“F” as in “fat,” that is.

Or maybe I should say “f” as in “family” because, in spite of all the attention being given to the obesity epidemic, family is rarely part of the story. Surprisingly little information is available today for the family who wants to develop healthy habits as a family to support healthy weight management.

And that’s a crying shame, because fat is a family matter. We learn habits as a family, and if anything is inextricably linked to family traditions, it’s food. The habits we develop in our families today can last for generations to come. The good news is that we can unlearn habits as a family, too. We can change our family food traditions, very likely saving our families in the process. And that’s what this book is all about.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably courageous enough to start facing the truth about your family’s eating habits. You are feeling symptoms of poor health at home, and are fearful of the ramifications for yourself and your family. You’ve probably already decided that fads don’t work: you know they just mean an endless, frustrating, and self-defeating cycle of weight gain and loss. You know that extremely rigid or complicated diets are impossible to stick to—you lose weight but don’t keep it off. You just want to be able to enjoy healthy, good-tasting food with your family, without spending countless hours cooking.

You want the best for your family, but somehow it’s all gotten out of control—the TV watching, the loss of focus on nutrition, the everyone-for-themselves eating habits, the lack of family meals, the on-the-run eating, all the fast food and packaged food. Over and over again, you find yourself desperately asking, “How can I get a grip on this chaos?”

You may have experienced one or more of the following:

I talk to families every day who share these same challenges. I know how hard it is to climb out of that pit we call “denial” and start scaling the mountain of change. But I have helped hundreds of families do just that, and I can help yours.

You might be surprised to learn that some of the families I work with aren’t overweight. That’s because families can easily have unhealthy attitudes and habits that have not expressed themselves in excess weight—but you can be sure the negative consequences are there just the same.

That’s because it is possible to be slim—even downright thin—and eat a high-fat, highly processed diet and/or get very little exercise. Even if it seems you are “getting away with it,” inside you are setting up clogged arteries and lining them with plaque, taxing your liver with cholesterol overload, stressing your pancreas with way too much sugar, weakening your bones with no activity, and generally developing fatty organs. New research tells us that having fat deposits on internal organs like the heart, liver, or pancreas can be as dangerous, if not more so, than the symptoms of a typical overweight person.¹ The term TOFI (Thin Outside Fat Inside) was created to describe this newly diagnosed subset of the population. From a behavior and health perspective, you can indeed be “fat,” even if the scale isn’t showing it.

Do you have a friend or someone you know who can truly take “just one bite” and be satisfied? They may not be particularly slim or thin—they may just be of average build and weight. But what they have is a “thin” attitude. Some experts describe it as a “relaxed relationship with food.” They don’t think about food all the time, they don’t obsess about treats and desserts, they understand hunger and eat for satisfaction, they enjoy tasty food while still being able to push a half-filled plate aside when full. People with “thin” attitudes typically share these traits:

Not surprisingly, these are the same traits shared by healthy families. Although your family may not exhibit these healthy food behaviors now, they can learn. Making that shift to a “thin” attitude and healthy habits is what this book is all about.

The obesity crisis is on the home front, and family habits are at the root of it. In many cases, busy schedules and “convenient” food choices have replaced healthier routines, and these new habits are rapidly undermining our health. For example, you may have pleasant childhood memories of home-cooked meals and family activities and gatherings. Ideally, family time, and family-meal time, should conjure up positive associations. For younger generations today, however, many of those positive feelings may be linked primarily to TV-watching and junk food.

Will your children associate happy, satisfying feelings with fat and sugar—or with nutritious meals, fun activities, and family love and support? The choice is up to you.

Those of us who are parents need to rise to the occasion, own up to our responsibility, and take charge of the situation. By monitoring our own weight, following a nutrient-rich diet (from pregnancy and even before), keeping a healthy selection of foods in the home, limiting sedentary screen-watching time, and modeling daily physical activity, we have the power to turn our families—and the future—around.

