Vijay Murali speaking today at IRWD 2012 in Orlando.

A big challenge for Nutrisystem Inc., a provider of weight-loss programs and nutritional foods, is getting prospective customers to go through the several steps required to calculate their Body Mass Index—a crucial first step in planning a diet program with a customized meal menu, vice president of e-commerce technology Vijay Murali said today at the Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference in Orlando.

With a little creative use of mobile commerce technology, Nutrisystem has designed a BMI entry form designed to make the process quick and painless enough—even fun, in a responsible sort of way—to result in a noticeable increase in the number of consumers who complete the index form and, as a result, become more qualified prospects for Nutrisystem’s programs, Murali said.

Instead of asking consumers to enter their current weight into a blank window on a data-entry form, for example, the “Body Assessment Form” on a tablet computer lets consumers enter their weight by swiping the form to move a wheel that looks like a needle on a weight scale. “Our BMI completion rate is up,” he said, because Nutrisystem made the BMI form something people “want to use.”

Murali added that effective mobile design also requires retailers to sometimes break the rules of traditional design. While a data-entry form on a web site would try to get as much information as possible on a single page, a consumer on a mobile phone might find it easier to enter the data on a few pages instead of just one. At the same time, however, he noted that designers should still try to limit the number of data-entry forms on a mobile device and ensure that pages load quickly.

Murali addressed how to transfer the user experience from a traditional web site to a mobile device in a session titled “Site design for the new reality: PCs, phone, tablets.”

His co-presenter, Betsy Emery, CEO and founder of web design consultants Tellus Web, of which Nutrisystem is a client, also referred to leading designs at other online retailers, including Walgreens, Zappos, Sears and health-and-wellness products retailer Gaiam. In each case, she said, these retailers understand their customers and design mobile sites that suit how they like to shop. Walgreens and Zappos, for example, have streamlined navigation so shoppers can quickly find products; at Sears, effective mobile features include the ability to choose “As Seen on TV” products for the consumer looking for something she just saw advertised on a television commercial. And at Gaiam, mobile shoppers can click a relaxation audio file that complements their interests in health and wellness products.

Retailers, she said, need to “look at mobile first” because it’s becoming a primary shopping experience for consumers.

Nutrisystem is No. 63 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide; Sears is No. 7, Walgreens, No. 73, and Gaiam, No. 285. Zappos is unit of Amazon.com Inc., No. 1.

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IRWD2012: Nutrisystem gets its mobile channel in shape

Eastern North Carolina boasts a rich culture, with its fascinating history, friendly people and its tasty, but unhealthy, food.

A steady diet of fried foods, fatty meats, salty side dishes and sugary sweets along with a sedentary lifestyle combine to make a deadly combination.

 “In this area, we do have high rates of obesity and (being) overweight, and one of the biggest problems that we see is diabetes,” said Angie Doncaster, dietitian for Lenoir Memorial Hospital. “Type 2 diabetes can be directly related to carrying extra weight, especially around the abdomen area. The biggest (problems are) diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and risk of heart attack.”

At the same time, Americans are inundated everyday with advertisements for quick fixes, weight loss surgeries and magic pills that promise fast results.

But hundreds of people in Lenoir County are sticking to their plan of losing weight the old-fashioned way — diet and exercise — as part of Lighten Up Lenoir, a free community weight loss challenge hosted by Lenoir Memorial Hospital.

“It comes down to calories in and calories out,” Doncaster said. “If you take in more calories than you burn, you gain weight. If you take in less calories, you’ll lose weight.”

The program is facilitated entirely on its website, lightenuplenoir.org, with the current session running from June 23 to May 11. It tracks people’s weight loss, and sometimes gains and provides important tools for becoming healthier, such as exercise videos and healthy recipes.

Let’s meet some of the people who are taking part in the 16-week challenge

 

The Martins

 

Trey Martin stands 6-foot-3-inches, every bit as tall as his father, a former basketball standout at Grainger High School. Martin was also athletic, taking after his father and playing basketball while attending Barton College in the late 1980s and early 90s. Martin had no idea that one morning his life would come to a screeching halt.

