Guest post by Drew Brees and Dominique Dawes, Co-Chairs of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition

National Physical Fitness and Sports Month is the perfect time for children and families to get outside and play together! You don't have to do back flips in the Olympics or throw a football 40 yards down the field to be active and break a sweat. Whether you ride your bike to work or school, or chase after your dog in the park, physical activity can be fun - and it helps you feel good too.

President Barack Obama issues a proclamation during May National Physical Fitness and Sports Month. In that proclamation, he calls on all Americans to make daily physical activity, sports participation and good nutrition a priority in their lives.

You've probably heard that today in America, one third of all children and two-thirds of all adults are overweight or obese. We know that physical activity can help build lean muscle, reduce fat, and promote strong bone, muscle and joint development. So what are you waiting for? Through her Let's Move! initiative, First Lady Michelle Obama has formed a coalition of supporters including community and faith-based organizations, schools and childcare centers, local governments, and corporations to help end childhood obesity within a generation.

This time of year in most parts of the country, the weather makes it easy to explore America's great outdoors. So the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition is challenging everyone to pick up a new activity or sport, and help guide your loved ones and neighbors to better health!

Did you know that May is also Older Americans Month? It's never too early - or too late - to lead a healthy lifestyle. We want Americans of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to set new physical activity and healthy eating goals, and track your progress online while earning a Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA+). That's right - you can actually receive presidential recognition by improving your health. What more motivation do you need to get fit?

As the First Lady often says, we want to make the healthy choice the easy choice, and PALA+ is the easy choice to jumpstart or maintain a healthy lifestyle. It doesn't matter how old you are or where you live... anyone can participate in PALA+. The physical activity requirements are 60 minutes a day for kids (30 minutes a day for adults), five days a week for six weeks. You should also add a weekly health eating goal each week and build on those goals throughout the same six weeks.

So what are you waiting for? Earn your PALA+ today, and follow us on Twitter @FitnessGov for tips to stay motivated throughout the month!

The 2nd anniversary of the Let's Move! campaign provides a moment to raise awareness of the obesity epidemic and reflect on two years of real progress.

Thanks, in large part, to Let's Move!, concern over obesity now extends beyond public health circles and may be found in local schools, faith-based organizations, and town meetings. And, perhaps most importantly, the Let's Move! campaign seems to have ignited a golden age of innovation for anti-obesity programs designed to create sustainable healthy habits.

But what fascinates me most about Let's Move! is the role of its champion, First Lady Michelle Obama. Of course, her standing as First Lady provides her with a podium and an audience, but it has been the combination of her passion and energy that has fueled the development of countless initiatives around the nation. Quite simply, she has accomplished what very few studies or policy statements can ever hope to do - she has inspired people to take action.

She is widely viewed as a talented, charismatic communicator, but her skill set is by no means unique in America. American communities are full of passionate and energetic folks who can rally others to their causes. Community leaders are part of our national heritage.

One of this year's major goals for the International Health, Racquet, and Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) will be to encourage and support the efforts of IHRSA health clubs - i.e. passionate fitness advocates - to transform their facilities to vital community hubs for healthy living and disease prevention. We believe, wholeheartedly, that the success of the Let's Move! team may be replicated on a local scale by fitness centers. In fact, it's already happening.

IHRSA's commitment to health promotion will be on full display this month at IHRSA's 31st Annual Convention & Trade Show in Los Angeles, CA.

The convention schedule includes sessions such as, "Leveraging Healthcare & Wellness Programming to Better Serve the Community," "If Exercise is Medicine, How do Health Clubs Cure Illness?" and "Lessons from Corporate Wellness to Get People Active."

The capstone session, however, will be a keynote presentation and panel with members of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition ("the Council") to discuss the IHRSA Joining Forces Network and other opportunities for health clubs to impact the wellness of their communities. IHRSA's Get Active America program, for example, will empower clubs to become champions for the Council's PALA+ program, which encourages folks to be active and improve their diet 5 days/week for at least 6 out of 8 weeks. Another offering, IHRSA's I Lost it at the Club, provides clubs with an 8-week turnkey program for responsible weight loss.

For more information on IHRSA's effort to support the operation of health clubs as vital community resources, please check out our Vision for a Healthier, More Prosperous America, and let us know what you think.

What are other organizations doing to create community champions?

Like a lively puppy that is thriving, joyously active and everywhere at once, Let's Move! has energized America with no sign of slowing down. In just a year, First Lady Michelle Obama's initiative has prompted families, individuals and organizations to take health into their own hands. Collectively, we're eating better and finding ways to be more physically active. It adds up to healthier lifestyles for a whole spectrum of people and reflects encouraging momentum in the fight against childhood obesity.

As more and more of us connect the dots - through Let's Move!, the National Physical Activity Plan, Exercise is Medicine (EIM) and countless other initiatives - we're helping the movement mature. Recounting success stories and lessons learned lets us share best practices. EIM on Campus connects colleges and universities with one another, but also with their local communities. Groups like the National Society of Physical Activity Practitioners in Public Health allow professionals to learn from one another and share resources.

We're learning not only from one another, but from new research about exercise, nutrition, physiology and motivation. This is essential to make sure our programs and policies will be effective. From molecular-level, basic science to studies of group interaction and epidemiology, new knowledge is providing a solid base of evidence to underpin our efforts.

Similarly, approaches to healthier lifestyles range from the granular to the global. We know that every bite we consume, every calorie expended, brings with it a health impact. Individual actions become habits, with immense effects on individuals over time. Family members influence one another, and whole communties can gain a collective consciousness or identity around healthy lifestyles (think Portland, Oregon, where bicycling is a shared passion).

A spectrum of solutions

Some of us emphasize physical activity and exercise, but we know that's just one factor in the health equation. Nutrition plays a huge role, as do tobacco and alcohol use, air quality and more. We've learned that all these elements must work together, and that healthy behaviors must become part of our everyday lives to be effective. And their adoption requires the kind of one-on-one modeling that happens in families, classrooms and circles of friends - but also the collective action that is reflected in organizational and community policies.

The vision reflects the range of benefits, from individual health and quality of life to societal gains in worker productivity and reduced health care costs. We're getting there, thanks to a growing foundation of research, immeasurable individual effort, and the unstoppable enthusiasm of initiatives like Let's Move.

How do your efforts complement the work of Let's Move!, the National Physical Activity Plan and other initiatives?

How can we activate more people to "think globally; act locally" to foster healthier lifestyles?