Kids don’t just get fat (in their habits or in actual physical size). It happens insidiously in the home, usually because of the way parents are running the ship. Whether you realize it or not, as a parent, you are the policymaker. You are entrusted with making the decisions on everything from how recreation time is spent to how food dollars are allocated. You are responsible for the kinds and amounts of food available in the home, and the manner in which it is prepared. Your choices largely determine everything from the amount of time that is spent together as a family unit to the way your kids learn to handle their emotions (with communication or with candy bars.)

It may sound like a tall order, but if parents don’t turn families around, who will? I’ve seen many families succeed at changing their lifestyles, so I know it can be done. Most families (like yours) just need a little practical help, and that’s why I developed the Healthy Family for Life (HFL) program. It was created from more than twenty years of experience with families struggling for better control of eating habits, exercise habits, cravings, and emotional eating patterns. I’ve introduced this structured, easy-to-follow manual to hundreds of families, and the results have been remarkable. That’s how I can tell you that this program will work for the family who works together.

Unlike nearly all of the healthy eating and weight loss plans available today, the HFL program is a whole-family approach. It will take you step by step through daily planning, preparation, and portioning of food for your family, as well as what you need to do to get the activity you need. This is a practical program designed by a busy parent for busy parents. You’ll see how I use these ideas with my own family throughout the book.

If you are asking yourself, “Are the foods and drinks I’m serving my kids healthy and appropriately portioned?” the answer is probably no. If you are asking yourself, “Do we move enough, get enough exercise, and eat together enough?” the answer is probably no. Unfortunately, that’s the answer for most families today, and most families need help with healthy lifestyle management in order to avoid the modern obesity trap and the health traps that follow. This program is about saving yourself, saving your kids, and maybe even saving their kids.

I am telling you that tomorrow is too late. If you were brave enough to pick up this book (even with its “in your face” title!), then you are ready to face the perils of your current home food and activity environment—and you’re ready to take on the day-to-day changes needed to turn the situation around.

Our children are expected to be the first generation of Americans who will live a shorter lifespan than their parents. We are eating ourselves to death and handing our self-destructive habits off to our kids.

It’s impossible to watch the news for very long without hearing alarming updates on the escalating rates of obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, all conditions associated with how we choose to live our lives. Reality TV programs showcase their successful “losers,” only many of them regain their weight after leaving the strict confines of the show’s protective and secluded settings.

Obesity is one of our nation’s biggest public health dangers, despite the fact that, on average, nearly two-thirds of Americans say that their doctor or health care provider has talked to them about issues like weight management and exercise. Here are some of the most startling facts, based on reports from 2005 and 2006:

Future predictions include:

The obesity problem is not solely an American phenomenon. I recently traveled to Israel, a country where I assumed good eating habits were well entrenched. (After all, I grew up loving Israeli salad!) While working out in the hotel gym, I watched a morning news show tackle the “growing problem of obesity in Israel.” I almost fell off the treadmill in shock. It seems that kids in Israel are on computers and cell phones for hours, not outdoors playing or working like previous generations. Fast food has also invaded their country.

On a trip to Italy, I saw that many Italians eat meals slowly and really savor their food. They don’t serve gargantuan portions in restaurants, and there’s a smart workday break in the afternoon that allows people to accomplish errands, take a long lunch, and walk. Still, thanks to the invasion of unhealthy food and more sedentary living, even Italy, along with France and Britain, is experiencing increasing rates of obesity among the adult and child populations.⁷ In addition to the fast food, processed food, and high-sugar sodas available, the changing physical nature of communities and the disappearing family meal—even in these countries—all contribute to the rising tide of obesity.

Worldwide, 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women are now overweight; 24 percent of men and 27 percent of women are obese. Obesity has become a major clinical and public health problem in a number of countries.⁹

A rather sobering reality is that if historical obesity trends were to continue through 2020 here in the United States, without other changes in behavior or medical technology, the proportion of individuals reporting fair or poor health that directly relates to their being overweight would increase by about 12 percent for men and 14 percent for women, compared with statistics in 2000. Up to one-fifth of health care expenditures would be devoted to treating the consequences of obesity.¹⁰

I’m not fond of scare tactics, but in this case, the statistics are overwhelming. We need to be not just scared, but horrified, and that horror should spur us into action, for the sake of our own health, and especially for the sake of our kids.

