Form Your Team to Lighten Up For Life

Staff reports

Are you ready to make 2009 the year you get to a healthier weight? Would you like to have fun with your friends while you do? And don’t want to spend a dime doing it? Then Lighten Up 4 Life is for you!

Mission Hospital’s community weight loss challenge left Asheville more than 20,000 pounds lighter in 2008. Registration has now started for 2009.

Lighten Up For Life has always been open to everybody, but in its first year organizers concentrated on getting businesses involved. For 2009, we’re reaching out to the entire community to encourage teams from neighborhoods, churches, clubs, and simply groups of friends who want to support each other in getting healthier.

Here’s what you do:
•    Find three other people to form your team of four. You can
join on your own, but we learned in 2008 that people who joined LU4L
with a team stuck with it were more successful and lost more weight
than people who joined on their own.
•    Choose a name. You can be serious or outrageous – whatever name
works for you. One of this year’s first teams named themselves after
Barnabus, the Biblical encourager for St. Paul. On a lighter note, 2008
names included “Now you see us, Now you don’t,” “We’re Not Pregnant,
Now Quit Asking,” and “Less Junk in our Trunk.”
•    Register on line. Just go to lightenup4life.com and follow the steps.
•    Choose your approach to weight loss. You’ll also get helpful hints emailed to you from LU4L.
•    Every month, weigh your team members and report your progress on line at lightenup4life.com.

This year’s competition concludes on June 5 with the Asheville
Chamber Challenge 5K Walk/Run. You don’t have to walk or run to come
and enjoy the celebration!

“The team that loses the biggest percentage of body fat will win
big prizes,” said Becky Brown, Mission’s team leader for Lighten Up For
Life. “But in this case, everybody who loses will be a winner!”

For more information call Merrell Gregory (828) 213-4806 or email [email protected]