If you’re of a certain age, you might remember commercials for the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, which challenged kids to “run, jump, pull-up, sit-up and throw a softball” in the President’s Physical Fitness test.

Due to the nation’s growing obesity rate and the effect that’s having on the public health, now the President’s Council is expanding its efforts to promote fitness. Adults as well as kids will be able to take the National President’s Challenge. The program encourages all Americans to be active for 30 minutes a day, five days a week — a routine that would go a long way toward improving our national fitness level. There are separate programs for kids, teens, adults and seniors and you can register through April 3.

Adults may enter one of two categories: The “active lifestyle” program is for those who are not regular exercisers. For eight weeks, track your progress online as you work up to the 30-minutes-five-days minimum. If you reach that goal for six of the eight weeks, you’ll get a Presidential Active Lifestyle Award. You don’t have to join a gym to participate: The Challenge lists nearly 100 activities that count toward the award — everything from walking to fishing to juggling.

The Presidential Champions category is for those who already exercise the minimum amount. You accumulate points according to the intensity of your exercise (running counts more than playing darts). If you’re a hard-core gym rat, there’s an “advanced” level that requires you to accumulate twice as many points to get awards. As for the awards, the points you get determine whether you get a gold, silver or bronze medal. And if you actually want a medal, you can buy it on the Web site.

Monte Warden knew it was time to lose weight when he had this epiphany: “I woke up one day and there was a fat drunk in the mirror, and he was screwing my wife.”

The Austin-based songwriter can laugh about it now, because he’s essentially turned his life around. Still, he keeps a photo nearby, taken in 2003, when he was 50 pounds overweight. “That’s the picture that started it all,” he says. “That’s horrible. … It was a long time ago. I had just quit taking pills and quit drinking. I thought I was about 20 pounds overweight, but you step on a scale and you go, ‘F—! I am 50 pounds overweight!’ I had to do something, so I did.”

Warden started by running short distances, and relied on his singer’s lungs to build his endurance. His biggest piece of advice to new runners is to avoid comparing themselves to other runners on the trail. “You say, ‘I’m going to run a mile today,’ and you try, and then you say, ‘I’m going to run 10 yards today.’ The first thing I did, I guess I ran half a mile, and I realized that half a mile is pretty far. Then you run a mile, and I was at a mile for a little while. Once I broke past one mile, I could run five miles. It was the first mile that just about killed me.”

Since he’s been running, almost always in the mornings, Warden’s been on a roll. He’s completely sober and 50 pounds lighter. When he travels, he still makes it a point to run, even in London. “I think about the other things I used to chase down in cities around the world…” he muses. At 40 years old, Warden imagines easily fitting into the stage clothes he wore in his 20s, when he was leading the progressive country band, The Wagoneers. In 2004, George Strait released “Desperately,” a Warden co-write with Bruce Robison. He’s working on new music too, and running a publishing company with his wife, Brandi, who ran the Country Music Half-Marathon with him last year. In April, he’s going for the full, 26.2-mile distance, and the fat drunk in the mirror will be nowhere in sight.