Genetic factors may affect a variety of areas related to obesity. Many of the body’s systems that regulate eating and body weight initially develop in utero during critical periods in brain development, and these may affect a child’s eating and body weight—in particular, body fat—later in life.¹¹

Your parents’ weight directly correlates to your “weight future.” A recent study found that a child is at much greater risk of being overweight by the age of seven when one parent was obese; with two obese parents, the risk was even higher.¹² When parents are obese, a child also has more than twice the risk of being obese as an adult (60 percent risk), regardless of whether he or she was obese before the age of ten. By contrast, a preschool child with parents of normal weight has only about a 25 percent chance of being overweight as an adult.¹⁴

New research suggests that eating is a reinforcing activity, but there appear to be significant differences, because of genetic variations, in the perceived reward that food gives to people.¹⁵ The research suggests that some people eat to live while others live to eat and it adds another explanation to why some people may overeat. The study revealed that some people have lower dopamine levels (a brain neurotransmitter that helps make behaviors and substances more rewarding) so they are more likely to feel the reward of food when they stimulate those dopamine levels, so they not only eat, they overeat.

Genetically speaking, if you have more dopamine receptors, it may be easier for you to experience reward, in this case from eating food, so you will tend not to overeat. If you have fewer dopamine receptors, you may be more susceptible to the food-pleasure reward and overeat in an attempt to achieve that feeling.

Beyond genetics, other “outside” factors may play a role in fostering obesity. There is an emerging field of microorganisms and obesity called infectobesity. The word was coined by N. Dhurandhar, MD, head of the Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who sees a relationship between obesity and viruses.¹⁶ The theory is that some intestinal microbes or viruses may be making their human hosts fat. Other theories offer the idea that since certain gut flora actually prevent the body from storing fat, if we could find a way to give these flora to people, perhaps we could offset a predisposition to weight gain.

Still another theory says you may actually be able to catch a virus—an adenovirus, to be exact—from a newly infected person who is a carrier (so he himself is not necessarily overweight) and this virus (Ad-36) can cause you either to produce more fat cells or to produce superior fat cells that can hold more fat per cell.¹⁶ Even C-reactive protein, produced by the liver during systemic inflammation in the body and specifically implicated in heart disease and other conditions that may have an inflammatory component, may be causing a kind of chaos among fat regulation, contributing to excess fat.¹⁶

Forget the factors your family can’t control because what matters are those you can: Do you choose to walk daily? Do you choose to lift weights? Do you choose to control the size of your portions? Do you choose to stock your pantry with healthy options? Do your daily life habits support weight gain or do they deter weight gain?

The healthy new habits suggested throughout this book can help minimize the impact of any negative predispositions you or your family have and give you control of your health. Regardless of your genetic heritage, you are not a helpless victim when it comes to weight or eating habits. Biology and genetics may set the stage, but it’s up to you to direct the play of your life, and that includes the food and activity choices you make.

Almost all Jewish holidays and celebrations revolve around food. There’s honey and apples and sweet treats on the Jewish New Year, Hamentashen cookies on Purim, all kinds of matzo treats on Passover, not to mention the weekly challah (egg bread) and sweet wine served every Friday night. Even the Yom Kippur fast is followed by a “break the fast feast.”

I was also the child of a woman who expressed her happiness, sadness, frustration, anxiety—pretty much any feeling—by eating.

My mother was not a particularly good cook. Money was tight, so she approached the week with “standards.” Monday night was a fish dish (I would call that a healthy night), Tuesday was meatloaf, Wednesday was tuna noodle casserole (with three different cheeses, macaroni, and cream of mushroom soup), Thursday was lamb chops and potatoes, and Friday was always chicken or goulash (meat stew) with potatoes or kugel (a potato or noodle baked casserole). Saturday night meant pizza and Sunday night was leftovers.

