It’s never too late to start living a healthy lifestyle. Thrive Allen County wants to get people up and moving this year.
Thrive is sponsoring the sixth annual Movement, a county-wide eight week healthy initiative. The Movement focuses on physical activity and nutrition to motivate individuals in the community to eat better and create more movement in their lives.
Registration is April 29 to May 2, said Damaris Kunkler, program director for Thrive Allen County, as well as anytime throughout the eight weeks. Participants can sign up individually or as a team. Signups are at Moran City Hall, Thrive Allen County and Terry’s Flower Shop in Humboldt.
“You don’t have to have a team to sign up,” Kunkler said. “We encourage anyone who is interested to join.”
Registration costs $12 and participants get a T-shirt, information folders and access to all the classes. There will be a Movement kick-off event on May 5 at the Iola High School track where participants can weigh in.
“We will take registration and give out T-shirts that day,” Kunkler said. “We will walk around the track and there will be music. When the music plays Latin music we’ll do some dancing.”
Each day of the week will have classes like hike and bike, yoga and abs and assets. These classes are provided to encourage participants to get out and stay active.
Kunkler said the Movement Facebook page has grown into a beast of its own. Participants post photos of their weight loss or healthy activity for the day. The posts continued far after the Movement had ended last year. There are video clips from class instructors talking about why people should attend the Movement classes.
“The person who is reading that post becomes motivated and those who post are motivated by the encouraging feedback,” Kunkler said.
In the past Kunkler had worked on organizing the Movement on her own. She really wanted to get others involved and created a committee.
“The planning committee has been very helpful and they have come up with great ideas,” she said.
A check-in will be mid-way through the event on June 7. People can come into the Thrive office and weigh-in to check their progress. Official weigh-outs will be the week of June 27.
Wear it, Walk it Wednesdays is when participants wear the Movement shirt and post the photo of them wearing it on the Facebook page. Each person will get an incentive ticket.
Those who have most weight lost, most movement activities participated in, most Wear it, Walk it Wednesday will earn prizes at the end of the event. All prizes will be announced by July 9.
