone from zero to 10,000, and our planning department is still paying for that. The citizens got together on that first day and elected a mayor. And then they shot him. (Laughter) That’s not really all that funny — (Laughter) — but it allows me to see what type of audience I’m dealing with, so I appreciate the feedback.
俄克拉何荷城是在一种我们所能想像到的最独特的方式中建立起来的。那是在1889年的一个春天，联邦政府掀起了一场他们称为“大地奔跑”的廉价土地抢占热潮。他们将想要在这里定居的男女老少们排成一列，然后鸣枪作为信号，于是人群吼叫着冲过乡村在土地上插置木桩以抢占土地，这样一来，他们便可将新家安在他们所插置木桩的土地上。在“大地奔跑”的第一天结束后，俄克拉荷马城的人口从零飙升至一万，我们的规划部门甚至直到今天都还在为这些土地支付费用。市民们在那一天聚集在一起，并且选出了自己的市长。然后，他们枪毙了他。（笑声）这其实真的没有那么好笑。–（笑声）–但是这可以让我看到我正在和什么样的观众打交道，所以我很感谢你们这样的反馈。
The 20th century was fairly kind to Oklahoma City. Our economy was based on commodities, so the price of cotton or the price of wheat, and ultimately the price of oil and natural gas. And along the way, we became a city of innovation. The shopping cart was invented in Oklahoma City. (Applause) The parking meter, invented in Oklahoma City. You’re welcome.
二十世纪对待俄克拉荷马城的方式真是相当宽厚。我们的经济以商品为基石，故而棉布抑或小麦的价格也是这基石的一部分，并且，最终以石油与天然气的价格为基础。随着时间的推移，我们发展成为了一个具有革新意义的城市。购物车是在俄克拉何马城发明的。（掌声）停车计时器，也诞生于俄克拉何马城。不用客气！
Having an economy, though, that relates to commodities can give you some ups and some downs, and that was certainly the case in Oklahoma City’s history. In the 1970s, when it appeared that the price of energy would never retreat, our economy was soaring, and then in the early 1980s, it cratered quickly. The price of energy dropped. Our banks began to fail. Before the end of the decade, 100 banks had failed in the state of Oklahoma. There was no bailout on the horizon. Our banking industry, our oil and gas industry, our commercial real estate industry, were all at the bottom of the economic scale. Young people were leaving Oklahoma City in droves for Washington and Dallas and Houston and New York and Tokyo, anywhere where they could find a job that measured up to their educational attainment, because in Oklahoma City, the good jobs just weren’t there.
然而，依赖于大宗商品的经济体会时常起伏不定，这确实也是俄克拉何马城在历史上所经历过的。二十世纪七十年代，当能源的价格不再下跌的时候，我们的经济飞速发展，而后来在二十世纪八十年代早期，它迅速地崩溃。能源价格狂跌。我们本地的银行开始破产。那十年中，俄克拉何马州的一百家银行宣告破产。而当时又没有可以即刻实施的救市政策。我们的银行业，石油与天然气工业，还有商业地产业，在当时都完全不具有一定的经济规模。年轻人成群结队地离开俄克拉何马城前往华盛顿、达拉斯、休斯顿、纽约和东京，前往任何一个他们可以得到一份符合自己教育程度的工作的地方，因为俄克拉何马城已无他们的容身之地。
But along at the end of the ’80s came an enterprising businessman who became mayor named Ron Norick. Ron Norick eventually figured out that the secret to economic development wasn’t incentivizing companies up front, it was about creating a place where businesses wanted to locate, and so he pushed an initiative called MAPS that basically was a penny-on-the-dollar sales tax to build a bunch of stuff. It built a new sports arena, a new canal downtown, it fixed up our performing arts center, a new baseball stadium downtown, a lot of things to improve the quality of life. And the economy indeed seemed to start showing some signs of life.
然而，在八十年代末期一位有事业心的商人来到了这里，并且成为市长。他的名字叫罗恩·诺里克。罗恩·诺里克最终发现经济发展的诀窍并不是去激励那些处于先锋地位的公司，而是要开创出一个企业们愿意植根、投资的地方，于是他推动了一项名为“MAPS”的倡议。这项倡议主要是以低额销售税为中心来建立大量的各类设施。依照这个发展计划，我们建成了一个崭新的体育竞技场，一条新的位于市中心的运河，并且修缮了我们的表演艺术中心，还建起了一个中心棒球场，以及其他许多提高市民生活品质的事物。这样一来，经济似乎开始发展，并且确实展现出了一些复苏的迹象。
The next mayor came along. He started MAPS for Kids, rebuilt the entire inner city school system, all 75 buildings either built anew or refurbished.
