Buy Walking VideosPilot Study for Children at Weight Watchers
These two articles from USA Today talk about a pilot program that Weight Watchers has been testing for two and a half years down in Florida. It’s a program for children.
The hair on the back of my neck started to rise and I could feel the anger when I heard about this. After reading the articles, however, it looks like Weight Watchers has a feasible plan that isn’t going to send children into bingeing like my grandmother did to me. Here are the basics:
- Parent attend several sessions a week, whereas, the children attend one session a week. The classes are meant to affect the parent’s behavior more than the children.
“Parents model (kids’) attitudes, values and beliefs about food and eating. For example, if parents believe a wholesome breakfast is important and eat one every day, we’ve seen that kids will, too.”
- The Parent sessions are like a normal Weight Watcher class, but the children’s sessions focus on portion control.
“The concept is that parents are the biggest influencers on their children’s behavior, and by educating, motivating and providing group support to them, they can make changes at home.”
- There are no weigh-ins for the children.
“Our goal is to have the children maintain or improve their percentile on weight charts as they grow.”
- The sessions for the children are taught by a specially trained coach who has specialized in child weight issues. This is important because children are different than adults. They have less control over their environment and there is the potential to wound them in ways that may take years to recover from.
On the whole, it sounds like a good program that might help more children than it will hurt. Weight Watchers can’t control what the parents do in their lives, but they can give the parents good options. It reminds me of the advice I gave about Childhood Obesity a while back.
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April 14th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
my daughter is 13 and is on weight watchers points, 24 a day.. i wouldent DREAM of her going to meetings! i wouldent put her trough that hell. she looses a pound a day, im not letting her loose more than a stone.