Wellness Challenge offers healthy start to 2024 for Swift Current, Shaunavon residents
The 12th annual Wellness Challenge will again offer Swift Current residents a healthy start to the new year and an opportunity for Shaunavon residents to participate for the first time.
This free-of-charge activity will take place from Jan. 22 to Feb. 18 to promote healthy lifestyles among participants.
The event is offered by the City of Swift Current Community Services Division. The City’s In Motion Community Facilitator Val Choo-foo noted that just over 3,000 people have participated in the challenge during the past 11 years and the format will remain similar for 2024.
“The biggest twist for this year is that we are going to have a friendly competition against Shaunavon,” she said. “The Town of Shaunavon is going to do the exact same Wellness Challenge, but they’ll do it with their own local teams and their own prizes from their local community. Then we will keep track and find out which community has the highest average at the end of the four weeks. It’s just a fun way to have a healthy rivalry between two of our communities.”
The involvement of another community in the Wellness Challenge is a result of a discussion between Choo-foo and a Shaunavon resident who works for the Town.
“I just shared everything with them,” she recalled. “So we’re in contact constantly. The Town of Shaunavon will have a person just like myself, who will have all the points sent in to them. They’ll have their own prizes, but other than that, they follow the same format. Then at the very end, we’ll just figure out the highest average of points between all of Shaunavon teams and then all of the Swift Current teams, and we’ll see who comes up with the highest average.”
The goal of the challenge is to help participants make healthier choices and increase awareness of their daily wellness routines.
“I always love to say that the greatest prize of all is their own health and wellness,” she mentioned. “So hopefully people have fun with it and feel like 2024 has had a good start with the Wellness Challenge.”
There were 24 teams with a total of 196 participants in the 2023 Wellness Challenge. According to Choo-foo the participation numbers have usually been around 200 people in previous years.
“People can register a team, whether it’s from their workplace, family or friends, and then they’ll keep track of daily wellness points,” she said. “I made a few little changes just on people’s feedback from last year, but it’s pretty close to the same.”
Wellness Challenge participants will earn daily wellness points for nutrition, physical activity, water and sleep. They can receive additional points by participating in the educational and weekly challenges.
They will report to their team captain once a week with their points. The team captain will compile the total team points per week and submit the information to Choo-foo by Feb. 7 as a mid-report and then by Feb. 26 for the final report.
The challenge has a holistic approach to wellness and it is therefore not meant to be only a program for weight loss or fitness.
“It’s really about the whole experience of wellness and that’s why we’ve always stuck firm with it’s not a weight loss program,” she said. “Now, do some people lose weight? Yes, they definitely can. It depends, but it’s more about feeling healthy at the end of it. The reason for four weeks of Wellness Challenge is hopefully people have established some new habits that they can continue into the year.”
The education challenge for each week will have a lunch and learn format. Participants can earn an extra 10 points by joining each virtual session or by watching a recorded video later. Each educational session will have guest presenters and the topics for the different weeks are wellness, mindfulness, nutrition and physical activity.
The weekly challenge will be another way to earn an extra 10 points. It will be an opportunity to try something new, for example different wellness practices, a new recipe from Canada’s food guide or a new exercise.
Activities included in the wellness challenge will help to promote mental wellness. For example, the final weekly challenge is an exercise on gratefulness. The various wellness practices that can be tried out during the challenge include an act of kindness to others.
“There’s research on that,” she said about how kindness adds to personal wellness. “It’s not just a guess. When we do kindness and do good things for others, we feel good ourselves. That is why it’s incorporated, because it’s a part of wellness.”
Some free or discounted activities will be available to registered Wellness Challenge participants in Swift Current. It will give them access to different City programs available at the Aquatic Centre or Stockade as well as activities offered by Twist of Fate, a local health and fitness centre, during the four-week period of the challenge.
“We’ve got some free City programs and then some discounted programs if you participate in the Wellness Challenge that you can be a part of,” Choofoo said. “And also this year we have Twist of Fate that’s joined on, and they have some great deals for discounted costs for those participants in the Wellness Challenge.”
All teams will be entered in a weekly prize draw and there will be a prize for the team with the highest average of points at the end of the challenge. Only teams with at least five members will be eligible for the overall team prize, but teams of all sizes as well as individuals who sign up for the Wellness Challenge will be entered into the weekly prize draw.
“I would really like to say a huge thank you to the Swift Current Kiwanis Club,” she noted. “They have supported the Wellness Challenge pretty close from the very beginning. So they provide some funds to us, and those funds go to help with the promotion of the Wellness Challenge, and a large part of it goes to the grand prize for the team with the highest average of points.”
The registration deadline to participate in the 2024 Wellness Challenge is Jan. 15 for teams and participants in both Swift Current and Shaunavon.
Details about the Wellness Challenge is available on the City of Swift Current website at www.swiftcurrent.ca/ wellnesschallenge and on the Town of Shaunavon website at www.shaunavon. com/page/wellness-leisure/