接着，下一任市长就任。他发起了为孩子们设立的“MAPS”倡议，重建了整个旧城区的学制，总共重建、翻新了七十五栋建筑。
And then, in 2004, in this rare collective lack of judgment bordering on civil disobedience, the citizens elected me mayor.
然后，在2004年，在这难得一见的近乎于非暴力反抗的对判断力的集体缺失中，市民们选我为市长。
Now the city I inherited was just on the verge of coming out of its slumbering economy, and for the very first time, we started showing up on the lists. Now you know the lists I’m talking about. The media and the Internet love to rank cities. And in Oklahoma City, we’d never really been on lists before. So I thought it was kind of cool when they came out with these positive lists and we were on there. We weren’t anywhere close to the top, but we were on the list, we were somebody. Best city to get a job, best city to start a business, best downtown — Oklahoma City.
现在我所继任的这座城市正蠢蠢欲动，从它沉眠的经济中苏醒过来，而且头一次，我们开始在排名表中崭露头角。你们知道我所说的排名表。媒体与网络向来喜好为城市排名。在此之前，在俄克拉何马城，我们从来没有登上过这些排名表。所以我认为当这些具有肯定意味的排名中出现了我们的城市时，真是挺酷的。我们的排名并不靠前，但是我们在列表上面，我们有分量。最佳工作地，最佳创业地，最出色的商业区——俄克拉何马城。
And then came the list of the most obese cities in the country. And there we were.
然后，又有了全国最“肥胖”城市的排名。我们也在其中。
Now I like to point out that we were on that list with a lot of really cool places. (Laughter) Dallas and Houston and New Orleans and Atlanta and Miami. You know, these are cities that, typically, you’re not embarrassed to be associated with. But nonetheless, I didn’t like being on the list.
现在我很乐意指出一点：有很多很酷的城市和我们一起登上了这个排名。（笑声）达拉斯、休斯顿、新奥尔良、亚特兰大和迈阿密。你们知道，这些城市是那种典型的没人会羞于与它们有什么联系的城市。但尽管如此，我并不喜欢被登在这样一个排名上。
And about that time, I got on the scales. And I weighed 220 pounds. And then I went to this website sponsored by the federal government, and I typed in my height, I typed in my weight, and I pushed Enter, and it came back and said "obese."
也差不多是在那时，我称了称体重。我重约220磅。然后我去了那个由联邦政府赞助的网站，我输入了自己的身高、体重，然后我按下“输入”键，结果显示：“肥胖。”
I thought, "What a stupid website." (Laughter) "I’m not obese. I would know if I was obese."
我想，“这网站太蠢了。”–（笑声）–“我不胖。我要是胖的话我早知道了。”
And then I started getting honest with myself about what had become my lifelong struggle with obesity, and I noticed this pattern, that I was gaining about two or three pounds a year, and then about every 10 years, I’d drop 20 or 30 pounds. And then I’d do it again. And I had this huge closet full of clothes, and I could only wear a third of it at any one time, and only I knew which part of the closet I could wear. But it all seemed fairly normal, going through it.
然后我开始试着对我与肥胖一直都在斗争的事实诚实一些。而且，我还注意到了一个模式，那就是我几乎每年都要增重两到三磅，然后大概每十年，我都能瘦二十到三十磅。然后再循环。我还有一个装满衣服的大衣柜，但是我每次只能穿其中三分之一的衣服，而且只有我知道衣柜中的哪一部分是我可以穿的。但是经历这些，在当时对于我似乎都相当平常。
Well, I finally decided I needed to lose weight, and I knew I could because I’d done it so many times before, so I simply stopped eating as much. I had always exercised. That really wasn’t the part of the equation that I needed to work on. But I had been eating 3,000 calories a day, and I cut it to 2,000 calories a day, and the weight came off. I lost about a pound a week for about 40 weeks.