You get the picture: filling comfort food, always served with a salad, though, as my mother’s homage to a healthy diet. It was homemade; we didn’t eat too much store-bought food during my childhood (too expensive). Except for snacks. I was from the generation of Ding Dongs^® and Yodels^®, apple-filled pastries and pound cake. Pop-Tarts^® featured prominently, as did chips, cookies, pretzels, and licorice.

I couldn’t help but notice how food seemed to calm my mother down; by association, I too began to turn to food when I received a bad grade, lost a school election, got scolded. There was always some treat available at home, ready to be hoarded and enjoyed in secret. I learned from the best, watching my mom seek solace in food secretly (or so she thought).

I knew what was going on behind the one bathroom door when she would stay in there a long time. I knew when she closed her bedroom door at night before my dad came home that she was “visiting” with food “friends,” and I know a lot of eating went on while I was in school.

Over time, I developed a true hankering for sweet treats, and my palate seemed to crave these goodies. My extra weight and “thunder thighs” (a popular phrase at the time) became a serious problem around the age of sixteen, when my group of friends started dating. I was always pretty smart academically, good at sports, but I wore braces and glasses and then there was the extra weight—what an awkward stage.

One day, I had one of those true epiphanies when you just get fed up. The only options were starvation or a balanced diet. I marched myself and a friend off to a local meeting of the only structured diet program available at that time. We did the mortifying weigh-in and I settled down for my first nutrition lecture. The downside was that most of the women had forty years on me, so I didn’t necessarily relate to their perspectives or feel any sort of camaraderie. The upside was that no one knew me, so I could keep my “shameful” struggle somewhat private and interact minimally.

Ultimately, that friend became my weight loss buddy and we both dropped serious pounds. By the beginning of my junior year in high school, the braces were off, contacts were in, forty-two pounds were gone—and my mother was really, really unhappy. Yup, I was no longer sharing secret binges. I now understand that my success was a real slap in the face to her, and it took me years to understand her true emotional pain.

That was the beginning of my dedication to weight management, health, and fitness. I have kept those forty pounds off ever since those teenage years, and it hasn’t always been easy. I have to pay attention to what I eat and I am passionate about regular exercise to this day. And I have taken these habits into my family life. Naturally, I wanted to spare my children the struggles I experienced. Throughout this book, I’ll share how I have met the nutritional health challenges of my own family, and how you can, too.

Beyond my own experience as a health-conscious wife and mother, I have worked first as a Physician Assistant and then for more than eighteen years as a Family Lifestyle Coach, focusing on family nutrition, working with clients referred from physicians.

During my training to become a Physician Assistant, my specialty was in Internal Medicine and Dependency Medicine—invaluable experience for my work today. Working with people suffering from drug and alcohol dependency enhanced my understanding of dysfunctional relationships with food. In order for addicts to have a successful rehabilitation, they needed to do many of the same things that people with food and weight problems need to do: distance themselves from their drug of choice, examine their relationship with the drug, create an ongoing plan to deal with day-to-day situations that would put them at risk for relapse, and create a support system that involves their family and others who had detoxed successfully.

As a certified personal trainer and professional member of IDEA Health and Fitness Association, my approach to family wellness integrates physical activity with nutrition education. My training and background in medicine, nutrition, and exercise have given me a strong foundation to help families transform their health habits. I have helped hundreds of families move from unhealthy eating and activity habits to healthy ones. This book is about helping your family make that move, too.

If Mom or Dad decides to diet and starts to drink those shakes or control food portions, but they still bring home processed foods, fast foods, and temptations for the rest of the family, they’ll invariably falter and fail. Kids don’t fare any better when they’re expected to make changes while other family members maintain old habits. Would you place a child with an allergy to grass in a room filled with a patchwork grass floor? Can you imagine this child tiptoeing around all day long trying to avoid the grass patches?

