This weekend, my family and I are headed to an all-ages kickball game and chili supper. Our friends Heather and Travis were looking for a way to stay active and have fun during our long Midwestern winters, and they came up with this excellent idea. On the third Saturday of each month, we'll meet in a park near their house for kickball. After the game, we'll go back to their place for a potluck dinner. I'm sure we'll end up kicking the ball in the snow a few times, but that won't matter as long as we're all bundled up.

What kinds of outings or activities does your family enjoy? I made a list of active play venues, but I bet I've forgotten a few. Let me know where you like to go, so I can add it!

...and community gardens, and bike trails, and walking groups. Hearing about this project really made me smile. Inspired by research on Blue Zones, geographic areas with especially long-lived participants, the AARP set out to make over one midwestern town by adding 10,000 years of healthy life to its residents. The AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project, sponsored by United Health Foundation, arrived in Albert Lea, Minnesota, in January 2009. Working closely with residents and local government, project leaders kicked off new ways to eat, exercise, play, and work. By the time the project concluded this fall, the town had achieved some exciting results:

• 2,300 people officially participated
• a walking/biking trail was completed around a local lake
• thousands of feet of sidewalk were added
• hundreds of kids walked to school in walking school buses
• more than 600 citizens joined walking groups
• two-thirds of locally owned restaurants added longevity-promoting foods to their menus
• Albert Lea pledged to keep the experiment going by establishing a Vitality Center in the heart of downtown

Visit the AARP to learn more about how to make over your town. Or start in your own home with these 10 simple, but valuable lifestyle changes.

Can you burn a lot of calories with Wii Fit? Not exactly. The American Council on Exercise commissioned a study of the popular exergame to analyze its fitness value. Sixteen volunteers played the game in a lab setting at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Of the six Wii Fit activities tested, Island Run and Free Run yielded the highest energy expenditures at 5.5 calories/minute, but none of the six activities were vigorous enough to maintain or improve cardiorespiratory endurance. In some cases, such as the boxing activity, the start-and-stop nature of the Wii Fit program interferes with calorie burn. The new Wii Fit Plus upgrade (compare prices), with its ability to put together a longer routine, may help.

But overall, says research lead John Porcari, PhD., "You're better off doing Wii Sports [the game that comes packaged with every Wii system] than Wii Fit. There's more jumping around, and you're not constrained by having to stand on the balance pad. There's much more freedom of movement and you get a better workout." Still, any game that gets you moving--even a little--is better than being completely sedentary, so if you're a Wii Fit fan, keep playing!

Conventional wisdom holds that lack of exercise is a major cause of obesity in kids and teens. But "decreased physical activity may have little to do with the recent spike in obesity rates among U.S. adolescents," according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in the journal Obesity Reviews.

"Although only one third of U.S. adolescents met the recommended levels of physical activity, there is no clear evidence they had become less active over the past decade while the prevalence of obesity continued to rise," said Youfa Wang, senior author of the study. In fact, Dr. Wang's research showed kids actually watch less TV now (although they may have replaced TV with other sedentary activities).

Wang and other experts on childhood obesity say the takeaways from the report should be that teens, especially girls and non-white adolescents, are still not getting enough physical activity; and that nutrition plays a critical role in kids' health and obesity rates.

So says a report from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, which recently released its annual survey of fitness behaviors and purchases. Despite the recession, sales of fitness accessories, hand weights, and exercise mats increased in 2008. Plus, 17 of 28 fitness activities tracked by the industry showed an increase in participation.

Not surprisingly, the top five most popular fitness activities are all fairly accessible, even to busy parents: walking for fitness, treadmills, hand weights, running/jogging, and weight/resistance machines. Many of these can be done at home, or outside with children along for the ride.

My daughter's school doesn't give letter grades, at least not traditional ones. Her report card includes a long list of concepts, and notes on whether she's mastered them or is still learning them. The progress report also indicates (with a +/-/* system) how she's doing on several behavioral measures, such as working independently and participating in class.

But I was still just the tiniest bit annoyed when I saw that she received a "needs improvement" mark for phys ed class--specifically, for "able to sustain physical activity for 4-5 minutes." As I stood on the playground reviewing the report, my kid was climbing, doing pull-ups on the monkey bars, and running full-tilt, and complaining when we had to leave after more than half an hour!

I know this particular grade really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it does make me wonder about the usefulness of grading kids on gym class. The primary goal of gym class should be to promote physical activity, and some kids might be discouraged by low grades. What do you think?

A few months ago I mentioned Weight Watchers' Lose for Good program, in which WW promised to donate $250,000 to hunger-relief charities for every million pounds its members and online subscribers lost between August 30 and October 17. The results are now in, and WW will be donating $1 million to Share Our Strength (which fights childhood hunger in the U.S.) and Action Against Hunger (an international humanitarian organization).

In addition, during the campaign, Weight Watchers staff organized local food drives at over 3,300 locations across the country. They collected more than two million pounds of food for local food banks. Way to go, team Weight Watchers!

Today marks the 40th anniversary of this beloved, and always innovative, kids' TV classic. To celebrate, First Lady Michelle Obama stops by to talk about gardening and eating healthy food. For the past two years, the show has focused on healthy eating, exercise, and the prevention of childhood obesity--but always in a kid-friendly, age-appropriate way. This year and next, the show will focus on environmental issues, showing kids how they can find nature in their own neighborhood.

Happy birthday to Zoe, Oscar, Cookie Monster, and the whole gang!

_{Photo: Getty Images}

If you've ever wondered whether you can really lose weight playing Wii, stay tuned to new studies from the Health Games Research program, an initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The foundation will support 12 different research studies that will investigate digital games that "engage players in physical activity and/or motivate them to improve how they take care of themselves through healthy changes in lifestyle; prevention behaviors; cognitive, social or physical skills; chronic disease self-management; and/or adherence to a medical treatment plan." Some of the grant recipients:

• Autism: Children's Hospital in Philadelphia will test facial perception games to see if they help kids with autism spectrum disorder perceive and interpret facial expressions.
• Physical fitness: George Washington University will compare physical, psychological and behavioral effects of two exergames (Winds of Orbis and Dance Dance Revolution), plus more traditional physical activities, in African-American and Hispanic kids and teens.
• Weight loss: Georgetown University will recruit obese and overweight high school students and see if playing EA Sports Active (a Wii sports game) helps them lose weight. The study will also examine whether competitive or cooperative game play is more effective.

This month, the American Diabetes Association observes American Diabetes Month. The ADA says that  57 million Americans are at risk for type 2 diabetes, and that 1 out of every 3 children born today will face a future with diabetes if current trends continue.

Being overweight and leading a sedentary lifestyle are both big risk factors for type 2 diabetes. If you or someone in your family falls into one of these groups, resolve to make some changes now.