好吧，我最后终于决定我得减肥，而且我知道我能做到，因为我以前已经尝试过许多次了，于是我就开始不再吃那么多。我那时一直都坚持锻炼。我其实真的不必坚持那样做。但是我曾经一天摄入三千卡热量，然后我将它削减到了一天两千卡，最后我的体重恢复了正常。我每周大约瘦一磅，持续了大概四十周。
Along the way, though, I started examining my city, its culture, its infrastructure, trying to figure out why our specific city seemed to have a problem with obesity. And I came to the conclusion that we had built an incredible quality of life if you happen to be a car. (Laughter) But if you happen to be a person, you are combatting the car seemingly at every turn. Our city is very spread out. We have a great intersection of highways, I mean, literally no traffic congestion in Oklahoma City to speak of. And so people live far, far away. Our city limits are enormous, 620 square miles, but 15 miles is less than 15 minutes. You literally can get a speeding ticket during rush hour in Oklahoma City. And as a result, people tend to spread out. Land’s cheap. We had also not required developers to build sidewalks on new developments for a long, long time. We had fixed that, but it had been relatively recently, and there were literally 100,000 or more homes into our inventory in neighborhoods that had virtually no level of walkability.
然而，通过这种方式，然后我开始评估这座城市，它的文化，它的基础设施，我努力去寻找我们这座特定的城市之所以有肥胖问题的原因。然后我得出了结论，那就是如果你碰巧是一辆车的话，你的生活水平会达到难以置信地高。（笑声）但是如果你碰巧是个人类，那么你似乎正处处与车斗争。我们的城市四通八达。我们拥有庞杂的交错的公路，我是说，俄克拉何马城确实没有什么值得注意的交通拥塞。因此人们住得非常远。我们的城市范围很广大，620平方英里，但是十五英里的路程花费要比十五分钟少。在俄克拉何马城的交通高峰期间，你都能接到超速行驶的传票。结果，人们就倾向于散开来。地产很便宜。我们也已经很长时间没有再要求开发商们在新建住宅区修建人行道了。我们曾经修缮过人行道，但是这个问题是最近才出现的，并且有超过十万个出现在我们清单上的家庭都居住在事实上没有任何可步行性的社区中。
And as I tried to examine how we might deal with obesity, and was taking all of these elements into my mind, I decided that the first thing we need to do was have a conversation. You see, in Oklahoma City, we weren’t talking about obesity. And so, on New Year’s Eve of 2007, I went to the zoo, and I stood in front of the elephants, and I said, "This city is going on a diet, and we’re going to lose a million pounds."
在我尽最大努力斟酌我们将怎样对待肥胖症的问题，并且在脑中考虑着这所有的要素的时候，我认为我们的首要任务就是进行一场对话。你们知道，在俄克拉何马城，我们不讨论关于肥胖症的问题。因此，在2007年的除夕夜，我去了动物园，站在大象们的身前，并且说：“这座城市将要实行节食，而且我们还要减掉一百万磅。”
Well, that’s when all hell broke loose.
咳，那就是一切开始变得一团糟的时候。
(Laughter)
（笑声）
The national media gravitated toward this story immediately, and they really could have gone with it one of two ways. They could have said, "This city is so fat that the mayor had to put them on a diet." But fortunately, the consensus was, "Look, this is a problem in a lot of places. This is a city that’s wanting to do something about it." And so they started helping us drive traffic to the website. Now, the web address was thiscityisgoingonadiet.com. And I appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" one weekday morning to talk about the initiative, and on that day, 150,000 visits were placed to our website. People were signing up, and so the pounds started to add up, and the conversation that I thought was so important to have was starting to take place. It was taking place inside the homes, mothers and fathers talking about it with their kids. It was taking place in churches. Churches were starting their own running groups and their own support groups for people who were dealing with obesity. Suddenly, it was a topic worth discussing at schools and in the workplace. And the large companies, they typically have wonderful wellness programs, but the medium-sized companies that typically fall between the cracks on issues like this, they started to get engaged and used our program as a model for their own employees to try and have contests to see who might be able to deal with their obesity situation in a way that could be proactively beneficial to others.
