Red Deer Mayor Ken Johnston rallies the crowd at a Community Better Challenge kickoff event at the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre in Red Deer on June 9, 2024. (Supplied)

By rdnewsNOW Staff

red deer looking to get back on top

Campaign for title of ‘Canada’s Most Active City’ showcases mental health benefits of exercise

Jun 9, 2024 | 12:20 PM

With Red Deer once again vying to be ‘Canada’s Most Active City,’ a title it earned two years ago as part of the national participACTION Community Better contest, there’s a spotlight being shone on the positive mental health benefits that come with exercising.

The contest, which comes with a prize of $100,000 for the winning community, encourages group participants to track the exercise they do throughout the month of June, at its website.

An official kick-off event was held at Red Deer’s Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre on Saturday, June 8, with several community agencies on hand to provide participants with valuable health information from many different lenses.

Denise Fredeen, Move Your Mood coordinator with Alberta Health Services’ (AHS) addictions and mental health department, has been one of the key drivers of Red Deer’s involvement with the Community Better Challenge for the last four years.

“We know physical activity creates connection between individuals. We also know that socialization and healthy eating improve physical and mental wellness, and these are things we can control,” says Fredeen.

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“With Move Your Mood, we did an eight-week research project with children, who came in and exercised with us three times per week. We measured their mental health outcomes at the beginning and end; after four weeks, they improved their coping strategies significantly, but there wasn’t a huge change in mental health.”

(Supplied)

Fredeen says that major mental change came at the eight-week mark.

“We saw significant changes in depression, anxiety, self-esteem, mood and generally how they felt about themselves,” she says.

“We know that when you get active, it works, but you have to stick with it for eight weeks to a lifetime”

The goal with Move Your Mood, she says, is to show people that movement should be fun.

Fredeen also points to a recent national report card released by participACTION which shows that Canadian children and youth get a grade of D+ (up from D in 2022) when it comes to overall physical activity.

The report shows just 39 per cent of Canadian youth, ages 5-17, met the recommendation of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day.

The last adult report, from 2021, gave grown-up Canadians a C+ for light physical activity, a C (up from an F in 2019) for moderate to vigorous physical activity, and an F for active transportation, which includes human-powered movement like walking, cycling, wheeling, skating and paddling.

As of the morning of June 9, Red Deer sits first in Canada for the Community Better challenge, which can be tracked here.

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READ MORE: Red Deer aiming to take back title of Canada’s most active city

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