Fighting obesity: one girl’s challenge

CHICAGO (AP) — Paris Woods is hardly a poster child for the obesity epidemic. Lining up dripping wet with kids on her swim team, she’s a blend of girlish chunkiness and womanly curves.

In street clothes — roomy pink sweats or skimpy tank tops revealing broad, brown swimmers’ shoulders — the teen blends in with her friends, a fresh-faced, robust-looking All-American girl.

That’s the problem.

Like nearly one-third of American teens, Paris Woods is overweight. Her doctor worries her weight will creep up into the obesity range. One out of four black girls her age is obese.

The more than 11 million U.S. teens who are overweight or obese face an increased risk for diseases once confined to adults, such as diabetes, artery damage and liver trouble.

Those problems along with high blood pressure and high cholesterol are showing up increasingly in kids.

Paris’ pediatrician urged her to take part in an intensive experiment. The goal? To see if a yearlong program of weekly sessions with a nutritionist, exercise trainer and doctor, all preaching major lifestyle changes, could keep the 14-year-old from becoming obese.

It’s the kind of intensive help that the influential U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said last month can work for teens.

Through successes, setbacks and even a bout with H1N1 flu, Paris tried sticking with it. Skipped sessions stretched the program from 12 months into 20, but she didn’t quit.

Her parents, Dinah and Parris Woods, wanted their three daughters to be active, to keep them busy and out of trouble. “You can’t just do nothing,” says Dinah, 47, a former fitness instructor.

In Paris’ tween years, her weight started to creep up. She developed early, and classmates made fun of her blossoming bust and swimmers’ shoulders.

“They started calling me fat,” Paris says softly. It made her very self-conscious.

At 5 feet 4 inches and 158 pounds, Paris started the program about 20 pounds overweight. That was April 2008, just before her 15th birthday.

By October, Paris’ weight is down 8 pounds, to 150, and she’s lost 3 inches from her waist. Her parents also have shed pounds, and all three say they have more energy.

Chicago’s 2008-09 winter is harsh, snowy and cold. Paris feels little motivation to venture outside to exercise. It’s dark when she gets home from school, and homework keeps her busy until bedtime.

Her friends alternate between encouragement and saying she’s wasting her time. Her dad says Paris “is fine as long as she’s at home. She pretty much sticks to the diet. When she’s with friends, they go out to burger places. She struggles with that a bit.”

Since they began a year ago, the family has missed several sessions because of busy schedules, but they’ve vowed to complete the program and are allowed to continue for several more months.

Then Paris is sidelined with swine flu. She skips a few more program sessions, and then a few more because of training for a lifeguard job, but also loses a few pounds.

During the summer, lifeguarding interferes. Instead of swimming, it means long hours sitting in a perch, watching other children swim. By the time she gets home, she’s too pooped to work out.

She returns to the medical center when the summer job is over.

Fall 2009 is stressful for everyone. Dinah has to work long hours, arriving home too late to fix dinner. She and her husband eat vegetarian. Paris does too, at home, but continues to eat fast-food away from home.

Now a high school junior, she’s stressing out over college admissions exams, and much of her free time is spent studying for them.

When Thanksgiving arrives, it’s another tofu turkey day. But everyone falls off the wagon during a family vacation to Disney World after Christmas.

Finally, the Woodses’ last program session arrives — Jan. 19, close to two years. Paris seems tense.

You can almost hear a drum-roll as she steps onto the scale — 170.6 pounds.

That’s 12 pounds heavier than when she started. Her waist size is the same, 33 inches.

There are no tears, but she looks dejected and is thinking “failure.”

The success is that Paris didn’t become obese — and she looks far from it — even though she’s a mere four pounds away from that.

Paris Woods’ results show what everyone knew at the start: Losing weight and keeping it off is tough, and life sometimes gets in the way.

As for Paris? Despite her disappointment, she says the program changed her for the better.