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Officially recognized by the Texas Legislature as the second week of April, Healthy Texas Week is our annual celebration of healthy living in the Lone Star State! We encourage you, Texans, to make it the healthiest week of the year by Shopping for healthy items, Sweating by getting physically active, and Serving your community by volunteering and giving back. Healthy Texas Week matters, because it symbolizes our organization’s larger vision: a Texas where everyone can be physically active, eat healthier, and equip their family, friends, and neighbors to do the same.

“Healthy” isn’t always obvious, and it definitely isn’t always easy. Whether a healthy choice, like being more physically active or eating healthier meals, is doable depends on many factors: our neighborhoods, the culture and policies in our schools, workplaces, and communities, our financial situations, our daily responsibilities, and more.

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a whole army of motivated individuals, businesses and organizations, schools, and government leaders to raise a healthy Texan. Luckily, that army is out there. Take our Healthy Texas Week Allies at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, CLIF Kid, and The Fruit Guys, three companies with an inspirational and unwavering commitment to the health of their employees, the communities in which the work and live, and the state at-large.

Healthy Texas Week is a compact version of the expansive IT’S TIME TEXAS model, which tackles these infrastructural and socioeconomic constraints by helping motivated Texans make change at all levels. It is up to all of us to identify the places and the people we influence and to create a culture of health wherever we go, with everyone we care about and with everyone we meet. If you participated in the 2016 Community Challenge you know the exhilarating feeling of creating a new healthy habit together with family, coworkers, your congregation, students or friends, and inspiring more people to join in. If you build a health-conscious community around you, someone is right there to keep you moving, and you can motivate them on their off days, too. This is the key to social change, and in order to build a healthier Texas, no one is exempt from joining this movement. 

If the statistics to the right shock you, and you believe that we must do better for the next generation of Texans, then join with us for Healthy Texas Week 2016! The healthy choices you make each day just might stick with you, and they will likely spread to others. This is how a single week has the potential to make Texas a healthier place.

Here are some fun ideas, or you can come up with your own:

• Make your grocery list for the week in advance, and plan to buy more fresh produce and less processed/packaged foods. Snap a picture when you’re choosing healthier in the store!
• Plan a healthy meal or potluck with friends or family one night next week and snap a picture when you’re purchasing the ingredients or preparing the meal!

• Plan to attend a workout class with friends or family next week, or find a workout video on Youtube and host a workout right in your home! Snap a group photo to post on social media.
• Organize a workplace walk with your coworkers on at least one day of the week and snap photos of the group to share on social media!

• Plan a healthy food drive at your office, school, place of worship, or community center! Snap photos of the goods piling up to share on social media!
• Plan a public park or school campus clean-up to make your outdoor spaces better for active play. Post a group photo!
• Find a community garden you can weed or plant in! Don’t forget to snap and share pics!

Participate in Healthy Texas Week by planning healthy activities like these, inviting others to join you, and make sure you’re connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! We want  you to take to social media and share pictures of all of your healthy actions with the hashtag #HTW2016 all week long. Every time you share you’ll be entered to win awesome, healthy prizes!

Are you game to make April 4th-10th the healthiest week of your year to-date? Let’s do this.