Local group challenging residents to get fit for life

By BETH FOLEY
The Palestine Herald

PALESTINE January 25, 2009 12:12 am

— As a physician, Mayor Carolyn Salter sees what can happen to a person’s health when they quit moving.
When she heard about an initiative from Gov. Rick Perry’s office touting healthy activity through friendly competition, Salter was intrigued.
“It’s a six-week commitment to fitness but it only takes 21 days to make a habit,” Salter said. “Hopefully people will carry that habit into the rest of the year. A fairly high level of fitness makes you feel better, makes you feel happier, helps prevent cancer, reduces the impact of disease like high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes and arthritis.”
Salter approached several people around town, including Leah Vintilla, a registered nurse specializing in informatics and health statistics at Palestine Regional Medical Center, to devise easy ways that local residents could become more active, improve their health and have fun at the same time.
The group, called the City of Palestine Physical Fitness Council, consisted of Salter; her husband, Dr. Michael Gorby; Vintilla; her sister, Andrea Sims, a local cardiac rehab and wellness nurse; Palestine ISD athletic director and football coach Booker Bowie; Westwood ISD AD and football coach Kevin Anderson; Bobby Pennington, chief financial officer for the city and a personal fitness trainer; Sarah Jane Freeman, longtime fitness advocate involved with the YMCA and youth sports; and Sharyn Hightower, YMCA program director.
Vintilla wrote the proposal submitted to the governor’s office, which led to the city being awarded two grants totalling $59,820 to implement the plan.
“The grant is designed to increase awareness in Get Fit Texas and other programs the state offers,” Vintilla said recently. “Our other goal is to get people more active.”
Participants can choose from a variety of moderate activities ranging from walking, bicycling, aerobics, rowing and weight training to more intense such as jogging, wheeling a wheelchair, backpacking, rock climbing, water jogging, martial arts, tennis and circuit weight training.
For every 10 minutes of moderate activity, participants may award themselves one point, while 10 minutes of vigorous activity earns two points.
The goal is to do enough over a week’s time to accumulate at least 15 points.
The plan targets youth, adults and senior citizens and adults with special health needs such as diabetics and cardiac patients, as well as the workplace as a whole, with suggestions of how to get each more involved in healthy lifestyles.
The plan impressed those at the state level, said Brandon LeBlanc, a program specialist with the Department of State Health Services in Austin.
“Along with doing the same things most cities do, they had added a few things,” LeBlanc said recently. “We really liked their ambassador program to train people from the workplace and schools to be a health and fitness person and teach best practices ... to an organized group in their own location to improve fitness.
“We also liked the physical fitness challenge they want to put together between local employers. It’s always a good idea to breed friendly competition.”
Kicking off the local fitness efforts will be the Palestine Community Fitness Fair from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Palestine Civic Center.
“What we hope to do is expose people to what resources are available for fitness in the community, to help them begin immediately to improve their fitness and adopt healthy lifestyles and to basically get people off the couch,” Salter said.
People can sign up for fitness-related activities at the booths, see demonstrations of fun, low-impact activities, pick up information and listen to fitness and medical experts, munch on barbecue and register to win one of two Wii game consoles to be given away.
Those who choose to participate in the local FITNESS challenge are encouraged to sign up for the Texas Roundup on the Governor’s Fitness Web site (www.texasroundup.org) to earn points for the city as a whole as it competes against other municipalities around the state.
“The city can win a trophy and I want to beat Dish and Sugar Land, because they’ve won the trophies in the past,” Salter said.
The Texas Roundup began Jan. 1 and will end on April 18.
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Beth Foley may be contacted via e-mail at bfoley@palestineherald.com

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