PHOENIX - Here's a novel approach for motivating girls to lose weight: Have them read a novel with an overweight heroine.
Researchers at Duke University had 31 obese girls, ages 9 to 13, read "Lake Rescue," a book in the Beacon Street Girls series by Annie Bryant. It's about a group of kids who go rock climbing, hiking and canoeing on a class trip to the mountains. One character in the book is an overweight girl who is ridiculed by her classmates, but on this adventure, she learns to make healthy food choices and that physical activity is fun.
The researchers gave 33 obese girls a different novel called "Charlotte in Paris," a book from the same series that didn't have an overweight heroine. And 17 girls didn't read either book. All were participating in the Duke Healthy Lifestyles Program, a comprehensive intervention for overweight children and adolescents.
At the end of six months, the girls who read Lake Rescue had experienced a 0.71 drop in their body mass index percentile (BMI), a number that incorporates, age, height and weight. Those girls who read other novels had a 0.33 percentile drop in BMI and those who didn't read a book had a 0.05 percentile increase. These differences were small, but statistically significant.
Reading Lake Rescue was a way to teach girls about healthy eating and appropriate physical activity without preaching to them, says Alexa Russell, lead researcher on Duke study.
