Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right: The Food Solution That Lets Kids Be Kids

Best thing I've ever bought! This book is so easy to follow and has loads of information. It teaches you portion sizes, shows how to calculate bmi, gives you a weight loss road and a maintenance road. It has lots of recipes and sample meal and snack plans, as well as an appendix of everything from healthy foods to less healthy, it even includes fast food restaurants so you can see what you should order if you are in a hurry and need to stop there. It's the perfect book to get your family eating right and losing weight (or maintaining) without being on super restrictive diets. I made my daughter color coded tickets so when she eats something, she moves the correct # of tickets over. Like today for lunch she has 3 green lights to use. She had homemade chinese chicken chop suey. She knew she could add 3 oz of chicken, the size of a computer mouse, which is 1 green light (ticket). Vegetables are free fuel, so that left her with 2 more green tickets. She chose 1 cup of chocolate almond milk, which is another green light. She still has 1 ticket left for lunch which she can use on some nuts, or yogurt, or a fruit roll up, or a cookie, or a slice of bread or.... then she can have fruit, which is free fuel. In other words, she can still be a kid and have some "junk" as long as it stays within the light guidelines and follows the portion sizes. If you don't want your kids to have any junk, you don't give it to them and use the lights for something healthier. Vegetables and fruit are free fuel and don't cost any lights. If for dinner you are serving chicken Parmigian, it shows to serve 3 oz chicken with cheese and sauce and 2/3c pasta for 3 green lights. Veggies are free, and water is free. I asked my childs doctor to look into this book and she said it was very good. The book is awesome!

My kids often use this book to decide what to eat/not to eat. This has been the most useful tool in our kitchen. I even made a magnetic chart and purchased red, yellow, and green magnets for us to keep track of our food intake!My only request is that there is an app made so we can keep track while in the go. We would love to have the app to help make choices before ordering at restaurants or picking up things at the grocery store.

I read several different books before deciding on this plan for a family eating plan (we don't like the term diet). I love the concept of red, yellow, green light, and it was very easy for my children to understand. I wanted them to make better choices in their snacking, and this program has worked for us. It took several weeks for them to adjust and stop asking for things like Little Debbies, but now they regularly make better choices without being prompted. They know that they can have 2 cheats per week, and they like to plan out what their "Pit Stop" will be. I love that no foods are off limits, and that it is teaching my kids moderation and self control. I also love the concept of free fuel - all raw fruits and veggies are unlimited along with things like mozarella sticks (fat free). My kids have come to understand that you can eat more food if you stick to greens and the occasional yellow. Both of my kids are slowly slimming down and becoming more active. I do have 2 small criticisms of the book: 1. It advocates fat free products such as cheese, mayo, and dressing. I prefer that my kids eat whole/real foods in moderation, so I adjusted the chart accordingly. 2. It doesn't include any supplementary materials. I developed a visual chart of free fuel/green/yellow/red foods that they commonly eat so that the kids could see at a glance which foods were which. I also developed a weekly food chart for each family member based on our goals that divided the day into breakfast/morning snack/lunch/afternoon snack/ dinner. We placed this chart into a dry erase pocket so that we could easily check off our daily allowances. This became part of a reward system for my kids. They received a point for every day that they stayed on their eating plan (along with other healthy habits like brushing teeth, getting exercise, playing outdoors), and when the points reached a certain level they received a prize such as a gift card or toy. We have been using this system for over 2 months, and it is working. Small changes are leading to big results in our family.

Great book. Simple to understand and put into practice. Both my 15 year old daughter and I have been following the plan since Feb, and we’ve both lost 10 lbs! She is learning about healthy eating, and doesn’t feel deprived or “on a diet”. This is really helping set her up for a lifetime of healthy eating habits. We start with a full jar of bingo chips as points (green and red) and place then in another jar as we use then you throughout the day. Works very well for us to keep track!

I like this approach both my lean child and cubby child got it right away and started using the language upon brief intro , the portion controls are easy for kids to get - recipes good and it has helped me liberate the kitchen- one week in and my chub has lost 2 lbs painlessly- I loved be this program ( life time experienced dieter ) this red light - green light is easy for the family !

Fantastic recipes - my daughter loves cooking from it.