4 Ways to Help Your Family Lose Weight

Trying to help your family lose weight? Here are four tips to help them fight the fat, and keep it off for good.

1. Set an example: "Kids model their parents—they learn healthy, as well as unhealthy, behaviors from them," says State University of New York at Buffalo psychologist Leonard Epstein, PhD, a pioneer in family-based obesity prevention. Telling a child to go out and get some exercise is far less effective than asking him or her to join you for a bike ride.

2. Set goals: Consider having everyone in the family sign a healthy-living contract. In the short term, don't focus on weight loss. Instead, have everyone agree to specific daily goals, such as recording a certain number of steps on a pedometer.

3. Use nonedible weekly rewards, says Daniel S. Kirschenbaum, PhD, clinical director of Wellspring weight loss programs. A small gift or a few dollars—or even allowing a child to have a friend sleep over—will help reinforce the importance of working toward specific goals.

4. Sit down for a family dinner: Kids who do this at least five or six nights a week are a third less likely to be overweight than children who never eat dinner with their families, according to a 2006 University of Alabama study. Other research shows that kids who eat more family meals consume less fried food and artery-clogging trans fat and saturated fat. Get started with quick, easy recipes for the whole family.

http://www.oprah.com/article/health/weightloss/200905-omag-family-lose-weight