The family wellness makeover: Part 3

HURDLE: Food-focused social life
Several times a month the Morfidises host a major meal for friends or family. Despina loves doing this and says, “I'm not going to change.” (Of course, when food is the focus of socializing, it may be easier to overeat.) Here's what the coaches suggest.

• Institute healthy eating rules around entertaining: always use lower fat/lower calorie recipes, serve dinner early and no snacking after nine.
• Send friends and family home with doggy bags (and the tempting leftovers).
• Curtail alcohol. Drinking adds empty calories (five ounces of white wine has 100 calories) and lowers defenses (which may mean eating more).
• Being squeezed for time (because they are so busy planning dinner parties) can lead to fast and unhealthy food choices. Always have healthy food on hand.
• If possible, visit friends after dinner rather than eat a meal at their home – to stay in control of food choices. (Tell them why and they may start providing healthier choices for you, too.)
• Plan activities (bowling, skiing) rather than meals with friends.
• At least once a month, substitute a family activity day – a visit to the zoo, a long bike ride or attending a music festival – in place of hosting a meal. (To Despina's surprise, the kids loved this idea.) Take turns choosing the activity.

HURDLE: Fitness-related injuries
When Stefi fell off the balance beam at gymnastics and landed on the side of her foot, “I thought I could get right back on. But it hurt to walk.” Not surprising since she injured a ligament. What can the Morfidises do to prevent an injury from sidelining one of them indefinitely in the future?

• Treat the injury right away. Darren Vine, owner of Courtice Physiotherapy in Courtice, Ont., treated Stefi's overstretched ligament with electrotherapy and laser (which promote healing of tissue). He advised her to sit out a few classes, which she did. She's now back to full steam.
• Encourage one another to listen to their body; an injury may be a sign to slow down or focus on strengthening another part of the body.
• Check that everyone is properly outfitted. When Despina first started her walking routine, she developed plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the tissue that runs from the heel to the base of the toes) on one foot. She went to an athletic footwear retailer and was properly fitted for walking shoes – and hasn't had any problems since.
• In the event of an injury, find another way to exercise if possible. When Ria twisted her ankle running, she stopped running and worked on her flexibility while it healed.

HURDLE: Weight plateau
When George and Despina weighed in and saw that they hadn't lost one pound between the two of them for an entire month, “I was so frustrated and disappointed,” says George, “I almost wanted to give up.”

Despina agrees. “It was such a slap in the face. I couldn't make the connection between all the exercising I was doing and not losing more weight.”
When George and Despina's slow and steady weight loss came to a grinding halt, Berkoff and Forest quickly reassured them that this was normal: in the course of altering diet and exercise, weight plateaus can occur as the body is adapting to the new regimes. Also, weight loss is never a straight line down, says Berkoff. “You lose, then gain, then lose again…remember, you didn't gain in a straight line up either.”

At the same time, if people are trying to change and not succeeding, says Buchanan, they need to look at everything they are doing and see what they need to adjust. Here are the coaches' recommendations.

• Revisit diet strategies to lose weight. Keep trimming fat and calories, and be vigilant about reducing portion size.
• At every snack and meal, ask yourself: “Will this food help me achieve my goal?” says Berkoff.
• Write down everything you eat in daily food journals, to stay honest (it's easy to fool yourself) and to discourage the tendency to slip back into old eating/snacking habits.
• Increase (calorie-burning) aerobic activity. Forest added cardiovascular exercise to their gym program (George and Despina weren't able to fit enough aerobic activity into their lives outside of the gym). Now they're at the gym five or more times a week, alternating resistance training days with cardiovascular exercise days (George does 30 to 45 minutes on the treadmill and Despina does 30 minutes on the cross trainer or treadmill).
• Keep life as stress-free as possible. Stress and fatigue lower resolve, and that's when overeating can occur. (One of George's winning strategies
is to exercise at night when he has the time, rather than in the morning when he would feel rushed and stressed all day.)
• Use small daily steps to achieve your goal, says Gierden. Take the stairs instead of the elevator at work, skip your morning snack and drink water instead, and switch to milk if you usually take cream in your coffee.