From the Biggest Loser to the Biggest Mover

We are 10 weeks into our 12 week Biggest Loser Campaign and I’m starting to focus on what’s next. We are planning a four month healthy activities campaign (aka Biggest Mover) beginning May 1st. This campaign will focus on getting people to move more whether they are active already or sedentary. We’re thinking a lot about how we transition participants in the Biggest Loser into the Biggest Mover. The team component of our Biggest Loser campaign has worked very well, so we want to give people the option of keeping their Biggest Loser teams together. We’re also going to encourage people to form teams around a specific activity like swimming, biking, golf or dog walking. We just need to figure out how to let the team structure grow organically while still facilitating a process where everyone that wants to be is placed on a team.

We’d like to hold a few new trial exercise classes. (Does anyone know a good hip hop instructor?) We are also making plans with True AP to hold a Frisbee golf tournament. I would like to do something in conjunction with the community center to get our staff to visit there and see what they offer too.

Throughout the Biggest Loser Campaign participants have had to enter their weight anonymously on our intranet site. This has helped to keep folks accountable and allowed us to declare weekly winners. We want to do something similar for our Health Activity Campaign and the President’s Challenge might fit the bill. People can create an activity log and then accumulate points based on the energy expenditure for each activity. Participants can earn Presidential Champion Awards based on the number of points they achieve. We can order medallions, lapel pins and certificates to present to people. I’ve already set up a group and it looks like it will be pretty easy to pull participant reports. This should allow us to recognize both individual and team achievements.

I’ve been experimenting a bit with getupandmove.me. People here are such good sports. I sent out challenges to folks and without even questioning me they were doing wall sits, jumping jacks, rolling tennis balls under their feet, and standing on their heads. I thought team members might be able to use this to challenge each other to get up from their desks for a few minutes during the work day.

We’ve also talked about doing a field day like competition at the end of the campaign and posting a tip of the day to our intranet. Do you have any suggestions for us?