UW becoming healthier with ‘Lighten Up Wisconsin’

Was losing weight or exercising more part of your New Year’s resolutions? For members of the University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty and staff, achieving these goals has never been easier.

UW–Madison is offering faculty and staff the opportunity to participate in Lighten Up Wisconsin, a four-month challenge that supports teams in making “small, realistic and permanent changes” in members’ lifestyles to encourage healthier living.

“We’re going to try exercising together during lunch,” says Ann Hebl, a team leader in the Office of Admissions, one of the many departments that will participate in the program. “Our teams are hoping to become healthier by changing our eating habits and increasing how often we exercise.”

Lighten Up Wisconsin offers weekly exercise and nutrition tips, healthful recipes, periodic challenges and a handbook filled with healthy eating and exercise ideas, while also encouraging members to make healthy decisions through friendly competition with others and personal goal-setting. Teams of ten or less participants compete to lose the most weight or to reach the highest amount of accumulated activity among other teams in the state. Although the competition officially starts on January 15, teams can register until March 15, 2007.

For three years, the challenge has been helping participants get healthier around Wisconsin, but this is the first year UW–Madison has participated. In 2006, the program encouraged participants to lose 18,000 pounds and log more than 371,000 miles of activity.

“UW-Madison is such a huge part of the community and people really look to the campus as part of what is going on in the city as a whole,” says Jordan Bingham, the coordinator of Lighten Up Wisconsin. “If the campus can take on a wellness program like this and can make small changes in eating habits and exercise, it can be a really great example for the rest of the state.”

The program is being run by the Wisconsin Sports Development Corporation, along with sponsors Ministry Health Care, Unity Health Insurance, American Family Insurance, Hydrite Chemical Company and the Wisconsin Education Association Trust.