Health Promotion & Chronic Disease Prevention
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Tipping the Scales in Your Favor: Tips for Weight Loss and Maintenance

Have you decided to start eating healthier and become more physically active? Have you realized that healthy choices have a positive impact on not only yourself, but also those around you?

If your goal is to lose weight or maintain your current healthy weight, here are some tips to help you achieve that goal. Remember, to maintain weight, you must balance calories with the energy you burn through physical activity. If you eat more than you expend, you gain weight. If you eat less (reduce calories) than you expend, you lose weight!

Make healthy choices a habit. This leads to a healthy lifestyle! Make a commitment to eat well, move more, and get support from family and friends. Even better, start eating healthier and being active together!

Remember to be realistic about your goals. If you try to reduce the calories, fat, saturated fat, and sugar in your diet AND promise to make a drastic change in your physical activity level, you may be setting yourself up for failure. Instead of trying to make changes at once, set smaller, more realistic goals for yourself and add a new challenge each week.

Conduct an inventory of your meal/snack and physical activity patterns. Keep a food and activity journal if you are serious. Write down not only what you ate, but where, when, and what you were feeling at the time. You will see what triggers your hunger and what satisfies your appetite. What foods do you routinely shop for? What snacks do you have in the house?
Eat at least 5 servings of vegetables and fruits per day. If you’re adding fruits and vegetables to your diet, try substituting them for higher calorie, less nutritious foods. Check out the CDC 5 A Day Web site for great information on the 5 A Day Nutrition Program, suggestions on how to incorporate more fruits and vegetables to your diet, and healthy recipes.
Eat foods that are high in fiber to help you feel full. Whole grain cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruits are good sources of fiber that may help you feel full with fewer calories.

Prepare and eat meals and snacks at home. This is a great way to save money, eat healthy, and spend time with your family. When preparing meals, choose low-fat/low-calorie versions of your favorite ingredients and learn how easy it is to substitute.

Choose snacks that are nutritious and filling. A piece of fresh fruit, cut raw vegetables, or a container of low-fat yogurt is excellent (and portable) choices to tide you over until mealtimes. Take these snacks with you for a healthy alternative to chips, cookies, or candy.

Take your time! Only eat when you are hungry and enjoy the taste, texture, and smell of your meal as you eat it. Remember it takes approximately 15 minutes for your stomach to signal your brain that you are full.

Forgive yourself. If you occasionally make mistakes, don’t give up! Forgive yourself for making a choice and keep working on it. Eat an extra healthy lunch and dinner if you had a high-calorie, high-fat breakfast. Add more physical activity to your day.

Remember physical activity! Aim for at least 30 minutes (adults) or 60 minutes (children) of moderate-intensity physical activity five or more days of the week. If you are just starting to be physically active, remember that even small increases provide health benefits. Check with your physician first, and then start with a few minutes of activity a day and gradually increase, working your way up to 30 minutes.
For more information on how to tip the scales in the right direction, contact the Centers for Disease Control at www.cdc.gov or contact Shapeup America at www.shapeup.org.

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A Word to Parents: Helping an Overweight Child Can Be a Touchy Matter…Here are some practical pointers from professionals.

Nobody wants their child to be fat. Aside from serious health issues, there’s the gym-class issue, the last-one-picked-for-the-team issue, the clothes shopping issue, and alas, the meanness issue. Being an overweight kid is painful. Other kids can be cruel. And, let’s face it; a blubbery kid is a bad reflection on the parent. It suggests too much junk food in the pantry, too much time in front of the TV, and other failures of parental oversight. For a parent who also carries too many pounds, it’s one more thing to feel awful about.

A child who is overweight as a teenager has an 80% chance of being overweight as an adult – so preventing obesity with family meals that instill good eating habits and family outings that involve plenty of activity is a parent’s best bet. What if you lost that bet? What if your child is one of the 30% of kids who are either overweight or at risk? What about childhood diabetes? How can you turn the tide without making your child more miserable, more resentful of you, and more obsessed with eating, or just as perilous, not eating? Here are some pointers from experts:

Face up to the problem. It’s easy to tell yourself that your child is going through a chubby phase. But your pediatrician’s growth and body mass index charts don’t lie.

It’s a Family Affair. Don’t focus on a problem child. It’s better to get the whole family eating right, starting with yourself. If you don’t know how to do that, consult a dietician or the local health department. If you change your ways, the child will change theirs. Children tend to mimic their father’s eating habits, so dads “Pretend you like it!”

Take a Seat. Sit-down family dinners offer the best opportunity for building good eating habits. Not only do they enable you to keep an eye on what your child eats, but they also tend to be more well-rounded meals than meals eaten on the run. If you can’t do it every night, aim for three or four nights a week.

Make it Fun, Try New Things. Nutritionists and dieticians believe in a healthy or even playful involvement with good food. Have a “food ceremony.” Buy one unusual fruit or vegetable a week and do a family taste test together. Don’t give up on a new food just because it didn’t go over well the first time. Research shows that sometimes it takes 10 to 15 introductions for a food to be liked. Brussel sprouts anyone?

Unplug, Get Moving. One of the few things proved to prevent obesity is getting kids to watch less TV. Walk the walk: the best way to get your kids off the sofa is to get up yourself. Encourage physical activity; keep the bicycle tires pumped; plan a walk after dinner; buy a badminton set. See who wins!