He woke up one day and noticed something was wrong — very wrong. He had no feeling in his right hand, and the numbness rapidly spread to his other hand and legs.

He was diagnosed with polyneuropathy, a neurological disorder that affects the nervous system, damaging his balance and mobility.

“I haven’t felt my feet in four years,” Martin said. “(Polyneuropathy) causes numbness, instability with balance and things like that. I’m limited in the things that I can do.”

On top of that, Martin also temporarily took steroids to treat his condition, which wrought havoc on his body. The treatment, along with an unhealthy diet of burgers and pizza, caused him to pack on about 80 pounds.

Martin decided last summer he would start doing what he could to lose weight. With a healthier diet and a steady workout regimen, he has lost 70 pounds so far, 10 pounds of which came off since the start of Lighten Up Lenoir almost three weeks ago.

Though he still must walk with a cane to keep his balance, he has regained feeling in his hands and some in his legs, something his mother, Phyllis, attributes to his healthier lifestyle.

“He’s come a long way since he was taken sick, because he had no feeling anywhere, his legs, arms or feet,” she said. “I attribute it all to the exercise and the diet because … he could hardly get out of the chair because he was so big and he had put on so much weight. Now he’s within 11 pounds of his original weight by dieting, eating right and exercising.”

Trey Martin is his mother’s inspiration for joining Lighten Up Lenoir, something she wanted to do to fight off health problems of her own, including having had five heart attacks and two bypass surgeries. 

“I’ve been in cardiac rehab for 14 years,” Phyllis Martin said. “Every time you have a heart attack, you have to start the program all over … Had it not been for that, I probably would have not been here.”

Phyllis, 65, believes her heart problems are partially genetic — her father died at age 42 of a heart attack and three of her brothers had heart attacks — but she also admitted a diet rich in red meat and fried foods also played a role. But with Lighten Up Lenoir, and motivation from her son, she’s hoping to reverse it.

“(Trey) has been my inspiration, because I figured with his disability, if he can lose that much weight and have the disability that he has, anybody can do it,” she said. “I’ve been carrying around 50-60 pounds extra since he was born, and that was 42 years ago. I decided it was time for me to get some weight off. I just wished I had started when he started.”

Phyllis Martin now uses healthy cooking tips and recipes from the program’s website, exercises five days a week and uses the Weight Watchers point system to keep track of what she eats.

Phyllis Martin said she has lost about 10 pounds and giving up soft drinks has been one reason.

“I never drank water before,” she said. “I just hardly didn’t ever drink any, so now I’m drinking it all the time.”

Phyllis Martin’s husband, Titus, said he has seen his wife gain and lose a total of about 500 pounds since they got married 45 years ago.

“I’ve seen times in her life when she was too thin, believe it or not,” he said. “I know it’s tough, living in Eastern North Carolina and eating the way we do. … Growing up with us, we were always meat and potato people.”

 

Family man

 

Keith Hayes, a 37-year-old producer for Jake A. Parrott Insurance, was flipping through an edition of The Free Press a few weeks ago when he stumbled on an article about Lighten Up Lenoir.  Though he had tried fad diets and working out before, he knew he was finally ready for something that would not only help him drop pounds, but keep them off.

“I was planning on starting a diet the same day Lighten Up Lenoir happened to start,” he said. “My mother in law called and I was at the house, and my wife talked to her. She said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ ”

Hayes’ answer was yes, but for him it was more than about just losing some excess weight. The self-described “Mountain Dew-aholic” was driven also because of his family’s history of heart disease. Hayes’ father had a history of heart attacks and passed away when Keith was only 17 years old. He wanted to avoid a similar fate, and wants to stick around for his 6-year-old twins.

