The sixth annual Fitness, Information, Technology Challenge kicks off Saturday with the intent to get students, faculty and staff interested in healthier and more active lifestyles.
The program shows participants how to “get moving and eat better” by teaching the importance of increasing physical activity and improving nutrition, said Betty Blanton, associate director of recreational sports.
“Healthy workers are more productive, and nationally one of the most important things employers want students to learn in college is healthy habits,” said Debra Reed, a nutrition, hospitality and retail professor.
People sometimes rely on cars or buses instead of walking from place to place, which cuts out simple and basic movement from their lives, Blanton said. Any type of movement is important to living a healthy lifestyle, she said.
“We’re trying to make people aware that small changes in their lives can have a big impact on their health,” Blanton said. “As a general rule, Americans have gotten kind of lazy. Our lifestyle is not very physically active anymore and that’s really a necessary part.”
During the eight-week challenge, participants put themselves in teams of six and try to become more active. Each team selects its level — Raider Rookie, Raider Power or Raider Warriors — and members exercise between 120 to 360 minutes each week depending on their athletic abilities. The three levels were introduced to allow people to participate, regardless of how active they are before the program begins, Blanton said.
“Having that set number is kind of a motivation for people to reach their goal,” said Shweta Gohel, FIT Tech student coordinator and a senior nutritional sciences major from Lubbock.
At the end of each week, team members go online and input the minutes they spent being physically active. This helps hold members accountable for their own workouts, Blanton said.
“We hope that teamwork is involved and people talk to each other and encourage each other,” he said. “We’ve really found that the team — having other people to rely on and also not to disappoint — helps keep them more motivated than if they were trying to achieve a fitness or nutrition goal by themselves.”
Blanton said FIT Tech also wants people to know becoming more active isn’t the only way to live a healthier life.
In previous years the program offered seminars teaching topics ranging from “drinking away calories” to the importance of goal setting. This year, she said, FIT Tech will instead post “webinars” online every Wednesday at noon because people were not always able to take time from their schedules to attend the seminars.
“We used to have seminars last year and we’d all get together in a room, but this year we have webinars so that people can be nutritionally advised on their own time,” Gohel said.
Last-minute registration for the challenge will begin at noon during the event kick off at the Robert H. Ewalt Student Recreation Center. After registering teams and a short training session for team captains, FIT Tech participants can take part in the 5K/1 mile fun run/walk. The challenge costs $8 for students and $10 for faculty to participate, which includes fees for T-shirts.
In addition to the challenge, FIT Tech organizes two walks at 12:30 p.m. every Wednesday and two at noon every Friday. The walks begin at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center flagpoles and the Preston Smith statue. The organization also will have healthy food demonstrations at 5:30 p.m. Thursday and noon Friday in Room 287 of the Human Sciences building.
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