For Families, Next Steps

Caleb Bess, 15, tosses a salad for his family's fish and brown rice dinner. (By Michael Temchine For The Washington Post)

At the Smith home in Germantown, they're serving fruit for dessert. Last week in Upper Marlboro, the Tuckers added a fresh spinach salad to a family dinner. They're also snacking on smoothies made with strawberries and nonfat yogurt.

"These are the little things that are making a difference," says Jewell Graves Tucker, whose family is taking the Lean Plate Club's Fit for Fun Family Challenge, now in Week Two.

If you missed last week's launch, no problem: You can join the challenge at any time. During the next three weeks, you'll find simple food and exercise goals to help you and your family prepare for a healthier summer.

This challenge isn't designed to help you fit into a smaller pair of shorts or turn your clan into athletes. But it will produce small, sustainable changes, which research suggests help build a foundation for more long-lasting healthy habits.

Each week during the challenge, you'll find one way to improve your family's eating habits and at least one way to boost activity. Follow the suggestions and you'll be on your way to a healthier lifestyle. Find additional information and printable forms to track your progress at http://www.washingtonpost.com/leanplateclub , where you can also log your family's activity online and see how it compares with others taking the challenge.

The activity challenge for this week: Take two 10-minute walks together. In Northern Virginia, the Melnick-Scharf family will be on spring break, which will give them more time to be active together. They plan to hoof it to Burke Lake Park near their home, where they like to toss a frisbee around. They'll also be including some out-of-town family members in the fun.

It's this kind of family activity that a new University of North Carolina study suggests can pay off long-term for youngsters. Published in this month's edition of the journal Pediatrics, the study of nearly 12,000 teens found that those who participated in physical activities with their parents had higher self-esteem than their inactive peers who spent hours watching television.

Many people think of physical activity as a means to achieve weight loss or a way to improve physical health, notes Penny Gordon-Larsen, assistant professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina and lead author of the study.

"But it's important to understand that physical activity has benefits beyond those, including social and cognitive factors that are so important. If parents are aware of that, they may be more willing to spend the time to get their kids into any kind of physical activity."

The study also found that nontraditional activities -- from skateboarding to yoga -- were just as effective at boosting self-esteem as team sports like soccer. "We were surprised," notes Gordon-Larsen. "We thought that it would be the team sports that would be more protective."

The findings underscored that any regular physical activity boosted self-esteem, improved academic performance and helped lower the odds of risky behavior, from drinking alcohol and taking drugs to smoking cigarettes and engaging in sexual activity. "Having a parent involved in an activity with kids also clearly seemed to be very important," Gordon-Larsen says.

It's not just playing together that helps instill healthy habits: Dining regularly together does, too. In preparation for that, one of this week's eating goals is to shop for food as a family. In tomorrow's Food section of the newspaper, you'll find a shopping list and five easy recipes for family dinners to help get you going.

This week's eating goal is to clean up your carbohydrates. That means replacing the carbs found in most white bread and other processed foods with healthier versions made from whole grains that are also rich in fiber. The latest U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend eating three servings daily of whole grains, a food group that many people fall short on.

Here are some tactics to help meet those goals, whether you're a family of one, a large household or somewhere in between:

Keep reaching for the fruit and vegetables. They come packed with healthy complex carbohydrates and fiber. The more variety, the better.

Ease into whole grains . Whole grains can be an acquired taste. So add a quarter-cup of whole-grain cereal to your more refined cereal and slowly increase that percentage over several weeks. Enjoy pancakes or waffles made with buckwheat or other whole grains. Or make rice pilaf with a mixture of white, brown and wild rice. Consider pasta salads that are made from a mix of both regular and whole-wheat pasta.

Go white . As in whole-wheat white bread, made from winter white wheat. (Here's a case where you can have your white bread and eat it, too.) Two possibilities: Sara Lee Soft & Smooth Made With Whole Grain White Bread and Wonder White Bread Fans 100% Whole Grain. Or make your own with King Arthur whole wheat white flour ( http://www.kingarthurflour.com/ ).

Think outside the cereal box. Oatmeal, Cheerios, shredded wheat, Wheaties and raisin bran are good examples of whole-grain cereals. But the list of options is expanding and now even includes soup. Frontier brand soups -- Iowa Open House Grain & Pasta Potage and Washington State Lentil Cracked Wheat -- are made with 100 percent whole grains, as is Frontier's Montana High Plains Wheat Berry Chili. These mixes, which are low in sodium and have no MSG or other preservatives, are available online at http://www.frontiersoups.com/ , at many health food stores and at Great Harvest Bread stores. Or add whole-grain punch to your soup (or the can of soup you open) by adding brown rice, wild rice or whole-wheat pasta. Find more whole-grain options at the Whole Grains Council, a nonprofit consortium of chefs, food companies and scientists ( http://www.wholegrainscouncil.org/ ). ·

Celebrate publication of "Secrets of the Lean Plate Club" with Sally Squires and other Lean Plate Club members on Saturday, April 29, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at The Washington Post, 1150 15th Street NW. We'll have light refreshments, prizes and a book signing. Space is limited. RSVP to 202-334-7969. Join the Web chat today from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. at www.washingtonpost.com.