Are you up for a fun fitness challenge?
Don’t let the word “fitness” intimidate you, though. Just as spring weather is hitting West Michigan, Lowell Community Wellness is hoping to kickstart everyone’s journey into a healthier lifestyle with an easy and very inclusive health challenge.
By focusing on a broad concept of what it means to be “healthy,” this challenge includes many opportunities to track attempts at lifestyle improvements and ways to participate.
Barb Hoogenboom, board president of LCW, says the challenge focuses on eight different wellness “dimensions” and offers ideas for activities that will count toward fulfilling fitness goals. Those dimensions are:
- Emotional
- Spiritual
- Intellectual
- Physical
- Environmental
- Financial
- Occupational
- Social
Some of the activities can include writing in a journal, reading for enjoyment, creating a budget, drinking 8 ounces of water per day, and spending time in nature.
The first thing participants need to do is get a Challenge Card. The card can be found on the LCW website or Facebook page, or picked up at the Lowell Community Expo March 23. LCW will be handing out cards from their booth from 9 am – 2 pm. There is also an option to download the card to your phone.
Hoogenboom says the card resembles a Bingo card, and participants can cross off activities they’ve accomplished three times. A total of 10 different activities will enter a participant into a prize drawing. The challenge relies on the honor system, and it is up to the participant to keep track of their activities.
The challenge runs April 8 through April 21. Participants can either mail in their card to the LCW office or take a photo of it and send it through a private message online.
Some of the prizes include passes to a tai chi or yoga class or a one-week pass to the Litehouse Family YMCA. There will also be a grand prize drawing where participants get the chance to win fitness equipment or one-on-one training sessions. To be considered for a grand prize you need to submit a photo of yourself completing a challenge to LCW.
Hoogenboom says the goal of the program is to help people consider doing activities that will focus on wellness, even for a short period of time. She said the program was created in response to a survey in which Lowell community members said they wanted small, self-driven activities they could do from home
In brainstorming sessions, LCW board members came up with activities that people could do if they are homebound or ideas that could become long-term habit starters. The main idea is to help people understand the full breath of wellness, Hoogenboom says.
“We hope the community can identify Lowell Community Wellness as a part of their wellness journey… or a go-to source for wellness ideas,” she adds, “and we hope that people will be able to participate at their own pace… and in their own dimensions of things that feel like wellness to them.”
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