Three months into the new year is not the time to give up on a resolution to become healthier or more active. The University’s Cooperative Extension Services is about to begin its third session of Walk Georgia, an interactive online program aimed to promote healthy lifestyles.

Walk Georgia is a free, eight-week program that “addresses physical inactivity,” said Maria Bowie, marketing professional with the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences’ Office of Communications, in a phone interview Tuesday. The program began Sunday, but registration is still running through March 9.

To join, participants must create an account on the Walk Georgia Web site, either individually or as a four-person team. When they log in, they select the type of activity they have been doing that day. Bowie said there were 40 different choices, not just walking. Participants then enter the number of minutes they did that activity, and the “minutes of activity will be converted to ‘miles walked,’” said Judy Hibbs, senior public service associate for Clarke County Extension, in an e-mail interview Monday. For each number of miles walked, they then can choose a virtual path to walk through Georgia, and for every county they “walk” through, they learn different facts about the area, Hibbs said.

These facts include famous people or historical spots, or the area’s geography and agriculture.

In addition to learning about Georgia with the online program, Cooperative Extension publishes a newsletter for each week of Walk Georgia. The newsletter features a different Georgia commodity, a recipe for using that product, and a variety of health tips, Bowie said. “We hear again and again, ‘Oh, I learned so much about the state’” from past participants, she added.

Walk Georgia “helps [the college] get our message out about what [agriculture] is and its impact on the state,” said Jay Scott Angle, Dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, in an interview Tuesday. “Part of the goal of CAES and [the College of Family and Consumer Sciences] is good health. Primarily to this college, that is good food and the environment. FACS, is [focused on] good nutrition and exercise. The whole thing is very central to the mission of both colleges,” he said.

Angle, Bowie and Laura Jolly, Dean of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, have participated in past Walk Georgia events.

“We’re committed [to participating] because it’s a new way to get the word out about the health benefits of walking,” Jolly said in a phone interview Thursday.

“It does get you moving because it’s a way of setting goals and tracking them,” said Angle, who has a team from his office that does the program.

“Some teams that became competitive actually had an impact on their health.”

Renee Smith, a senior from Waycross, is going to be doing Walk Georgia for the second time. “I think Walk Georgia is a great way to keep up with those miles that people often miss when looking at their exercise routines,” she said in an e-mail interview Tuesday. Some of these missed miles can include “taking the stairs instead of the elevator [and] parking in the back of the lot at Wal-Mart.”

Jolly encourages all University faculty and students to get involved with Walk Georgia, both to become more active and to learn about the state. “Just sign up,” she said. “Do it. . Just do it.”

“I don’t see a reason not to join; if everyone at the University of Georgia counted all the miles they walked to and from school and to and from classes they would be amazed [at] the total miles from [Sunday] to April 25,” Smith said.