Hayes has lost a staggering 22 pounds since starting Lighten Up Lenoir began three weeks ago, thanks to a strict diet and moderate exercise.

He started the Dukan Diet, which he said is designed to keep pounds off by heavy dieting at first and then incorporating lifestyle changes.

Along with dieting, Hayes found a workout that suited him.

“I’ll take 20-30 minutes out of my day and go walk at the track every day at the hospital,” Hayes said. “Unusually within that 30 minute time frame, I can fit in 2 miles. … It was probably two to three years ago, I’d go work out, kill myself for an hour or hour and a half and be zapped for the rest of the day. I’d do it again the next day, and eventually it just got to the point where I didn’t want to do it anymore.”’

Although he’s already lost a significant amount of weight, Hayes said he hopes to drop another 50 pounds and to stay on track.

“Playing with your kids, jogging … when you get overweight, it just becomes more difficult,” he said. “I’m looking forward to dropping it back off again and see if I can get back to my early 20s weight.”

 

Busy woman

 

As a branch manager for ResCare of Kinston, Veronica Lee is always on the go. Her exercise regimen used to be close to nothing, and she often ate fast food and processed snacks when out and about.

 “Traveling from place to place, you find yourself doing a lot of fast food or snacking,” Lee said. “That was my biggest problem — I’m a snacker.”

Because her company promotes healthy living, and with encouragement from her doctor, she joined Lighten Up Lenoir to make her physical health a priority.

 “I do have some medical conditions, hypertension and things of that nature,” she said. “I expressed to (my doctor) I have really got to do something … and he encouraged it.”

Lee, 41, said ResCare has three teams of four. Though there is a little bit of friendly competition, the most important thing for everyone involved is to keep each other on track.

“With the teams, we’re contributing funds and buying healthy snacks so we have nothing in the office to tempt us to do wrong,” Lee said. “We motivate and encourage one another. … We like to do things together as a team, because it kind of promotes morality in the organization.”

Lee said for some of the participants, staying on track may be a matter of life and death.

 “We had one individual who, before the holidays, had a heart attack,” she said. “It so happened that the doctor had asked her to develop some of the things that we’re already doing (with Lighten Up Lenoir). She has done that, and she has done extremely well. She is back at work.”

Outside of the office, she now works out regularly and even has a new-found love of yoga.

She exercises at the Minges Wellness Center and finds inspiration in senior citizens who are still active.

“You see a lot of elderly people there,” she said. “People with physical disabilities, you see them making that effort to do it and that really is what motivates me. I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ ”

Lee has lost 9 pounds so far, and she is also noticing she is livelier.

“I have more energy, and that’s my ultimate goal, as well as losing weight,” she said. “I don’t want to lose too much too fast, but I just want to keep it ongoing and just develop that as a continuous life style.”

Lee said she has cut fast food out of her life and now eats balanced meals consisting of fresh produce, fish and poultry.

 “I’ve acquired the taste (for healthier food), and I’m okay with it, because there are so many different types of things you can use for seasoning that are healthy,” she said. “Where we are, (fattening food) is what most of us are accustomed to, but I’m leaving that lifestyle and developing better habits.”

 

Follow the leader

 

Marieta Miller, a case manager at ResCare, participates on the same Lighten Up Lenoir team as Lee.

Though she doubted that Lee would pull through, Miller was pleasantly surprised when she was proven wrong.

“(Lee used to be) the type of individual, she doesn’t believe in exercise and she would never go on a diet,” Miller said. “The only thing she wanted to do was eat and sleep. But she got motivated. … I was expecting it to last maybe two to three days, and I noticed she kept going. She really inspired me.”

Miller, 49, started making healthier changes two weeks before Lighten Up Lenoir started to get adjusted to the new lifestyle, and it has paid off as she’s lost 7 pounds so far.

Instead of being tempted by fried food, she eats baked chicken, whole grains, eggs and healthier alternatives.

Miller also goes to the gym three to four times a week, walks at home and looks forward to doing Zumba and other dance workouts with her coworkers.