When you have one child at home who needs to lose weight and you create a set of guidelines that only he or she has to follow while other kids in the family get the extra helpings and treats, resentment and frustration inevitably emerges. It’s not complicated science; it’s common sense. The best way for family members to get healthy is for the family as a whole to get healthy.

That’s why I believe it has to be the family way or no way, and why I chose to write a book about family rather than individual weight management. The HFL program requires—no, demands—that the entire family participate and that the participation be ongoing.

Research is mounting to support the value of a family-based approach to behavior change. A review of a range of studies found that family-based strategies in which parents and children work together are some of the most effective ways to encourage behavior change in individuals seeking to lose weight or improve their health for the long term, and that a family-based approach can “produce significant long-term sustainable results.”¹⁷

I’m of the belief, as are many others, that the home environment will have the single most profound influence on your child’s food habits, food choices, palate or taste determination, level of activity, and overall health. America on the Move did a study revealing that among 1,487 children, 71 percent said they get information on how to be healthy from their moms.

Keith Ayoob, a nationally known nutrition expert and a dietician at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, says, “Parents are hands down the biggest influence on their kids. They need to be good role models.” This speaks volumes more than genetic or family predisposition factors when it comes to kids and weight issues.

Studies have now revealed that the very choices we parents are making for our children are setting them up for obesity—and it has little to do with genetics and very much to do with exposures to certain food tastes and certain portion sizes. If you choose to feed an infant sweetened beverages and high-fat or sweet-tasting foods, it may instigate an early preference for such foods and beverages, which can then contribute in a very significant way to that child becoming overweight.¹⁸ As a parent who has raised two children in this environment of fast food, highly processed foods, and caloric sugar-laden drinks, I have seen that kids are being given far too many of these kinds of foods, far too early in their lives and far too frequently. In fact, the Feeding Infants and Toddlers Study (FITS) found that infants as young as seven months old are being fed soft drinks (sodas and highly caloric fruit drinks) and french fries.¹⁸

The bottom line is that because children’s preferences for high-fat, energy-dense foods are, in part, learned from their home environment and the environment in which they live, exposing children regularly to these highly caloric, very tempting, large and frequent portions of foods may reinforce their liking for them.¹⁹

Add to this dismal picture children who are given juice in their bottles as their significant source of hydration instead of water, kids who are kept on full-fat milk past the age of two, kids who are put in front of TVs for hours while snacking on food, and kids who are given few fruits and vegetables, and you are continuing to reinforce unhealthy habits in your home.

Experts believe family-based approaches are most effective when children are young, especially “before obesity-promoting behaviors have become well ingrained.”¹⁴ As the team leaders, parents can provide positive behavior for all family members to emulate. Research has found that a big part of this formula is to make sure the family engages in fun and productive physical activity. For example, one hugely beneficial step is to encourage kids to engage in physical activity with their peers instead of parking themselves in front of the TV or computer.² Because children also learn behaviors from parents, you should not be seen sitting for hours in front of the TV while telling them to go play with their friends.

So many key lifestyle patterns can be positively influenced by a family approach to behavior change from the very earliest ages. For example, one important predictor of a pudgy preschooler is a child who is still using a bottle by age three.²⁰ Children who are still drinking substantial calories by bottle (juice, whole milk) are probably doing so in addition to the food calories they are ingesting. Constant access to a bottle means constant consumption of calories, irrespective of hunger. Taking a bottle to bed with a liquid other than water is another bad lifestyle habit that should be discouraged; by one year, a child should be shifting over to drinking from a cup. By age two, unless a child has a health condition that warrants special caloric needs, there should also be a gradual shift to 2 percent, 1 percent, and finally, fat-free milk (this goes for all dairy products). The only way a child ends up with a nighttime bottle filled with a liquid other than water is if their mom or dad fills the bottle with something other than water. The only way a child can continue to drink high-fat milk is if their parents don’t make the switch.