国内媒体立刻被这个故事吸引住了，他们其实本来可以用一到两天来报道它。他们本来可以说：“这座城市太‘胖’了以至于市长不得不让市民们来节食。“不过幸运的是，舆论却是这样的：”看，这个问题在很多城市中都很普遍。然而这个城市想要做些什么来改变这个现状。”因此他们开始帮助我们为网站增加流量。现在，这个网址是thiscityisgoingonadiet（意为‘这座城市要节食了’）.com。一个工作日的早晨我去了谈话节目“艾伦秀”并且谈了谈这个方案，在那一天，十五万个访问者来到了我们的网站。人们开始注册，因此我们网站的分量开始增长，那场我认为很重要的谈话开始进行。它在人们的家庭中进行，父母与孩子们讨论肥胖症的问题。它同样也在教堂中进行。教堂开始为想要解决肥胖问题的人组建他们自己的跑步小组和支持团队。突然，它成为了一个值得在学校和工作单位讨论的问题。那些大公司都拥有完善的健康项目，但是那些中等规模的公司忽略了像这样的问题，于是他们签署协定并且开始加入我们的计划，以此作为员工们的模范。他们尝试，并且发起竞赛，以此来见证谁有可能以一种于他人而言也积极有效的方式解决他们自己的肥胖问题。
And then came the next stage of the equation. It was time to push what I called MAPS 3. Now MAPS 3, like the other two programs, had had an economic development motive behind it, but along with the traditional economic development tasks like building a new convention center, we added some health-related infrastructure to the process. We added a new central park, 70 acres in size, to be right downtown in Oklahoma City. We’re building a downtown streetcar to try and help the walkability formula for people who choose to live in the inner city and help us create the density there. We’re building senior health and wellness centers throughout the community. We put some investments on the river that had originally been invested upon in the original MAPS, and now we are currently in the final stages of developing the finest venue in the world for the sports of canoe, kayak and rowing. We hosted the Olympic trials last spring. We have Olympic-caliber events coming to Oklahoma City, and athletes from all over the world moving in, along with inner city programs to get kids more engaged in these types of recreational activities that are a little bit nontraditional. We also, with another initiative that was passed, are building hundreds of miles of new sidewalks throughout the metro area. We’re even going back into some inner city situations where we had built neighborhoods and we had built schools but we had not connected the two. We had built libraries and we had built neighborhoods, but we had never really connected the two with any sort of walkability. Through yet another funding source, we’re redesigning all of our inner city streets to be more pedestrian-friendly. Our streets were really wide, and you’d push the button to allow you to walk across, and you had to run in order to get there in time. But now we’ve narrowed the streets, highly landscaped them, making them more pedestrian-friendly, really a redesign, rethinking the way we build our infrastructure, designing a city around people and not cars. We’re completing our bicycle trail master plan. We’ll have over 100 miles when we’re through building it out.
然后，我们步入了下一阶段。到了推行我所说的“MAPS”3倡议的时候。现在，“MAPS”3，就像其他两个方案一样，有在其背后助推的经济动机，但是连同那些传统的经济发展工作一起，比如说建立一座新的会议中心，我们在这个过程中加入了一些健康相关的基础设施。我们在俄克拉何马城的市中心新建了一个七十英亩的中心公园。我们致力建设市中心的有轨电车，以便帮助解决住在市中心的人们的步行问题并且提升中心城区的人口密度。我们也在整个社区建设高标准的保健与健康中心。我们同样也对原来“MAPS”协议在当初投资开发过的河流进行了一些投资，目前我们已经步入了发展世界上最佳的皮划艇、赛艇运动场所的最后阶段。我们去年春天举办了奥运会的选拔赛。俄克拉何马城迎来了奥林匹克水准的赛事，来自世界各地的运动员们随着市中心改造项目的进行一起来到这里，从而促进孩子们更加积极地投身这些有点打破传统的休闲活动中去。我们也同另外一个已通过的提案一起在都会区修建数百英里的新人行道。我们甚至回到了一些已经建设了居民区与学校，但是我们还没有把二者连接起来的中心城区去。我们在此之前已经建立了图书馆与社区，但是我们从来没有真正地以任何可步行的方式将这二者连接起来。我们还通过其他的筹资渠道来重新设计市中心的所有街道来使得它们更加适合步行。我们的街道曾经确实很宽，可是你必须立刻动身来确保自己能够步行穿过街道，然后不得不飞奔才能及时到达街道的另一边。不过现在我们将街道缩窄了，对它们进行了高度的美化，使它们更加适于步行，并且进行了真正意义上的重设计，重新考虑了我们建设基础设施的方式，建立起了一个以人而非车辆为中心的城市。我们同时也在完成“自行车远足者”的计划。通过达成这一计划，我们将达到超过一百英里的成绩。
And so you see this culture starting to shift in Oklahoma City. And lo and behold, the demographic changes that are coming with it are very inspiring. Highly educated twentysomethings are moving to Oklahoma City from all over the region and, indeed, even from further away, in California.
