Fighting Childhood Obesity: It's A Family Affair

I agree that fighting weight issues are a family affair. At times, I struggle with planning ahead for all of our meals. At other times, I am just tired of my own cooking. Either way, since I am the one in charge of the cooking, then I have to do a better job of helping my family to be more healthy with our food choices. Although healthy foods are little more expensive than non healthy food, the long term cost of being overweight, pales in comparison. Obesity is a preventable condition, we can do something about it.

With more and more children in the U.S. becoming overweight, many parents are wondering how to talk to their children about weight. The Packard Pediatric Weight Control Program for families is remarkably straightforward and successful.

After a long day of school or work, a group of families gathers in a Stanford Hospital classroom in Menlo Park, Calif. The children are all in the highest percentile for body mass index, or BMI. They've signed up with their parents, often at the urging of a pediatrician, for a six-month healthy eating and exercise boot camp.

Gabriel Rodriguez, an 11-year-old, sparkly-eyed, self-confessed burrito lover, graduated from the program a few months ago. He's at the meeting with his mom, Gloria Arteaga, for their monthly check-in with their health coach, Thea Runyan.

They meet every month to measure Gabriel's weight and height and talk about how well he's sticking to his exercise and healthy eating goals.

The program is designed around a traffic light system. Soda and cookies are reds. Other foods are yellows or greens. Reds aren't banned, but kids do set goals for bringing down how many they eat each month. They keep track of what they eat in a journal — the snacks after soccer practice, the pizza at school.

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