DadsRT’s 14×14 Community Challenge – Better health one step at a time

When you hear “healthier lifestyle” what is the first thing that comes to mind? Probably nothing positive, right? I’m right there with you. I can think of a million different excuses for why I’m carrying an extra 40 pounds:

• I don’t have time
• I don’t enjoy working out
• It hurts
• I like to work out by myself
• I don’t like to work out by myself
• It’s too expensive
• I’m too tired by the end of the day

The list goes on and on. The truth of the matter is that all of these really are just excuses. We need to be healthier. We have things to do. We’re busy. We need to keep up. We need more energy to get through…life. The only way to do this is by getting exercise and eating healthier. You’d be surprised how much energy you will have when your body is working the way it should.

In order to break the habit of being sedentary and becoming healthier, we have to make decisions that we don’t like—at least at first. Some of us can start, but we need a little motivation to keep it up. Some of us immediately think that a “diet” is necessary (quite the turn-off word.) Some of us just need a good swift kick in the ass to get going in the first place.

Well, we aren’t going to kick anyone or recommend a diet today. (In fact, I hate diets. I think they are faddish marketing ploys that don’t work. Let’s face it, they are never sustainable, and that’s what we need—something that is going to last.) What we can provide, however, is a little group motivation. A few of us are trying out one of about a billion exercise challenge tools on the market called Daily Mile. It’s just a simple tracking tool with a social media kicker attached to it—nothing fancy; and for our purposes, it’s free. You can log in with Facebook or Twitter, add a profile, and have “fun” tracking your workouts. You can also set up or join challenges; which is what we did.

We aren’t competing against each other, we’re just trying to help build a healthier you and a help make healthier families.

We are doing a “rest-of-year” challenge called DadsRT’s 14×14 Community Challenge. We want to see if, as a community, we can log in 1,400 miles by 2014. The great thing is that you don’t have to be a runner or a fitness nut to participate! This Daily Mile challenge allows you to log in your distance via running, jogging, walking, cycling, swimming, or a combination of all of them. You don’t have to ultra-marathon either. There’s no minimum distance. If you get out and walk a lap on a quarter-mile track, great! It all adds up! Also, there are no winners or losers. We aren’t competing against each other, we’re just trying to help build a healthier you and a help make healthier families.

1,400 miles sounds like a lot, but this is a reasonable goal that I believe will be easily reached. You have to start somewhere, though, right? So if you have been looking for some workout buddies or a reason to get up off of your duff, let us help. Sign up for your free account, join our 14×14 challenge, and bust out those exercise shoes.

We’ll see you at the finish line!

What do you think? Is something like this worthwhile to you? Why or why not?

Photo credit: h.koppdelaney / Foter.com / CC BY-ND