Looking for a weight loss camp?  This should give you a great start.  Here are the seven largest weight-loss camps in the U.S.  They all have low camper-to-staff ratios (3:1), a low-fat or reduced calorie diet, nutritional and culinary education, and a wide variety of physical activities to choose from.   Three of the camps offer cognitive-behavioral [...]

Doctors of the USA Radio Show featured fitsmi founder Linda Frankenbach on their March 6 show, to talk about how to help teen girls with nutrition and why she started fitsmi.com, a website and online coaching program for teen girls struggling with their weight and ready to make a change.  If you missed it, no problem, you [...]

fitsmi was very sorry to hear about the recent death of Ed Koch, three-time former NYC mayor.   One side of his life that few may know about is his co-authoring with his sister Pat of a charming storybook to help overweight kids, Eddie Shapes Up , loosely based on Koch’s own overweight boyhood.  In honor of Mayor [...]

Should parents remind their teens to eat healthy?  Eliminate soda from the house?  Insist that their child get regular exercise?  Dare to bring up the whole topic of weight in the first place? Find out what fitsmi founder Linda Frankenbach recommends to parents of overweight teens  on NBC’s Feb. 2  New York Nightly News ! Linda’s years of experience [...]

Everyone’s talking about Coke’s new ad addressing obesity for the first time.  Is Coke finally stepping up to do the right thing, or is this just another marketing ploy to confuse us (and get our kids to drink more soda)? Listen to what fitsmi’s Editor at Large Abby Ellin had to say on the CBS morning talk [...]

Child obesity rates have tripled over the past thirty years.  What can parents do? Linda Frankenbach , founder of fitsmi.com and fitsmiForMoms.com, and fitsmi Editor at Large Abby Ellin, provide expert advice on what parents can do to help and what fitsmi offers teen girls struggling with their weight on a recent episode of  One Word Nation Radio . Catch the [...]

Introducing  fitsmi Group Coaching, A Cost-Effective, Safe Solution Winter Special!   Backed by fitsmi’s medical advisory board , fitsmi Group Coaching will: *  Help your daughter achieve a healthy weight on her own, through small daily changes that make a big difference * Connect her with a nurturing, professional coach,  a registered dietitian, who will meet with your daughter [...]

You might know him from The Biggest Loser . No, not Jillian Michaels—we’re talking about Bob Harper: Fitness expert, TV star and author. Harper is the brilliant force behind countless success stories of people who have previously given up on helping themselves, or been written off as helpless by others. As a result of Harper’s ever-growing popularity [...]

Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.  ~Robert Fulghum Is your child eating too much junk food?  Overweight?  Glued to the couch and resistant to exercise?  Feeling like it’s impossible to change so why try? Before you open your mouth to nag or sigh yet again about your [...]

What the heck is it about cold days that sends us running for the gooiest, most carb-loaded, decadent dishes that we can find? After all, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, beats a crispy grilled cheese sandwich and a steaming bowl of tomato soup on a snow day. Here’s the kicker…our fave cold weather classics tend [...]

What did this gender-studies ace, feminist, girl-power Mom do when her 7-year-old daughter said, “I’m fat”? 1.  Her heart broke, and she went all “mush” — at a complete loss for what to say or do. 2.  She kept her cool and said the party line, “You are built just perfect – strong and healthy.” 3.  [...]

If you or your kids are struggling with your weight, you already know that you’re not supposed to drink soda or juice with abandon.  Even “diet” sodas and artificially-sweetened drinks are risky, because they can increase your appetite for sweets in general.  And what about healthy-sounding “energy drinks” and “sports drinks”? They were both recently slammed by [...]

**This article comes courtesy of the May 2012 issue of School Nurse News ** Recently, there has been an effort through media and advertising campaigns to shock adults out of their denial about the state of our children’s health and the rise in childhood and adolescent obesity. School nurses have known for a long time that children and [...]

Are you planning to watch HBO’s new documentary series, The Weight of the Nation? So far, we’re impressed with the three years of research and the wide variety of expert voices who chime in at the screening we saw. The documentary takes a long hard look at environmental factors contributing to obesity — our country’s food [...]

Coming Soon! fitsmi.com, our sister site for teen girls struggling with their weight, is working on a new product: affordable, online group coaching. Girls will attend live webinars with professional coaches, track healthy changes online, and get peer support 24/7 from home or a mobile device. Interested? We’d love your input on a few key questions. [...]

Summer’s here.  School is months away.  What better time for your teen daughter to join fitsmi’s 30-Day Summer Change Me Challenge?  It’s simple.  Encourage your teen girl to use the fitsmi Change Machine (it’s free and all she has to do is register on the site) and pick at least 3 changes from our list of 30 top summer [...]

Parents of overweight teens often hear that one of the best things they can do for their kids is to role model healthy behaviors at home. But a new study goes a step further. The best thing overweight parents can do for their overweight kids is to lose weight themselves. Dr. Kerri Boutelle, an associate professor [...]

Why is it so difficult to feed our kids a healthy diet?  The infographic below, courtesy of teach.com, shows the media-advertising juggernaut parents are up against when it comes to weaning their kids from empty calories.  It might be worth printing and posting on your fridge for awhile, to let it all sink in. What do [...]

After surveying nearly 600 moms who identified “picky eaters who whine and complain” as the number one obstacle to getting their children to eat healthy, well-balanced meals, moms Liz Weiss and Janice Bissex, both dietitians, went into action, establishing themselves as two of the nation’s leading experts on family nutrition. Between their two cookbooks, The Moms’ Guide [...]

Vanessa Troyer is a busy lady. Not only is she the CEO of  Architectural Mailboxes, LLC, in Redondo Beach, CA, she is also mom to two daughters, ages 12 and 18.  A few years ago, Troyer started a weight loss regimen and lost 100 pounds. And a funny thing happened along the way: the entire family [...]