Ultima Fitness & Wellness — arm-in-arm with the Village of Wellington — is working to help make Wellington residents healthier. The Palm Healthcare Foundation’s fifth annual “Let’s Move: Commit to Change Physical Activity Challenge” starts March 1 and will continue throughout the month.
“The reason that the Palm Healthcare Foundation is doing it is because we exist to improve health in Palm Beach County,” said Marge Sullivan, the foundation’s vice president for communication. “One of our priority areas is preventing diabetes and helping people who have it manage it. We know that physical activity is key. When people are active, and they keep moving, they can sometimes prevent Type 2 diabetes.”
Last year, the Ultima/Wellington team made it to the county’s top 10, coming in fifth. At the end of the challenge, winning teams will be announced and honored.
The program, modeled after a national campaign that former First Lady Michelle Obama started for people to get more active and eat more nutritious food, has grown tremendously, Sullivan said. Ten teams participated the first year, logging 100,000 minutes. In 2016, 48 teams competed in the challenge, where they were asked to log their minutes of physical activity. More than 10 million minutes were logged last year, up from the 2015 total of 2.8 million minutes.
The challenge is free to join, and teams can be entire communities, after-school programs, banks, corporate partners, soccer teams, neighborhoods or even families. Teams can sign up now, Sullivan said, but won’t be able to log their minutes until March 1.
“The whole goal of it is to get as many people logging their minutes as possible,” Sullivan said.
The Palm Healthcare Foundation challenges participants to be active at least 30 minutes a day. Any type of sustained physical activity, such as gardening, dancing, running or any other activity, counts toward the challenge’s goal of promoting physical activity, nutrition and healthy behaviors.
Special events, such as those that will be coordinated by Wellington and Ultima, will be loaded onto the Let’s Move web site over the next few weeks. WPEC-Channel 12 and ESPN are also partners and will be broadcasting updates about the initiative.
In Wellington, Jill Merrell of Ultima Fitness is looking forward to being the fitness provider for Wellington and continuing to participate in this initiative. Ultima became involved in the Let’s Move initiative early, liked the program and partnered with the village.
“Ultima’s goal is to see how we can help make the community be the healthiest community in the county,” Merrell said.
Wellington’s team, tentatively named “Well Wellington,” will help area residents get more active.
“In the month of March, we’re going to have different days with events going on that are open to the public at no charge if they’d like to do them at Ultima,” Merrell said.
Wellington Community Projects Manager Scott Campbell wants Wellington to do even better than it has in the past.
“We want to reach out to those who are active, as well as those who aren’t, to get them interested in a minimum level of activity each day,” he said.
Merrell hopes the partnership, and initiative, will help make Wellington healthier.
“Wellington is such a great community. It deserves to always be the leader, not the follower of anything. We’re looking for Wellington to be the healthiest community in Palm Beach County,” she said.
The date and location for Wellington’s kickoff event will be announced shortly.
“It’s something we’re all excited to get going and make bigger and better, try to make it more encompassing, and ultimately it’s something we’d like to see echo throughout the whole year,” Campbell said. “We want to show people there’s a plethora of options Wellington has to stay active and stay healthy.”
To register for the Ultima/Wellington team, or to create your own team, visit www.letsmovepbc.org. Participants will also visit the site to log minutes once the month-long event begins.
ABOVE: Dr. Matthew DiLallo, Jessica and Jill Merrell, Shelly Williams and Scott Campbell at last year’s “Let’s Move” kickoff.
