Shaping up, to the Phys Ed mayor's whistle

A new city-sponsored 10-week fitness program encourages people who live and work in Somerville to team up with a friend to exercise and eat healthy, which sounds like fun -- that is, unless the mayor picks you to be his "fitness buddy."

Stan Koty, the Department of Public Works commissioner, was the recipient of Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone's good will and experience as a coach.

"I admit, I recruited him," said Curtatone, a 40-year-old runner who tries to work out every day and is now training for his first marathon. Since his schedule is so unpredictable, he tells Koty, "Have your gym bag ready."

Koty, who considers himself on the heavy side, said, "the mayor is a lot more conditioned and athletically inclined than I am." At least once a week, Koty picks up the mayor at 6:30 a.m., and they go to a Somerville gym, where Curtatone has him lifting weights, stretching and doing cardiovascular workouts.

"If I could go steadily with him three days a week, I'd be in terrific shape," Koty says.

The city kicked off the free Fitness Buddies program, designed by Cambridge Health Alliance, as a way to get people active during the New England winter, said Nicole Rioles, coordinator of the Health Department's Shape Up Somerville program and its first full-time staffer.

She said the city began the do-it-yourself program in January, when people were likely to be motivated to keep up their New Year's resolutions.

Fitness Buddies is the first formal fitness program under the Shape Up Somerville campaign. It began with a three-year grant from Tufts University encouraging daily physical activity and healthy eating with first-, second-, and third-graders in the city's public schools and was later expanded citywide.

Schoolteachers, firefighters, and the mayor's staff are among the more than 135 people who are participating in the program, which encourages a more active lifestyle combined with healthy eating.

Participants were given a pedometer to encourage them to walk more, along with water bottles to encourage higher water consumption. Health Department staff has lead workshops on nutrition and increasing physical activity -- not by setting aside an hour to go to the gym, but by being more active during the day. They've encouraged people to walk to work, if possible, and run errands on foot. And they have sent out e-mails with tips on healthy living.

Rioles organized a walking group, which meets at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. for a quick 20-minute walk near the City Hall Annex. Some people are climbing 10 to 12 flights of stairs to their offices. One participant started swimming and another is learning to ride a bike. Some employees are wearing their pedometers to work, trying to log in 10,000 steps a day.

The city also created a rivalry among departments. Prizes have been promised for departments that have the highest participation and success rates, based on the amount of exercise they record in their logbooks.

In the mayor's office, "we're all doing it," said Maeghan Silverberg, a city public information officer. She teamed up with her two roommates to hit the gym before work each morning. She's going from once or twice a week to five times a week.

Having Curtatone checking on her progress makes her accountable.

"He feels very strongly we should all have an exercise routine and eat a little healthier than we do," she said. "There's definitely a lot less takeout and delivery going on than there had been in months prior."

Gauging the other departments' participation levels has prompted Curtatone to threaten to send doughnuts to the clerk's office and pizza to the law department to slow them down.

Kristen Green can be reached at ciweek@globe.com.