Holiday Challenge Kicks Off a Healthful 2007

Diane learned to eat salads and to walk more. Melanie added fruit to her daily regimen and had a couple of close encounters with chocolate. Andy boosted fiber and figured out how to squeeze in additional physical activity.

Welcome to the wrap-up of the sixth annual Lean Plate Club Holiday Challenge, which officially ended yesterday.

As always, the goal of the challenge is simply to keep the bathroom scale steady during the holiday season -- a time when research shows that many people add pounds. How much they gain varies. But a National Institutes of Health study found that healthy-weight people put on about a pound from Thanksgiving to New Year's while overweight and obese people add an average of five pounds -- and don't shed it in the spring. That makes holiday weight gain a component of the ongoing obesity epidemic.

This year for the first time, Lean Plate Club members Andy Dalal, Melanie Miller and Diane Standiford chronicled their efforts during the challenge with video blogs posted at http://www.washingtonpost.com. Here are some of the lessons they learned:

· Eating more fiber, protein and healthy carbohydrates, such as whole grains, "sticks out in my mind as far as nutritional advice which I will take with me in the new year," Andy noted in an e-mail. (He and his wife already keep whole-grain pasta in stock.) Andy's also already quite active. He participates in adult soccer and touch football leagues, and he bikes regularly with his family. But Andy learned another habit during the holiday challenge: how to add a few minutes of walking intermittently during the day. That's something else he plans to continue in 2007.

· Melanie already ate plenty of vegetables and fiber when she started the holiday challenge. But she discovered that she wasn't eating much fruit. When she added fruit to breakfast, she found that she had fewer hunger pangs than she used to (when she snacked on protein bars that were fairly high in sugar). So she has given up protein bars in favor of fruit for the new year. A bout of strep throat left Melanie searching for comfort foods, but she smartly reached for a lower-fat version of her favorite Ben and Jerry's flavors. And whenever Melanie got off track, she simply cut back on portions, exercised more and gave herself a fresh start the next day -- something else that she plans to continue in 2007.

· Diane plans to keep walking regularly with other teachers at Colvin Run Elementary School in Vienna, where she teaches third grade. Now that she has seen how much better she feels with activity, she says she's also exploring adding Pilates to her exercise routine, which includes workouts with weights and stability balls. Diane also plans to continue eating the salads that she learned to eat during the challenge, and she hopes to focus more on controlling the size of her portions.

-- Sally Squires