Shape Up RI, a wellness program aiming to conquer the obesity epidemic, is launching its fourth season Saturday, Feb. 7 at Rhode Island College.

The program’s goal this season is to recruit 20,000 people who want to experience wellness through exercise and sound nutrition, said Rajiv Kumar, the Brown University medical student who founded the program. Its goal is to help people lose weight in an effort to fend off diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses related to obesity. When Kumar started the program in 2006, 2,000 people enlisted to compete on teams to lose weight and increase the number of steps they took each day. “Since then,“ he said, “15,000 participants in our statewide wellness program have worked together each New Year, collectively losing 64,000 pounds, logging 735,000 hours of physical activity, and walking 10 billion steps—the equivalent of 4,000 trips around the earth at the equator…

Full Story: Shape Up RI kicks off fourth season Source: Shape Up RI Blog, January 15th, 2009 Author: Tom Meade Added on January 27th, 2009 at 11:26 am, by Matt Mikula