Another critical example of how parents can influence family health is TV watching. Studies show that eating in front of the TV can lead to overeating because: 1) you’re not clued in to whether or not you’re getting full, so you are just shoveling food in without any mindful awareness; 2) you might sit at the table longer to finish watching a show and keep eating just because you sit for a longer period of time, and 3) you are exposed to TV food ads, which can increase your food consumption. A study from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom showed that overweight and obese children increase their food intake by more than 100 percent after watching TV ads for food.²¹

Studies also confirm that the current lack of real sit-down family meals seems to be a surefire way to encourage weight gain and poor nutritional choices.²² More often than not, several different meals are going on with no healthy food choices, parents are totally unaware of what their kids are eating, or parents are modeling poor choices. In any case, studies are clear that the loss of the traditional family meal is a definite contributor to weight and health problems on the home front.

Portion size is a unique issue because we know that until age four, no matter how much food you put on children’s plates, they will only eat until they reach a comfortable fullness. They actually have a natural shut-off valve that innately controls how much they will eat.²³ Take young children and put them into an environment of food coercion or threats to “clean your plate” and, over time, they will stop listening to their natural body cues and overeat. Overfill children’s plates or regularly put them among people who overeat and cajole them to eat more and you can blur their natural appetite shut-off valve and literally teach them to overeat. In older kids and adults, just the sight of extra food has been implicated in increasing their food intake, even if they’re not hungry.²⁴

On the other hand, overly restricting food because you struggle with weight or because you perceive your child to be overweight can backfire as well. A child who is overly controlled at meal and snack times is at risk of losing some of the inherent ability to self-regulate, to feel full, and to respond to internal cues that might otherwise guide very normal eating patterns.²⁵

It is certainly true that as a society we need to work on improving our food quality, increasing opportunities for activity, developing more public health resources, and creating more responsibility in our media messages. However, as parents, we can’t afford to wait for government or society to solve the problem. We have to step in and seize the right to control our home environments and change our habits and priorities.

This is the most important decision you can make as a parent. If you don’t take this seriously and take action now, you and your family will join the statistics of individuals suffering with weight and health issues directly related to your lifestyle choices. You could be handing your children the punishment of a shortened or lesser quality of life, and no parent wants to do that.

The HFL program is organized around the four P’s or four Habits of Healthy Families: 1) Planning healthy food, 2) Preparing healthy food, 3) Eating healthy Portions, and, 4) Getting enough “Play” (activity) time:

The heart of the HFL program is the “Yes, No, Maybe So” Food Choice Plan. This is a quick and easy way for you and all the members of your family to make the healthiest food choices for you. You’ll learn to turn as often as possible to rich-in-nutrients Yes Foods that taste good, fill you up, and are good for you. You’ll also learn to identify and set limits for No Foods, those personal favorites that can cause so much trouble when we either eat them with unconscious abandon or rigidly try to deprive ourselves of them. Rather than avoid them entirely, you and your family will learn how to get the most enjoyment from them while maintaining overall health and balance. Finally, you’ll learn how to plan and choose the right amounts of Maybe So Foods, those calorically dense choices (with higher carbohydrate, fat, or protein content) that are part of a healthy diet in moderation.

A number of studies recommend that we adopt eating patterns that focus on healthier selections and limit the intake of foods with minimal nutritional value. That’s the basis for the Yes, No, Maybe So approach. It’s an easy to way to start recognizing that every mouthful counts. It will help you learn to shift away gradually from processed and prepared foods that are high in white flour, sugar, fat, sodium, and preservatives and toward more simple, satisfying meals you prepare yourself.

Clearly, poverty or very limited financial resources can make serving healthy food a challenge. But even with limited funds, kids can learn HFL guidelines, such as drinking water and 1 percent milk instead of lots of soda and juice (which shouldn’t be in the home in large amounts anyway). They can learn to have healthy cereal and milk and an apple, rather than chips and dip. They can learn that dinner needs a veggie, salad, fruit, a serving of whole grain carbohydrate, and a portion of healthy protein.

