Weight loss and diet plan starts with family meals

On a previous blog it was mentioned that a healthy lifestyle should be a family affair, with all members of the family participating in activities, exercise, and healthy eating - the latter of which is best done together in order to instill the habit of a healthy diet.  And now it seems that disordered eating is less common among teens when they are having meals with their family.  Looking back at my own family life, I can attest to this fact, having grown up in a home where dinner together was expected and prior approval for missing better have been cleared with the cook.  In other words, I didn't know anything else. And the six of us sat together and had dinnder more nights than not - meals with lean meats or fish, a vegetable, a carb, maybe some gravy to go with it, and milk or water, and sometimes (not that often that I can remember - maybe it was somebody's birthday only) a dessert. The psychological, emotional, habitual, familial, social benefits that ultimately resulted from years of eating together as a family far outweighed (by miles!) any other benefit that us kids as teens back then could ever have received from any of our own activities outside the home. Read this report from Science Daily about some of the eating behaviors of teens who eat meals with their families vs. those that don't --

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Science Daily — Adolescent girls who frequently eat meals with their families appear less likely to use diet pills, laxatives or other extreme measures to control their weight five years later, according to a new report.

As youth progress from adolescence into adulthood, disordered eating behaviors--including binge eating and self-induced vomiting--become more common, according to background information in the article. "Disordered eating behaviors are associated with a number of harmful behavioral, physical and psychological consequences, including poorer dietary quality, weight gain and obesity onset, depressive symptoms and the onset of eating disorders," the authors write. "Thus, it is important to identify strategies for the prevention of disordered eating behaviors."

Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., and colleagues at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, studied 2,516 adolescents at 31 Minnesota schools. Participants completed two surveys--an in-class survey in 1999 and a mailed survey in 2004--regarding how often they ate with their families as well as their body mass index, feelings of family connectedness and eating behaviors.

Among teen girls, those who ate five or more meals with their families each week in 1999 were significantly less likely to report using extreme measures (such as self-induced vomiting and diuretics) to control their weight in 2004, regardless of their sociodemographic characteristics, body mass index or family connectedness. However, among adolescent boys, regular family meals did not predict lower levels of disordered eating behaviors five years later. Read on...

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