New Year's Day is just a few days ahead and millions of us will be making resolutions -- many will be to drop those unwanted pounds. Some of us will succeed, but many of these good intentions will fall by the wayside before the new year is barely a month old.

It would be far better if we resolved to start living a healthier lifestyle, instead. This would not only result in reaching our desired weight but could also add additional years of good health to our lives.

Long before Ponce de Leon searched for the Fountain of Youth, mankind had searched for some mystical means of extending life, but without success. But now, Dan Buettner and a team of scientists, doctors and demographers may have succeeded in finding the keys to long life by studying four parts of the world that have large concentrations of people who live to be 100 and beyond.

In October, Buettner captivated his Yakima Town Hall audience by describing his team's interviews of these amazing centenarians and the findings that resulted. Details of this five-year study can be found in his New York Times best-seller, "Blue Zones -- Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest."

Buettner labeled these four areas with amazingly high numbers of healthy centenarians as Blue Zones. They are located in Okinawa, the mountainous Barbagia region of Sardinia, the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica and Loma Linda, California.

What do Blue Zones have to do with gardening and gardeners?

What Buettner's team learned about the exceptionally long lives of these people can be summarized in just three words: their healthy lifestyle. All four Blue Zones shared these elements: a healthy diet, low stress, daily exercise, purposeful life, religion and life with meaning.

What the team found wasn't actually a secret at all but more of a verification of what has long been thought to be true. During his lecture, it struck me that all of us who garden share several of these elements that lead to long, healthy lives.

* Plant-based diets: Centenarians from all four Blue Zones have plant-based diets. Furthermore, most of what they consume, with the exception of those in the Loma Linda Blue Zone, comes from what they grow in their own gardens. Whole grains are also important in their diets, though these may be bought or bartered.

Adventists eat little meat -- pork and shellfish are taboo -- and many are vegetarians. In the other Blue Zones meat is eaten infrequently by economic necessity.

On the other hand, many of us consume meat two and even three times a day. But we are woefully lax about eating the recommended six to seven daily servings of fruits and vegetables. We are satisfied to overload on fast-foods -- both at home and when dining out.

Those of us who have vegetable gardens, however, are much more likely to meet the recommended standards of fruits and veggies that come fresh from our gardens. Some of us also put some of what we grow aside for winter by drying, freezing and (gasp!) even canning. Still, we gardeners could learn a lot about diet from long-lived folks in the Blue Zones.

* Low-intensity exercise: Exercise is built into the lives of those who live in the Blue Zones. The most common mode of transportation has always been by "shank's mare," an old expression for walking. In three out of the four Blue Zones, centenarians have had little choice other than to walk. However, bicycles are also sometimes used for transportation, and that includes the people over 90. They do not lead sedentary lives, as do lots of younger couch potatoes in our country.

No health clubs full of exercise machines for these folks! Their gardens are their gyms. And your garden -- whether it's a flower garden or vegetable garden -- can be the same. Gardening is an excellent source of the two types of exercise needed to build and maintain healthy bodies: aerobic and weight bearing.

Many of these oldsters continue gardening, walking and otherwise exercising well into their 90s or beyond. The key: low-intensity exercise. Workouts in your garden don't mean exhausting yourself; neither does it mean just occasionally puttering with your perennials.

* Relieving stress: What better way to relieve stress than unwinding by a relaxing session of gardening? Our lifestyle is just as overflowing with stress as our oversize dinner plates overflowing with what has been best described as "portion distortion." Folks in the Blue Zones seem to have mastered stress, and one of the main ways of doing it is found in their gardens.

* Meaning and purpose: Centenarians in the Blue Zones also benefit, both mentally and physically, from being surrounded by those who share their same values that have to do with meaning and purpose of life. Likewise, gardeners everywhere enjoy being surrounded by other gardeners. Sometimes it's their gardening neighbors and friends. Sometimes it's belonging to a garden club. Or it could be by becoming a part of Master Gardeners. (New classes start in late January. For more information, call 509-574-1600.)

So abandon thoughts of making a New Year's resolution to start the latest fad diet. Instead, resolve to make needed changes in your lifestyle. Gardening may a key to a longer and healthier life. Here's wishing you success in 2010 in whatever you set out to accomplish.

* Freelance gardening columnist Jim McLain can be reached at 509-697-6112 or ongardening@compwrx.com.