In truth, we have high rates of obesity in upper socioeconomic levels, too, where kids have every electronic sit-on-your-butt device imaginable and so they aren’t playing outside. They may have nannies who are making high-fat mac’n’cheese meals or they are turning to fast food takeout while their two working parents are out filling the family coffers.

I know from experience that, no matter how busy you are, you can give your family healthy choices. When I went back to work and had a nanny for a short time, I shopped and prepared food on the weekends and had a healthy food weekly menu plan for everyone to follow. One of our favorite family weekend activities was to go to a local farmer’s market and taste-test with the kids.

There are lots of excuses, but regardless of your budget or your schedule, by following the HFL program, you’ll discover actions you can take to become a healthier family.

I know the challenges of busy families. In many cases, both of you are working long hours outside the home, the school food environment has changed, communities may no longer be safe enough for your child to play outside, more meals are being eaten outside the home or on the go, physical education is disappearing in schools, and everyone in the family brings their own unhealthy (often stress or emotion-related) habits into the picture.

Creating change is rarely easy, but it helps when you can work together as a team—a true family. You can learn to work together as you assimilate the new behaviors you need to become an HFL family. You’ll find that this isn’t a program of 100 percent success or failure. In my experience, families start with different challenges, move toward different goals, and progress at different rates. The same is true of family members—every individual’s experience will be somewhat different, and success will not look the same for everyone.

Your family will become healthier with any and every positive change you make, and that’s the simple goal. If you are increasing the number of times you eat together, improving the quality of your food choices, expanding the amount of time each member spends on physical activity, or if the overall health profiles of family members are improving through weight loss and better health screening results—you are succeeding as an HFL family.

The HFL program takes a “project view” of weight and health issues. Just as you draw up plans to build a house, the HFL program provides the planning tools you need. Just as you follow the house plan you put on paper, the HFL program walks you through the stages of implementation: shopping, stocking your fridge and cabinets, prepping food ahead of time so it’s ready to be cooked later in the week with minimal effort, portioning out foods and snacks so there’s no guesswork. Research has found that even small changes in diet and physical activity can yield big results in reducing people’s risk for health problems ranging from diabetes to heart disease.² When you make small, steady changes, you are more apt to stick with them, and right now there is an absolute urgency—for the sake of your own health status and the future health of your kids—to make changes that will stick for good.

The HFL program will help you:

I won’t lie to you: changing behavior takes sustained effort. Cravings do not just melt away and disappear. Complacency can be a real danger, especially after a lifestyle change has been in place for a while. We convince ourselves that we are changed people and, for the most part, we are—except that old habits and cravings and relationships with food linger for a long, long time.

With the HFL program, your family will have an arsenal of strategies and solutions for even the most daunting situations in or out of your home. Everyone in the family will learn to tackle every moment with the best possible food solutions. There will always be temptation to face and choices to make—your family just needs to have tactical solutions to draw upon. And ultimately, you will feel more in control and relaxed when you know you have time-saving solutions that make your life not just healthier but easier.

Kids tend to want to know the “why” of things, and you will be including them in the learning part of the program, in the decisions that affect their food choices, and the reasons why your family needs a serious change now. You will provide the leadership and the call to action. There may be some initial resistance, unhappiness, and even resentment, but the HFL program will take you through solutions for phases like these and other common setbacks and challenges.

As you chart a new course of action, recipes will fall flat, kids will spit food out or prefer death to tasting a new fruit or vegetable, and spouses will test the limits of your tolerance. You can expect to have low days where it just feels like it’s all too much. Just like any new job, you’ll have to pace yourself, allowing time for information to sink in and for new behaviors to form and then gradually feel like they’re a good fit. You’ll have to allow each family member to personalize the tools to their unique needs and personalities and to realize they may only be able to embrace change at their own pace—not yours. Your job will be to offer the possibilities, to set boundaries and guidelines, but also to allow some flexibility. Most rewarding of all, you will be responsible for putting an end to those unhealthy habits that, if left in place, will quite probably doom your family to so many bleak, life-threatening health consequences.

Congratulations on your commitment to one of the most important family values of all: healthy living. Now let’s get started!