 Miller said she has also enjoyed the extra boost her healthier diet and exercise have given her.

“I have more energy,” Miller said. “I’m not as sleepy as I used to be because I used to sit down in my chair (and get drowsy) and when I get home, I would just fall out. But I’m finding that I’m not doing that any more.”

Miller said she is taking small steps and hopes to lose 15-20 pounds a month.

Miller said she doesn’t dread weighing herself, because the only thing that will show is the discipline and hard work she is continuing.

“I enjoy that weigh-in every Monday, because it’s exciting,” she said. “It’s kind of tempting during the week to go get on the scale, but I’ve got to wait till Monday. … I intend to keep Lenoir County light.”

 

Jane Moon can be reached at 252-559-1082 or jmoon@freedomenc.com.

 

Breakout 1:  The Challengers

Keith Hayes

Age: 37

Height: 6-foot

Goal weight: 207 pounds

Weight lost since Jan. 23: 22 pounds

Reason for joining Lighten Up Lenoir: “I wanted to lose weight to be healthier, and my father had a heart problem history.”

 

Veronica Lee

Age: 41

Height: 5-foot, 3-inches

Goal weight: 160 pounds

Weight lost since Jan. 23: 9 pounds

Reason for joining Lighten Up Lenoir: “I do have some medical conditions, hypertension, things of that nature. I had joined the (Minges) wellness center, so I had heard more about it, which motivated me even more.”

 

Phyllis Martin

Age: 65

Height: 5-foot, 6-inches

Goal weight: 150 pounds

Weight lost since Jan. 23: 10 pounds

Reason for joining Lighten Up Lenoir: “(My son Trey) has been my inspiration, because I figured with his disability, if he can lose that much weight and have the disability that he has, anybody can do it.”

 

Trey Martin

Age: 42

Height: 6-foot, 3 inches

Goal weight: 210 pounds

Weight lost since Jan. 23: 10 pounds

Reason for joining Lighten Up Lenoir: “I was worried about me. With putting on so much weight, I knew it was a strain on my heart.”

 

Marieta Miller

Age: 49

Height: 5-foot, 3-inches

Goal weight: 185 pounds

Weight lost since Jan. 23: 7 pounds

Reason for joining Lighten Up Lenoir: “It is fun, because I have a group of people to do it with. … I have competition because everybody is racing to lose pounds, so it’s exciting.”

 

Breakout 2:

Top three tips for losing weight

Eat breakfast. When we’re trying to lose weight, eating breakfast is so important because it kick-starts your metabolism. If you skip breakfast, it keeps your metabolism lower, and your body is not functioning at its best Eat more fruits and vegetables. They are naturally low in fat and high in fiber. For example, a cup of carrots is 50-60 calories, the same as about seven potato chips Don’t try to change things too drastically. Look at making small changes you can sustain for the rest of your life

Source: Lenoir Memorial Hospital Dietitian Angie Doncaster

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Kinston residents share stories of weight loss with Lighten Up Lenoir

Healthhound.org has just released an easy weight loss guide for their readers. The guide is now freely available on the site.

Houston, TX (PRWEB) February 12, 2012

Healthhound.org has just released an easy weight loss guide for their readers. The guide is now freely available on the site.

Joan Richards, one of the Directors on the site said that “this guide contains everything that we have learned about easy ways to lose weight in the last few years. We have come across many different weight loss methods over the years but we are aware that many of them are very hard to maintain with it comes down to it. We know that our readers are always looking for easy ways to lose weight from the comments that we get on the site so we decided to go on a mission to look for the easiest weight loss methods that we could find. We have put all the research findings that we have come across in this new easy weight loss guide. We hope that our readers will get great results from it”.

According to the management team at Healthhound.org, the page that the new easy weight loss guide is on has been receiving a ton of traffic recently that has come from a variety of sites online that are linked into the health hound news feed. Many of these sites are also attracting very positive comments about the new guide with many commentators praising the efforts that the health hound team have made.

