You have been successful at losing weight and gaining a healthier lifestyle. You have a teenage son/daughter who is in a "Healthy Living" class at school. The teacher has visited with you on numerous occasions and you've talked about the changes in your life. He has called you to talk about how you changed your life, what things you did, what were your successes and your pitfalls.
Basically what he wants you do to is share some ideas with teens who are a group of too thin, too heavy, and "just right" weight about how to get healthier. You have agreed to do this.

So where do you start, give us your lesson plan, what are you going to say, what tips are you going to give that will prove useful and accepted by these teens? It's your turn to share. There are no right answers, no wrong answers, just information to be shared.

So I gotta ask... is this a really scenario or just something you dreamed up

I would bring visual aids. Photos of attractive, healthy people.

I would give them tips on how to manage the food hype. Food ads are everywhere. Most things either tell you how good the food tastes or show you skinny people eating it.

I would wager that most teens have not seen a healthy normal-sized person. I'd talk about incorporating healthy snacks and meals into life. Being able to grab healthy fuel.

I'd do a bit of what Brie is talking about too.

I would focus my talk on developing positive self esteem and an "I can do it" attitude.

The teen years are so incredibly hard in terms of self image.

I would package exercising and eating healthy to that theme.

I'd talk about How I changed my diet
- Cutting out fast food
- Eating Organic as much as possible
- How eating at home really doesn't take that much more time and you control what goes into your food.
- making good food choices
- Talk about how I changed my attitude about food. It's not a comforter or a friend - its fuel for my body.
- Talk about how drinking water makes a huge difference in how your body functions - clearer skin, joints move more easily, bowels move more easily, etc.


I'd talk about getting how I got started exercising on a regular basis.

I did it for 21 days and if I did 20 minutes it counted.
I tried different activities - yoga, walking, running, biking just to see what I liked.
For the girls I'd mention that it's okay to use weights and that you won't bulk up from lifting more weight. Instead you end up with nicely toned muscles and that if they are trying to lose weight, muscle mass will burn calories in a resting state (I believe its 50 calories per pound of muscle over night).
I'd mention that everyone needs to do weight bearing actitivies to maintain healthy bones.


Successes -
It's one day a time one step at a time. but you have to start to go on the journey.
Celebrate your successes with something other than food.
Don't make the food the center of an activity.
It's okay to have a treat once in a while. but a treat is just that... a once in a while thing.

Pitfalls
Blowing it one meal or more is not an excuse to quit leading a healthful life - figure out what caused you to mess up - was it stress?? Emotional eating? Poor planning??? Once you have the reason figured out, create a plan so it doesn't happen again.