In this guest blog from One You Lincolnshire, Nigel Stephenson reviews their MOVE-ember, challenge and looks ahead to the Heart & Sole Programme they are launching in January.

With another new year fast approaching, I’m sure lots of us will once again be considering what new years resolutions we will set ourselves, once the clock strike’s midnight on New Year’s Eve. I would suggest that top of many peoples list for resolutions will be things like ‘improving my fitness’, ‘losing some weight’, ‘drinking less alcohol’ or ‘joining the gym’.

This year, One You Lincolnshire, the counties integrated healthy lifestyle service have offered a brand-new challenge called MOVE-ember. This was designed to inspire participants to increase their physical activity levels during November & December, months that have traditionally tended to be hard periods for people to find motivation to exercise, partly due to the colder, wetter weather and partly due to the close proximity to January. Often at this time of year, our mindset tends to switch towards our festive celebrations, and our physical activity sometimes can play second fiddle to other things happening around us.

Our MOVE-ember challenge had 187 people sign up at the start of November. As part of this, participants were challenged to do three simple things: firstly, wrap up warm and try to get moving outside (by walking, jogging, cycling, scooting), secondly; get active inside – by accessing Gloji Gym, our online exercise platform, and thirdly to try something new by finding things on the Let’s Move Lincolnshire activity finder. We are very much looking forward to hearing back from all the MOVE-ember participants to see how they have got on, and hopefully find out if they are feeling happier and healthier for being more active.

Looking ahead to January, One You Lincolnshire will be launching a programme called Heart & Sole. This is a 12-week programme, where participants will receive a free starter bag, containing a resistance band, water bottle and lots of useful resources to help participants to increase their activity levels. They will also be set weekly challenges to try to achieve, like recording their steps, eating more fruit and vegetables, alongside support and encouragement from both physical activity coaches and fellow challengers. We are excited to offer this next to clients living in the Grantham area, but we plan to also roll this out to other parts of Lincolnshire, later in the year.

So, whether you are someone who will be keeping yourself active over the Christmas period, or plan to wait for January to arrive before reaching for the sports kit, remember that even a little bit of exercise is much better than doing nothing (and might make getting started in January much easier)! Have a fab Christmas and New Year everyone!!

If you would like to find out more about all of the different programmes that One You Lincolnshire offer, which support people to Move More, Lose Weight and Eat Well, Drink Less, Stop Smoking, please have a look at our website: https://www.oneyoulincolnshire.org.uk/. All programmes are FREE, subject to meeting eligibility criteria.