The team at health hound have been busy this week as in addition to the new easy weight loss guide, they have also come up with a new report on fast and effective ways to lose weight.

This report is said to be a perfect compliment to the easy weight loss guide by the management team on the site and the team at health hound hope that this new report will really skyrocket the results that their readers get.

The new report can be downloaded right now at http://www.healthhound.org/3217/easy-weight-loss/.

# # #

Jose C. Boyd
healthhound.org
978-874-6879
Email Information

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Healthhound.org Releases an Easy Weight Loss Guide

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Teenage girls gained less weight, improved their body image, ate less fast food, and had more family meals after participating in a 6- month program that involved weekly peer meetings, consultations with primary care providers and separate meetings for parents. Those results from a study published online today in the journal Pediatrics.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study is the first to report long-term results from a weight management program designed specifically for teenage girls. Most other programs have included younger children and interventions focused on the entire family. This program included separate meetings for parents with the rationale that teens are motivated more by peer acceptance than parental influence. Unlike previous programs, this one was conducted in a primary-care setting, rather than an academic or specialty-care environment.

"Nearly one-third of teenage girls are overweight or obese, and many of them are likely to become obese adults," said Lynn DeBar, PhD, MPH, lead author and senior investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research. "Our study shows that intervention programs can help these girls achieve long-term success managing their weight and also learning new habits that will hopefully carry over into their adult life." 

"Many teenage girls are still growing taller, so for them, maintaining weight or slowing weight gain is an acceptable goal," said Phil Wu, MD, a pediatrician who leads Kaiser Permanente's effort to prevent and treat childhood obesity and is also a co-author of the study. "Girls in the program gained less weight than those who weren't in the program, and they reduced their overall body mass index, improved their self-image and developed healthy lifestyle habits, so all of these are successes."

The study included 208 girls, ages 12–17, in Oregon and Washington during 2005–2009. All of the girls were classified as overweight or obese, according to standards set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention standards. Half of the girls were assigned to the intervention group and half to usual care.

Girls in the intervention group met weekly with their peers and a behavioral counselor during the first three months, and then every other week during months four and six. The girls were weighed and asked to keep a food and activity diary, which they discussed during each meeting. The program focused on decreasing portion size, limiting consumption of energy-rich foods, establishing regular meal patterns, substituting water for sugar-sweetened beverages, reducing fast food, increasing fruit and vegetable consumption, and having more family meals.

The girls were encouraged to exercise at least 5 days a week for 30-60 minutes, and to limit screen time to 2 hours a day.  They also received yoga instruction, and a physical-activity video game to use at home.  Discussion topics included ways to avoid disordered eating, coping with family and peer teasing and developing strategies to combat negative self-talk.

Parents attended separate weekly meetings to learn how to support their daughters. The girls' health care providers received summaries of the girls' current health habits, including meal and physical activity patterns. After receiving training in motivational techniques, the providers met with the girls at the beginning of the study to help them choose one or two behaviors to work on. The providers had a second visit with the girls at the end of the six-month intervention to check their progress.

Girls assigned to the usual-care group received a packet of materials that included a list of online reading about lifestyle changes. They also met with their primary care provider at the beginning of the study, but the providers were not given health habit summaries for these girls.

Both groups had health assessments and lab tests at the beginning of the study, at six months, and then again at 12 months. The girls started out with an average weight in the 190 lb. range, and an average body mass index in the 97th percentile, which by CDC standards is considered to be obese. At the end of the study, girls who participated in the program were in the 95th percentile, while girls in the usual-care group were in the 96th percentile.

Authors say the weight changes were statistically significant but modest compared to some other weight loss interventions. They point out that the girls were severely obese to begin with and possibly treatment-resistant due to previous involvement in other weight loss programs. The program purposely de-emphasized calorie counting, focusing instead on lifestyle changes, and the authors acknowledge that this approach may have produced more modest weight changes than they had expected.

