Fit Family Challenge

Take Small Steps to Get Your Family Moving

Do you want to take Lexington Family’s Fit Family Challenge, too?

Small steps that get your family to move more can help all of you maintain a healthy weight.

Choose a different tip each week for you and your family to try. See if you or they can add to the list.

Use these tips from We Can KY (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition)to add more physical activity to your every day schedule.

Walk Whenever Possible

  • Walk instead of drive whenever you can
  • Walk your children to school
  • Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator
  • Take a family walk after dinner
  • Replace a Sunday drive with a Sunday walk
  • Go for a half-hour walk instead of watching TV
  • Park farther from the store and walk
  • Make a Saturday morning walk a family habit
  • Walk briskly in the mall
  • Take the dog on longer walks
  • Go up hills instead of around them

Move More in Your Home

  • Garden or make home repairs
  • Do yard work. Get your children to help rake, weed, or plant
  • Work around the house. Ask your children to help with active chores
  • Wash the car by hand
  • Use a snow shovel instead of a blower

 

Live Actively 

  • Join an exercise group and enroll your children in community sports teams
  • Do sit-ups in front of the TV. Have a sit-up competition with your kids
  • Walk the sidelines at kids’ athletic games
  • Choose an activity that fits into your daily life/lives
  • Use an exercise video if the weather is bad
  • Play with your kids at least 30 minutes a day
  • Dance to music… with your kids
  • Choose activities you enjoy. Ask children what activities they want to do
  • Explore new physical activities
  • Give yourself a gold star with non-food related rewards, such as a family day at the park, lake or zoo
  • Swim with your kids
  • Buy a set of hand weights and play a round of Simon Says with your kids – you do it with the weights, they do it without.

We Can KY (www.wecanky.com) is devoted to helping families eat better and move more.

The web site has practical ideas to improve food choices, increase physical activity and reduce screen time for children ages 8-13.

We Can KY is endorsed by the Lexington Tweens Nutrition and Fitness Coalition. (www.fitky.org).