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Hurdles to a Healthy Narrabri

I'm a committed health freak and am constantly trying to gentle others around me to be so too. I started a group at work for the Get Healthy! initiate in Narrabri. I've spoken to a lot of people about hurdles to healthy.

Two big stand outs are the climate (esp. summer, so hot!, even first thing in the morning or last thing at night) and proximity to town (a lot of people live out of town, and an even greater number work out of town - which prohibits going to the gym for instance at lunchtime which for many is the only viable option). My partner and I live and work out of town and have set up a small home gym for convenient access and climate control but many people cannot afford to. It takes time but more important for a lot of people, money in fuel, to drive to town for the gym/pool etc. It costs money to install and run climate control.

Could there be "exercise hubs" set up strategically throughout the region that include out of towners? Someone with a suitable space on their farm that could receive a grant to improve it for subsidized user pays community use?

I also know of businesses that set up discounts/refunds for staff that attend local fitness facilities. For instance, this is available through NSW DPI. I think it’s a great idea. We have been trying to get a fitness room set up on our out of town work site (so that people can exercise during lunchtime in climate control etc) but there are issues regarding available space as well as concerns about injury/insurance etc. Are there resources to help with small demount-able structures and advice regards the correct process to deal with injury/insurance?

The thing that frustrates me the most about eating healthy is how difficult it can be for the average person to find the "good food" among the bad - at supermarkets, food outlets, social functions, work. I appreciate that everyone has the right to choice but where can we draw the line in terms of making it easier for people to do the right thing. How can we incentivize companies and businesses to sell and provide healthy food? Can we offer free healthy meals to staff at work, people walking down the street?  That's it for now. I'll canvas our Get Healthy group more broadly and get back....

Thanks for listening!

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Author Commented wewant2gethealthy almost 7 years ago
Some more feedback from our group: Could there be an education program among food outlets regarding including healthy options into their menus. Its great to see a new establishment in town that offers predominantly healthy options - but there could be more. There are no gyms that offer classes on every day of the week - the best is three days out of seven. Can the gyms in town be encouraged to collaborate to offer a week long program with a joint gym pass so that people who want to attend classes can do so every day and have options in terms of time of day?
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