DFIT.ca for Families: new portal now open to families

Family members of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel and veterans can now make use of DFIT.ca For Families.

Rachel Lallouz, Staff Writer ~

Family members of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel and veterans can now make use of DFIT.ca For Families.

It is a newly opened portal on the DFIT website that provides access to fitness and health programming previously only available to serving members.

“Supporting the culture of fitness in the CAF has meant providing military members with the tools and resources they need to be fit and fight,” says Daryl Allard, Director of Fitness, Sport, and Health Promotion at CF Morale and Welfare Services in Ottawa. “But if we really want to impact the culture of fitness, we have to support family members of those serving.”

The DFIT website was launched October 2012 in an effort to broaden the reach of fitness programming to military members, as part of the Canadian Armed Forces health and physical fitness strategy.

“The DFIT website generated quite a bit of momentum initially,” says Allard, who adds that within the first six months of the launch about 10,000 people had registered with the site, eventually increasing to 28,000 registered users. “But momentum has slowed down, so we wanted to move beyond Regular Force members and cater to the community that is one million strong, including family members and veterans.”

Allard and his team partnered with the programming company Kinduct Technologies to re-develop the original DFIT site, making it more mobile-friendly, quicker to load, and easier to manoeuver, meaning users can access the site to follow workouts on their phone while at the gym.

New upgrades include a specialized fitness program generator that allows a member preparing for deployment to enter his or her health and fitness information into a system to produce an individualized fitness program.

“You can enter the number of weeks you have until deployment, how many weeks you’d like to work out, whether or not you have access to fitness equipment, and your level of fitness,” says Allard.

From there a fitness program is generated that is tailored to a member’s specific job, depending on whether he or she is in the army, navy, air force, or are involved in domestic operations. Users can then log and rate their workouts.

Also available is the meal planner, which allows a user to input their weight maintenance, loss, or gain goals, level of physical activity, and height and weight to generate meal plans.

“Again, you have that same flexibility as with the fitness programming feature,” says Allard. “If the program includes something you are allergic to or don’t like, you can easily switch to an alternative.”

Another useful feature on the site is the on-the-road guide to healthy eating options. The guide provides nutrition information on foods available at Subway, Tim Hortons, or McDonald’s.

Using their CFOne card number, military family members, veterans and their families can access the DFIT.ca module for free through a special grant until January 2017. CFMWS is in the process of finding funds to continue the free service.

Access to DFIT.ca is also available to all other categories of CFOne members, such as NPF employees, DND public servants, RCMP officers, pensioners, and their families, on a paid subscription basis.

Military members need only the last four numbers of their service number and their last name.

“We are pretty excited about the changes and the fact that we are able to reach a larger segment of our audience means we can have a greater impact on people’s health and fitness,” says Allard.