Sit Less, Move More

Staying active every day keeps your body strong and your mind refreshed. Daily physical activity lowers the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers. Moving your body helps to manage stress, strengthens your immune system and helps you recover faster from illness or injury. 

What Affects How Active You Can Be?

How active you are each day isn’t just about personal choice — it’s also about your surroundings.

Think about your daily routine:

• How do you get to work or school?
  Are there safe and enjoyable ways to walk, bike, or wheel?
• Is public transit easy to use?
  Can you get where you need to go without a car?
• What’s your day like?
  Do you sit a lot at work, school, or during your free time?

These are all things that shape how movement fits into your day.

How we support active living:

We work with municipalities, school boards, and community groups to promote physical activity as an important part of everyone’s life. We meet with community partners and municipalities throughout Simcoe Muskoka to:

• Provide input into municipal plans to encourage building safe and enjoyable environments that promote physical activity. We promote  connecting networks of sidewalks, bike lanes, and trails that are safe and easy to get you to the places you need to go. 
• Encourage access to free or low-cost recreation activities and promote active play for all ages.   
• Support programs that preserve, create, or enhance public access to green and blue spaces.
• Coordinate the On the Move initiative for walking or wheeling to school.

How you can support active living:

• Talk with the people who make decisions in your community, such as your municipal council and staff, about having connected, accessible and maintained sidewalks, trails, and bike lanes for all seasons of the year.
• Find community groups who offer free or low-cost physical activity programming. 
• Explore your local trails/park system. 
• Build physical activity into things you already do. 
• Look for ways to add steps or weight bearing activities into your week.