因此，你们可以看到俄克拉何马城的文化开始转变。而且你们可以看到，随之而来的人口结构的变化真是非常鼓舞人心。受过高等教育的二十来岁的年轻人们从各个地区，甚至从更远的地方，比如加利福尼亚，搬往俄克拉何马城。
When we reached a million pounds, in January of 2012, I flew to New York with some our participants who had lost over 100 pounds, whose lives had been changed, and we appeared on the Rachael Ray show, and then that afternoon, I did a round of media in New York pushing the same messages that you’re accustomed to hearing about obesity and the dangers of it. And I went into the lobby of Men’s Fitness magazine, the same magazine that had put us on that list five years before. And as I’m sitting in the lobby waiting to talk to the reporter, I notice there’s a magazine copy of the current issue right there on the table, and I pick it up, and I look at the headline across the top, and it says, "America’s Fattest Cities: Do You Live in One?" Well, I knew I did, so I picked up the magazine and I began to look, and we weren’t on it.
2012年1月，当我们达到了一百万磅的目标时，我和一些减掉了将近一百磅，生活已经因此而改变的参与者们一起飞往纽约，并且去了“瑞秋美食秀”，那天下午，我在纽约的很多媒体发表了，人们已习惯于听到的，肥胖症以及它所带来的危害的相同的观点。然后我又走进了男性健康杂志的会客室，也就是那家在五年前将我们列入那个肥胖排名表的杂志。当我坐在会客室里，等待与记者谈话的时候，我注意到一张桌子上正放着一份现刊的拷贝，于是我将它拿起来，并且看了看顶部的头条，上面写着：“美国最”肥胖“城市：你正身处其中吗？“好吧，我知道我确实身处其中，所以我翻开杂志开始阅读，然而，上面没有俄克拉何马城的名字。
(Applause)
（掌声）
Then I looked on the list of fittest cities, and we were on that list. We were on the list as the 22nd fittest city in the United States. Our state health statistics are doing better. Granted, we have a long way to go. Health is still not something that we should be proud of in Oklahoma City, but we seem to have turned the cultural shift of making health a greater priority. And we love the idea of the demographics of highly educated twentysomethings, people with choices, choosing Oklahoma City in large numbers. We have the lowest unemployment in the United States, probably the strongest economy in the United States. And if you’re like me, at some point in your educational career, you were asked to read a book called "The Grapes of Wrath." Oklahomans leaving for California in large numbers for a better future. When we look at the demographic shifts of people coming from the west, it appears that what we’re seeing now is the wrath of grapes. (Laughter) (Applause) The grandchildren are coming home.
然后我看了看最健康城市的排名，我们就在其中。我们作为美国第二十二个最健康的城市而被列于其中。我们的国家卫生统计正在做得越来越好。诚然，我们仍有很长的一段路要走。我们仍不应该以俄克拉何马城的健康水准而感到骄傲，但是我们似乎已经完成了使健康具有更高优先权的文化转变。而且，我们真的对于那些受教育程度很高的新增的年轻人口，那一大批面临着众多选择，而最终选定了俄克拉何马城的人们感到无比欣喜。我们拥有全美最低的失业率，或许也拥有全美最强的经济。如果你也像我一样，在学习生涯中的某一时刻，被要求阅读一本名为《愤怒的葡萄》的书，那你就知道那时的俄克拉荷马人大批地前往加利福尼亚去寻求更好的未来。可当我们目睹那些来自西部的人们引起的人口变化时，我们现在正在看见的似乎是”葡萄的愤怒“。（笑声）（掌声）孙辈们回到了家乡。
You’ve been a great audience and very attentive. Thank you very much for having me here.
你们真的是很好的观众，而且还都彬彬有礼。非常感谢你们今天在这里聆听我的演讲。
(Applause)
（掌声）