This study is part of ongoing Kaiser Permanente research into weight loss. Previous studies include:

A Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research study published in the International Journal of Obesity last year found that people trying to lose at least 10 pounds were more likely to reach that goal if they had lower stress levels and slept more than six hours, but not more than eight hours, a night. Another Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research study published in 2010 found that the more people logged on to an interactive weight management website, the more weight they kept off. Researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research also reported in a 2008 study that keeping a food diary can double a person's weight loss and that both personal contact and Web-based support can help with long-term weight management.

 

Authors include Lynn L. DeBar, PhD, MPH; Victor J. Stevens, PhD; Nancy Perrin, PhD; John Pearson, MD; Bobbi Jo Yarborough, PsyD; John Dickerson, MS; and Frances Lynch, PhD, from the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore.,; and Philip Wu, MD, from Northwest Permanente in Portland, Ore.

About the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research (http://www.kpchr.org)

Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research, founded in 1964, is a nonprofit research institution dedicated to advancing knowledge to improve health. It has research sites in Portland, Ore., Honolulu, and Atlanta.

About Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America's leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, our mission is to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve 8.9 million members in nine states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: http://www.kp.org/newscenter.  

For more information
Mary Sawyers, mary.a.sawyers@kpchr.org, 503 335 6602
Danielle Cass, danielle.x.cass@kp.org, 510-267-5354

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Primary Care Intervention Helps Obese Teen Girls Manage Weight, Improve Body Image, and Change Behavior

A new weight-loss study focusing on teenage girls finds that they may be more likely to eat healthy and exercise if they're given the freedom to do it on their own.

Gary S Chapman / Getty Images

It’s hard to convince teens to do anything they don’t want to, but new research shows that when it comes to losing weight, a program that leaves parents out of the picture may help.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, involved 208 overweight or obese teen girls aged 12 to 17, who were living in Oregon and Washington in 2005-09. The girls were assigned either to receive usual weight-loss advice or to participate in a moderately intensive behavioral program that stressed healthy eating and exercise habits. The twist? The teens’ parents were given separate sessions about how to support their daughters in their weight-loss efforts. In contrast, most previous youth weight loss studies have offered treatment to families all together.

After six months, all of the girls were evaluated for weight and height to calculate their body mass index, or BMI; six months later, they were measured again. By the end of the yearlong interval, the teens in the behavioral program showed only slightly lower BMIs than the control group on average, but they reported having significantly better body image and had adopted healthier eating habits. Specifically, the teens in the behavior-modification program ate more meals together with their families, which previous studies have shown promotes healthier eating, ate less fast-food and consumed more fruits and vegetables.

“We purposefully set up the study not expecting people to have very dramatic and quick weight losses, but emphasizing different tools in terms of dietary changes and physical activity that we thought would be easy to include in every life, and which could be sustained over time,” says Lynn DeBar, senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research and the study’s lead author. “We suspected these would have more staying power than a more calorically focused weight management regimen.”

LIST: Fitness Tech: 10 Cool Ways to Get in Shape

Indeed, while the girls on the program didn’t lose a remarkable amount of weight, especially compared with other weight-loss regimens, DeBar says the results are still significant because they are the first to show that a teen-centered approach to weight loss can be effective. What’s more, because it did not focus on calorie-counting, the adolescent girls may have been more likely to embrace the behavior changes.

The behavioral program involved 90-min. group sessions that occurred 16 times over the study’s five-month period, during which teens met with specially trained counselors to discuss how to change their eating patterns and become more physically active by using exergames and incorporating 15 minutes of yoga daily. The girls also spoke with counselors about body image and eating disorders.

To change their eating habits, the counselors emphasized decreasing portion sizes and advised the teens on eating fewer high-calorie foods and more lower-calorie options such as fruits and vegetables. They also talked to the adolescents about substituting water for sugared sodas, and the importance of eating regular meals, especially breakfast.

