ARGYLE — Hilltop Elementary School students today will embark on an 830-mile journey without ever having to leave their neighborhood.

Students began the “Walk Across Texas” program Friday and will start working today toward each class’s collective goal of walking 830 miles, approximately the width of the state of Texas.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Members of Phyllis Zimmerman's fourth-grade class announce their team name as the Red Hot Chili Peppers at an assembly Friday at Hilltop Elementary School in Argyle. The event began a program called "Walk Across Texas," which challenges each class to walk or exercise to reach a collective goal of 830 miles during an eight-week period.

The eight-week program, created in 1996 by the Texas Cooperative Extension and the Texas A&M University School of Rural Public Health, is designed to help motivate students, parents and staff to become more physically active and better educated about the importance of exercise.

“Your body is something you have to live in every day,” coach Joan Wittmis told students Friday.

Wittmis said at the elementary school age most students are pretty energetic, but they still need to start thinking about their health and how to maintain good levels of fitness.

Hilltop counselor Michael Ball said the school has a Coordinated Approach to Child Health committee that comes up with ideas to make health something that can be woven throughout the school’s curriculum.

Teachers will incorporate academic subjects in the Walk Across Texas program. Students will use math to chart their individual and class miles, and they will learn about the geography of Texas along the way, Ball said.

But the primary focus of the program is fitness.

Students don’t have to just walk the miles; any 20 minutes of continuous physical activity equals one mile.

Students can earn more miles by involving their families.

Ball said the school’s health committee is concerned about overweight children.

“Childhood obesity is at epidemic proportions,” he said. “We have so many conveniences. We live in such a fast-food culture.”

Data from two National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys — one covering 1976 to 1980 and another from 2003 to 2004 — show that the prevalence of being overweight is increasing.

For children 2- to 5-years-old, prevalence of being overweight increased from 5 percent in the first survey to nearly 14 percent in the second; for those ages 6 to 11, prevalence increased from 6.5 percent to nearly 19 percent; and for those ages 12 to 19, prevalence increased from 5 percent to more than 17 percent, the surveys showed.

“We’re trying to get a healthier generation,” said fifth-grade student Kenna Roberts.

She and Evan Welsh, another fifth-grade student, said they already do a lot of physical activities — like playing tag with friends and going on bike rides. So getting up to 830 miles shouldn’t be hard, they said.

“If you think about it, you walk a lot,” Evan said.

He said people who are more active live longer. But some kids still make the choice not to be active.

“They may think it’s funner to do other things, like sit around and watch TV,” Evan said.

But studies show that in the long run, that may not be the healthiest option.

Information on childhood obesity through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that overweight children and adolescents are more likely to become obese as adults.

One study found that approximately 80 percent of children who were overweight at ages 10 to 15 were obese adults at age 25.

Ball and Wittmis said it is up to parents and teachers to encourage activity in children in the hope that they will remain active as adults.

Wittmis said she tries to teach students that physical activity is not just participating in the well-known sports, like football and basketball, but being active in anything that they might like.

“We can only teach them so much here,” she said. “We’ve got to get them to do it outside of here.”

SARAH CHACKO can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is schacko@dentonrc.com.