It’s time for December’s challenge to win a free subscription to Family Doctor Magazine. Written by health-care professionals, James Hubbard’s My Family Doctor is your trustworthy, evidence-based source for reliable health information–delivered straight to your door.

This December you’ll have the chance to be Santa’s Walking Buddy.

At WalkingSpree we have a diverse group that include many faiths and beliefs, so we fully recognize that not everyone celebrates Christmas or the spirit of Santa Claus. If you do not want to participate in the Walk with Santa Challenge. You can easily remove him from your buddy list by going to Walking Buddies and click remove. We will still verify if you’ve walked more than 7,000 steps on days between now and December 31st.

Rules:

You will notice on your profile page starting tomorrow morning that you now have a new walking buddy. . . Santa Claus. Jolly Ole Saint Nick himself.

Santa averages 7,000 steps every day during December (he doesn’t hit 10,000 because he’s on his sleigh a lot this time of year).

For every day you walk more than Santa from today until Dec. 31st, your name is entered into the draw for the subscription to Family Doctor Magazine.

Holiday Walking Tips

The holidays can be a challenging time for people to find time to exercise with visiting friends and family. So here are some suggestions to help you get those holiday steps in:

1. Holiday Shopping - You’re at the mall already, so instead of feeling frustrated that you’ve got to run around the mall so much, check your pedometer regularly and refuel that frustration into success that you’re getting healthier and boosting your steps.

2. Park far away from the malls

3. Family walks - While visiting family and friends. Instead of everyone sitting on the couch stuffed to the gills from food, suggest everyone go for a walk instead to look at the Christmas lights.

4. Shoveling snow - Not anyone’s favorite job. Remember as you push the scoop down the driveway that you’re adding more steps to your pedometer.

5. Decorating - While decorating the tree or house, take one item per trip to add more steps.

6. Walk & Talk - The holidays are a time when we’re often on the phone with family and friends. Take advantage of this time to use a portable phone and walk around your house while talking.

7. Holiday parties - Often a time for dancing. Get out on the dance floor and step up a storm.

We have to say that we were absolutely thrilled at the number of entries we received for this challenge. Thank you to each of you who took the time to enter the contest. We hope you had as much fun doing it as we did looking at all of them.

We would love to be able to show you all the photos, but there were just too many.

So congratulations to our winner Pete Manczyk as “Joe the Human Pedometer”. We loved your creativity and detail. Even including the USB port! Pete, you are the winner of a $30.00 Amazon Gift Certificate.

The runner up entry is from Sheila Anuszkiewicz with her “Walking is no “joking” matter entry. Well done. We almost felt like that pedometer could possibly explode or do all manner of nefarious things in true Joker style.

Honorable Mentions.

It was great to see such a diverse amount of entries from all our members. To those of you not shown, we say again. Thank you for sending them. We loved the 80’s style photos. We loved the vampires, the Britney Spears, the graveyards and so on.

Count Stepalot Halloween Challenge Video entry

One step, two steps, three steps, 10,000 steps

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Velcome my stepping friend!

Sound familiar?;)

It’s Halloween time again, a perfect way to take more steps and have fun at the same time. And if you’re likely dipping into the Halloween goodies, a great way to burn off some calories too. To help motivate you to take more steps this Halloween, whether it’s out walking with your kids from house to house, dancing up a storm at a Halloween party or traipsing to the door handing out treats, we’re offering you this challenge.

Send us a photo or a video of you wearing or holding your pedometer with some sort of Halloween theme in the picture and you’re eligible to win a $30.00 gift certificate from Amazon.com. You can be dressed up, or you can be in front of a Halloween decorated yard as long as it’s Halloween theme related. The winning photo or video will be posted on the WalkingSpree blog. You must have your pedometer showing in the photo or video or you won’t be eligible for the prize.

All entries must be in by noon EST. Monday, Nov. 3rd.

Send your entry to halloweensteps@walkingspree.com

Some tips to keep you on the straight and narrow this Halloween. Here’s a handy treats calorie calculator to figure out how many steps you need to walk off those calories.

Good luck and have fun!

If you remember our Micro Steps for Micro Media challenge we had last week that inspired many steppers to fit in more steps throughout the day. We now want to let you know of a new challenge from My Family Doctor Magazine that also follows along in that concept with their first Small Steps Twitter contest.

In order to celebrate what My Family Doctor Magazine has wonderfully dubbed National Small Steps Day inspired by blogger Mark Salinas’ post One Step at a Time, you’ll have the opportunity to win a free subscription to My Family Doctor Magazine.

They want you to:

Answer the question:
What small steps are you taking for your health?

Tweet your ideas throughout the day next Tuesday, October 21.
Type #step in the tweet.

This is a great incentive to build off your micro steps for micro media challenge. For every #step contest tweet you make, put in those 140 more pedometer steps. Just one more reason to keep those numbers going up and up.

This contest is over today at midnight. So get stepping and tweeting right now!

Be sure to follow My Family Doctor on Twitter.

I initiated this challenge to find creative ways to fit more steps into my day. I’m hoping you will step along with me. If you use a pedometer and use social media, this challenge is for you. For every tweet, facebook status update, blog comment, text message, friend feed activity or any other form of micro media that you participate in today, take at least 140 steps. If you participated in 10 micro media actions in the day, that’s 1400 more steps that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

This is an exercise to show you how small steps can add up over the day and make a positive benefit to your health. If you have time to write 140 characters in a tweet, you have time to take 140 steps.

Let me know how well you succeed on your micro steps challenge:)

10 stepping tips that we twittered previously;

1. Pacing the office during conference calls can be a great way to get in extra steps and improve oxygen to the brain.

2. Use the bathroom on the opposite floor that you are on in your home or in your work place.

3. Use a retractable leash when walking the dog. It will free your arms so you can pump more vigorously and burn more calories.

4. Keep a pair of walking/running shoes in your car or office so you can take advantage of any small period of time to walk.

5. Walk down the office hall to talk to co-workers instead of sending emails will increase your step count. This could mean 500 extra steps!

6. Sitting at your desk is a good time to do flexibility exercises like head rolls, shoulder shrugs and stretch your quads and hamstrings.

7. Setting targets is an important part of reaching goals. If your target is 6000 steps this week. Next week increase it by 20%.

8. Taking the stairs instead of elevators is an excellent way to add steps, strength train and improve cardo too.

9. To boost weight loss success, work up to 12,000 - 15,000 steps/day (add 2,000/week) and consume 500 fewer kcal/day.

10. Have kids? by walking around the field instead of sitting to watch your kids play sports, you can easily increase steps by 2000 steps/day.

On a side note, I’ve taken to keeping a jump rope in my office and alternating some of my step sessions with jump roping to give the metabolism an extra boost. It’s a way to mix up the routine a bit more in the office space and doesn’t take up too much room.

Ok, I’m off to tweet this and then do my 140 steps:)