Bostonians shed pounds in new campaign

On a Saturday afternoon, Melrose resident Whitney Warren burned calories to DJ Kupah’s music at “Pilates in the Park,” one of many free fitness activities featured in Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s health initiative.

About 150 people attended the class at the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

“It was great. I’m impressed with how many people came,” she said. “I loved it.”

Boston Moves For Health, a campaign aimed at providing easy and accessible physical activities at a budget-friendly cost, began in April with the goal of losing 1 million pounds and moving 10 million miles as a city over the next year, said Nick Martin, director of communications at the Boston Public Health Commission.

Since April, the campaign has created a series of free fitness classes open to the public and has worked with summer camps across the city to promote physical activity and record the campers’ results, Martin said.

Activities featured on the community calendar on the campaign’s website include walking groups, tai chi classes and Zumba.

Since the campaign’s initiation, more than 10,000 residents have signed up on the Boston Moves for Health website to create profiles and health goals, Martin said.

He said the website allows people to log activities and see the progress they have made through miles moved and pounds lost.

The city keeps tracks of these numbers and posts the totals on the website’s front page. As of Sept. 9, the website boasted 10,484 collective pounds shed and 1,526,339 miles logged.

Martin said for larger organizations such as youth summer camps the city has been working with a central point of contact who collects and provides them with the information.

“We want to really make sure we are capturing it all, but we want to make it as easy and convenient as possible for people,” he said.

The idea for the initiative originated when Menino was at a Thanksgiving community gathering. Menino was helping serve dinner when he encountered a boy who was overweight at a very young age, Martin said.

“He realized the kid doesn’t have a chance unless he gets help here because we know that health is so connected with other things in life,” he said.

Barbara Ferrer, the executive director of the BPHC, took the boy under her wing and helped craft a strategy to fight obesity, Martin said, forming the Boston Moves for Health Campaign.

“[Boston is] the third healthiest city in America, but still over 50 percent of our residents are overweight or obese,” he said. “It’s quite a staggering number.”

Martin said the campaign has made a lot of progress over the summer and that he is confident the city will reach its goal.

“It’s been a challenge for people to report back to us,” he said, “but we’ve made a lot of progress over the summer. We are plugging away at the goal, and I have no doubt we will reach them.”

The city has made a lot of progress in fewer than five months through partnerships and fitness programs, Menino said in a statement Martin emailed to The Daily Free Press.

“By increasing access to free and low-cost physical activities and healthy living resources, we are helping the whole city come together to get healthier,” Menino said.

Martin said the Boston Moves campaign would focus more on improving healthy eating and nutrition in the fall.

Residents of Boston and surrounding areas said the initiative and free classes were a great idea.

Warren, who plans to attend kickboxing classes at City Hall Plaza, said the Boston Moves for Health campaign sounds like a great idea.

Boston University alum Caroline W., a Charlestown resident, came out with her baby to spend the sunny afternoon doing Pilates in the park.

“It’s so fun,” she said, “I wish they did it more often.”