• Researchers assigned 390 overweight women to the Brigitte or the Weight Watchers diet plans.
  
• Brigitte is a simple diet in which participants get a shopping list and then follow a simple meal plan.
  
• Weight Watchers is more complicated and requires dieters to weigh and measure foods, assign points to each food, and keep under a certain number of points every day.
  
• The women on the more complicated plan tended to get discouraged and give up.

• Prof. Michelle vanDellen and her colleagues devised three different studies to find out if self-control can be contagious.
  
• In one study, for example, the research team assigned 36 volunteers to think about a friend who had either good or bad self-control.
  
• Those who thought of a friend with good self-control persisted longer at a task commonly used to measure that trait.

• Researchers studied data on more than 6,000 children (ages two to 17 years old) and their parents, which had been collected during the National Health Interview Study.
• 86 percent of children whose parents had seen a dentist the preceding year received dental care
• 63 percent of children whose parents did not go to their dentists received dental care
  

• This rate has remained the same between 2007 and 2008, when the last data was collected.
• The exception to the leveling off was boys ages 6 to 19 years old. In this group, the percentage of overweight has risen.
• More than one third of American adults are obese.

• 8 percent of internet users ages 12-17 use Twitter. This makes [using] Twitter ... far less common than sending or receiving text messages ... or going online for news and political information.
• 19 percent of adult internet users use Twitter or similar services to post short status updates and view the updates of others online.

• 14 percent of online teens now say they blog, down from 28 percent of teen internet users in 2006.
• 52 percent of teen social network users report commenting on friends' blogs, down from the 76 percent who did so in 2006.
• By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent years. Pew Internet Project surveys since 2005 have consistently found that roughly one-in-ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or blog.

• People in this study who watched TV for four or more hours a day were 46 percent more likely to die prematurely and 80 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than those who limited TV to two or less hours a day.
• Participants in the study were an average age of 50 years old at the beginning of the study in 1999 and 2000.
  
• Six years later, 284 of them had died, including 87 from cardiovascular causes and 125 from cancer.
  
• The researchers did not find a correlation between watching TV and getting cancer. However, the risk of death from any cause increased by 11 percent for each hour a day of reported TV watching, and death from cardiovascular disease increased by 18 percent.
  

• Dr. Genevieve Mageau and her colleagues studied 588 musicians and athletes ages six to 30 years old.
  
• They found that being passionate about art or sports was not a personality trait but part of the special relationship the person develops with her activity.
  
• Too much parental involvement can seem like pressure to a child.

"Anytime you begin working on a project or task, set the timer. As a rule, you should set the timer every time you direct your attention to a screen (computer, BlackBerry, PDA). ...

When the timer goes off, ask yourself ‘Am I doing what I am supposed to be doing?’ If not, [you can] get back on track." [Source: Cedar Rapids Examiner]

• Eating dinner as a family
• Getting an adequate amount of sleep
• Limiting TV viewing time.
  

• Dr. Haske van der Vorst studied 428 Dutch families.
• He found that the more teenagers were drinking at home with the parents, the more they drank outside of the home.
  
• The study also found that teens who drink with their parents or on their own increase their risk for developing alcoholism.

LJ Griffiths' study of children at age 7 1/2 showed that obesity predicts a higher likelihood of bullying (boys -- presumably because of their physical dominance in their peer group) or being bullied (both sexes) than normal weight (or even moderately overweight) children.

Overweight girls are especially stigmatized when it comes to dating. In a study of adolescents, only 12 percent of the students had dated someone who was overweight, with only 8 percent of boys dating overweight peers.

Formal studies suggest a relationship between self-esteem and health. Whether obese or not, adolescents with poor self-esteem are more likely to engage in early sex, less likely to use birth control, have higher rates of teen pregnancies, are more likely to use tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs, and to attempt suicide.

Obesity can also lead teenagers into binge-eating, sometimes purging as well. In 2007, a study reported a 20 year research of obese adolescents in upstate New York. They found that obese girls were nearly four times more likely than normal weight girls to suffer major depression and anxiety disorders as adults.

The power of extracurricular activities should not be ignored as the right activity will help a child's motor skills, assist with improved focusing and help with social interactions.

An activity, such as martial arts or swimming will provide a child with ADHD, focus, drive and a means to learn when and how to communicate.

A glowing example is Olympic gold medalist, Michael Phelps who [was] diagnosed with ADHD but channels the negative effects through determination to succeed at his sport.

• Researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth.
• They found that teens who use pot are 60 percent more likely to be sexually active.
• Teen who are regular drinkers are 50 percent more likely to be sexually active.