Keeping fit as a family

Sometimes the secret to losing weight is not a diet or a gym membership or a lean, mean personal trainer.

Your best allies can be the people facing you at the dinner table: your family.

They are so important in the mind of Barbara Benson, who coordinates a weight-management class at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, she requires a parent to come with youngsters enrolled in the Healthy You class.

"Sometimes there's an attitude of 'Here's my child. Fix him.' And that doesn't work."

Fitness instructors, too, say a commitment on the part of other family members - whether it's a parent or a spouse or a sibling - can be the make-or-break factor in a person's drive to become fit.

That's because being healthy is a goal that depends not just on what you do at the gym but on the way you eat and live once you get home.

Three local families shared their experiences of making lifestyle changes together: The Lawson family, The Gonzales family, and Elderd Sauls and Shanice Morgan.

Elderd Sauls is both partner and drill sergeant when she and her 9-year-old daughter, Shanice Morgan, go to the Greenbrier Family YMCA in Chesapeake.

"Ten minutes," she told Shanice as the two pumped stationary bikes next to one another.

"I can't do that much," Shanice said.

"Yes, you can," Elderd responded, wiping her own brow with a towel.

Sauls had known for a while that her daughter needed help losing weight, so together the single mother and her daughter joined the Y.

"She wanted to do it," said Elderd, who's 46. "I told her I would be there to support her."

An instructor there hooked them up with the 10-week Healthy You weight-management class at Children's Hospital.

They took the class together in February and March and learned about exercise and nutrition, and the different lifestyle changes they needed to make.

They started swimming together at the Y and going for walks. They cut out a lot of fast food, and Elderd began using brown rice instead of white and offering more fruit and vegetables.

Once the class was over, they began participating in the Greenbrier Family Y's six-month follow-up program. Twice a week, they exercise together on stationary bikes and weight machines and then attend a one-hour class where they learn about health tips and different exercise strategies.

Fitness instructor Vanessa Faircloth sets up goals for each of the class members, like moving from 10 push-ups to 12, or completing a one-mile walk in ever-decreasing amounts of time, so it's not all focused on weight loss.

Faircloth said parents aren't required to come, but most of them do. "If the parent puts forth the effort, it encourages the kids more," she said. "Not just exercising, but changing the way they eat.'

Benson, coordinator of the hospital's Healthy You class, said the majority of the parents of children in the classes are also overweight.

Parents will often use euphemisms to describe their children: husky or big-boned or chunky.

"You have to look it squarely and say, 'This is a problem,' " Benson said.

The No. 1 mark of success? Parents who make a lifestyle change with the child.

Benson sometimes meets her class members in the lobby of the Y the first night they attend to say, "You can do this," because gyms can be intimidating.

"They think everyone at the Y is fit, but that's not true."

One evening last week, Elderd and Shanice followed a biking and weight training session with a game in the Y's Interactive Zone. They each took a yellow foam "noodle" and stood at the ready in front of two wall-sized panels with lights that blinked on and off.

When a light blinked on, they hit it with their noodles or kicked it with their feet to gain points.

Mom was getting ahead. 100, 200, 300.

"I call time out," Shanice said.

But mom didn't let up,

"Keep going," she said, dodging from one end of the panel to the other with her noodle to collect more points.

And Shanice did, stretching up to hit her own noodle on a light panel.

Since the first of the year, Shanice has lost 21 pounds, her mother 15.

Does Shanice like working out with her mom?

"Sometimes. And sometimes not," she said with a wry smile.

Her mother laughed.

"You enjoy time with your child," she said. "You get to be healthy together."

Elizabeth Simpson, elizabeth.simpson@pilotonline.com