Okay Belleville, Get Fit!

First Lady Michelle Obama, head of www.letsmove.gov, owner Leslea Clark has a message for you:

Come to Belleville! Great, healthy things are happening right now.

Clark is the creator of the fun new called the Belleville Fit Club, a free-of-charge health awareness program open to all age groups where the only things you will lose are weight and poor health habits.

“I work with children. I see how society is changing,” claims Clark. “My generation is different; this one is ‘electronic-driven.’ There’s no more, ‘Can I walk down the block and see if Susie can play?’ It’s a non-walking society. Kids now go online, and on Skype.”

What Clark is seeking to do, with cooperation from the Township of Belleville Department of Parks & Recreation, as well as the Belleville High School Athletic Department, is sway the balance towards eating and exercising to better health.

Open to Belleville residents, the Belleville Fit Club is a program that will run from January 15 to July 15, 2012, where those who takes part will fill out a BFC Weekly Progress Sheet for accountability, attend a possible weekly meeting for further inspiration, and live by the Belleville Fit Club pledge, all culminating in awards and prizes, the foremost being a better you.

Don’t think you can make the weekly meeting, fill out the sheets or, overall, adhere to the program? You can, and it starts at the top, Clark being your friendly supporter. “I’m not perfect,” she attests, “but that’s okay. Who is perfect?” She then continues. “Embrace who you are.”

The Belleville Fit Club, or organizing something like it, had been on Clark’s mind for a while. Currently a Belleville resident, Clark grew up in Nutley, and was encouraged by the “Mayor’s Wellness Challenge.”

“Joanne (Cocchiola, Nutley Mayor) has been doing so many great things. I said to myself, ‘I live in Belleville, I have a business in Belleville. Why can’t I do something like this?”

And the school system is high on her list. “2012,” she says, “is all about bringing awareness. It’s about telling the right people that the community needs change.”

And it won’t be a hardship. “We can turn things around,” says Leslea Clark. “I want to show people you can live this way and it will be fun.”

And she hopes that weekly meeting will be filled. “As a matter of fact,” she says with a broad smile, “I hope I can’t fit them (those taking part in the program) here.”

Belleville Fit Club, 390 Union Avenue, Belleville, (973) 450-5882, www.Facebook.com/BellevilleFitClub.