Remember Grant and Eileen Powell (below)? They got the kickstart to health and wellness that they needed with Green Prescription over a year ago.

The Green Prescription programme is designed to give you the tools, resources, encouragement, and support to get you active and provide education surrounding nutrition. Ultimately these changes become sustainable and part of your healthy active life. This awesome couple are proving just that! Long-term change is possible resulting in improved health, fitness and weight loss.

Below they tell their follow up story:

Over 12 months on and we are still very active going to the gym four days a week. Our sessions include approximately 1.5 hour gym sessions followed by completing the lengths of the competition pool currently between 14 and 20, and a spa depending on how hot the day is.

We are now both active outside of the gym/pools with walks, gardening, hunting, fishing, and activities with the grandkids. Grant has even taken up kayak fishing at the end of last year.

We have lost over 40kg of weight between us. We feel great and are very proud of our achievements. Consistent work, along with support and encouragement from our Trainer Georgia at the Aquatic Center, and others have given us the results.

We have just returned from a trip to Australia where we did the 1000 Stairs Challenge, in Melbourne. We completed this, beating the recommended time by 2 minutes.  We also completed a number of Wilderness Walks in Tasmania seeing some incredible sights.

We are so happy with ourselves and proud of our success in our journey. Looking forward to this year and where we are heading.  We are not pain free by any means, but we are more able to cope with niggles and manage through it. We don't let it slow us down, and our gym is our priority and our new happy place.  We are so grateful to all the people who have helped us along the way.

However there has been one drawback to our journey. We both had to go out and buy some new clothes as our old ones no longer fit us. We are happy to have to deal with this small inconvenience.

At Sport Northland we exist to enrich Northlander's lives by inspiring and enabling more movement and one of the ways we do this is through Green Prescription - supporting people on their journey.  If you would like some support with your activity goals, give us a call on phone 0800 ACTIVE …..we are here to help.

Article written by Nat Wood, Green Prescription Healthy Lifestyle Support