Let’s Move! Getting Families More Active to Fight Childhood Obesity
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are leading the charge to give families the tools to fight childhood obesity. They have launched the Let’s Move web site to give families the tools for making healthier choices, increasing physical activity, building healthier schools, and giving greater access to healthy and affordable food.
A key goal to help increase physical activity is to double the participants in the President’s Challenge Active Lifestyle Program. This program has been around for many years, and now is updated with goals set by the latest studies. The basic goal is to be active for 30 minutes a day for adults or 60 minutes a day for youth under age 18.
The program encourages any sort of physical activity rather than setting goals for push-ups, etc. as the Presidential Physical Fitness Awards did when I was in school in the last century.
Pedometer step counting is specially featured as a way to achieve the active lifestyle goal. The program has set new targets for adult and child pedometer steps per day.
- Girls 6 to 17 - At least 11,000 steps a day
- Boys 6 to 17 - At least 13,000 steps a day
- Adults 18 or older - At least 8,500 steps a day
These amounts are based studies of average activity and are attainable by beginners. They offer the excellent President’s Challenge AE2790 Pedometer for a great price of $12.95, or the basic StepLinq pedometer for $7.95.
Top Picks for Pedometers
Let’s Move! Getting Families More Active to Fight Childhood Obesity originally appeared on About.com Walking on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 10:35:14.
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