To encourage the teens to exercise more, the program provided yoga equipment as well as exergames such as Dance Dance Revolution, which the girls could use on their own or with friends and which researchers figured they would enjoy more than regimented sessions at a gym. The researchers advised the teens to incorporate 30 to 60 minutes of physical activity a day, five days a week.

At the start of the study and again six months later, the teens also visited their pediatricians to discuss concerns about weight. The pediatricians were trained to be more attentive to weight issues and to work collaboratively with the girls to find the best way to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

MORE: Want Your Kids to Exercise? Let Them Play Video Games!

The control group was given a packet of information on weight-loss strategies, books and online materials, as well as contacts to local resources for weight management. They also met with primary care physicians at the beginning of the study to discuss healthy lifestyle changes, but these doctors were not provided with the specialized training to address teens’ weight issues.

Overall, the behavioral program seemed to be effective in giving teens the right tools with which to maintain healthy weight over the long term. After six months, the girls in the program had reduced their sedentary TV and computer time by 5 hours and consumed 240 fewer calories per day on average, compared with the control group.

Part of the program’s success may be due to the fact that unlike specialized or clinic-based weight management programs, which are more structured and conducted over limited periods of time, this program involved the teens’ pediatricians, with whom the girls have ongoing relationships. “The idea was to see if we could have a weight loss program that involved primary care providers, since formal weight management programs are time limited, meaning people do well during the program but then lose their improvements over time,” says DeBar. “We thought that since the girls have an ongoing relationship with their pediatrician, that would allow what they are doing to be reinforced and sustained over a longer period of time.”

It did, and giving the adolescent girls more autonomy over their weight loss options, without directly involving Mom and Dad, also helped. Still, there is a limit to how much control teens should be allowed to have over their diets, since studies also show that when parents are more involved in helping children decide what to eat — particularly by adopting the same diet and exercise changes that their children do — youngsters are more likely to learn and maintain healthier eating habits.

Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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Do Teen Weight Loss Programs Work Better Without Mom or Dad?

19-06-2011 20:29 The music used in it is Royalty Free Music from http://www.danosongs.com Thanks for SUBSCRIBING and Thank You for watching!! PLEASE COMMENT, RATE AND SUBSCRIBE!!! BLOGS: Missymistique.blogspot.com Missymistique.Tumblr.com FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/Missymistique TWITTER: twitter.com/4missymistique In honor of Spring and all things that are new and fresh, I invite you to join me for a 30 day raw food detox plan. The goal is to cleanse our bodies, mind and spirit. This plan could help jumpstart any weight loss programs you are currently working on thinking about working on. Why detox you ask? It is simple your health is your most important asset! Detoxifying our bodies answers our body's prayer for us to give it an internal shower and tune up. We are conscious about cleaning the external body, but not the internal body. When you detoxify your body, you open the door to healing and rejuvenation; in other words, you're turning back the hands of time on aging or degenerating. Detoxifying our bodies helps us to eliminate toxic waste accumulations, mucus, parasites and worms (that steal what little nutrition we get or have in our bodies), excess fat, fluid buildup (cellulite), old and hardened fecal matter buildup, and many more unsightly and odorous things that play a pivotal role in sabotaging and comprising optimal health. A detox program can help the body's natural cleaning process by: 1) Resting the organs through fasting; 2) Stimulating the liver to drive toxins from the body; 3 ...

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LOSE WEIGHT FAST? TRY A 30 DAY RAW FOOD DETOX. - Video

04-02-2012 12:22 I love shakeology. So I made a video about it. It has seriously helped me a lot with weight loss and I think everyone should drink it lol. http://www.myshakeology.com ^read about it here, and you can email me from here too! (best way to contact me) http://www.lauramustloseweight.com ^my diet plan, exercise plan, FAQ, tips, etc. Twitter @lauralostweight Facebook: http://www.facebook.com

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Weight Loss: SHAKEOLOGY. (peace, plateau.) - Video