Today is the ceremonial kick off of the “Live Healthy Iowa 100 Day Wellness Challenge” but there already has over two-thousand teams signed up. Iowa Sports Foundation executive director, Clarence Hudson, says the challenge that started in 2001 is a unique event.

“It puts teams together, teams of two to 10 individuals, from corporations to families to just individuals who want to put together a team,” Hudson explains. He says they expect to get some 30-thousand Iowans on the teams that will compete against each other. You sign up on the website and you can be eligible for prizes throughout the event. Hudson says being part of the team is what helps everyone be more successful in the challenge.

“When you and I decide that we want to exercise or lose weight…come Monday morning when it’s time to get up at seven o’clock and go do it, it’s very difficult,” Hudson explains. “But if you and I sign up together and we say Monday morning we’re gonna get up and go workout, I more than likely am not wanting to let you down. I will let myself down before I will let you down, so I will get up and go workout. That’s the team concept.”

The overall goal is to make Iowa a healthier state. “One hundred percent of the results of the program are that you feel better about yourself. It’s a lifestyle changer. Over the last six months I’ve gone through many of the communities in Iowa and talked about Live Healthy Iowa and what really excites me is the number of people that come up to me and say ‘this is a lifestyle change’.”

This year’s challenge includes a special team. Hudson says they went out across the state and picked 10 people to be on the “Dream Team.” He calls it something similar to the “Biggest Loser” program. “These ten individuals have joined together to really put on a show and show everybody what live healthy Iowa is all about.”

He says the team contains people that are overweight, and some that just want to get healthy. “I think in the long run people are gonna see this dream team and say ‘wow, I want to be a healthier person, a healthier individual and I want to see Iowa become the healthiest state in the nation’,” Hudson says.

You can sign up your team at: livehealthyiowa.org.  For $20 participants receive a training T-shirt; weekly motivational emails; personal tracking, goal-setting, tools and resources; health and wellness discounts from across the state; chance to win team and individual incentives; a one-year subscription to a lifestyle magazine.

The registration for the program will continue through February.