Illustration: Tim Bower for Newsweek

Priscilla Marquard wanted to set herself and her three daughters on a lifelong course of healthy eating. Marquard was about 10 pounds overweight, and her daughters, 12-year-old triplets, were “beginning to pudge up.” So she brought them to the Pritikin Family Program in Aventura, Fla., a two-week weight-loss camp for parents and kids (pritikin .com). The family had such a good time playing tennis, running on the beach and learning to make healthy tacos in cooking class they hardly noticed they were shedding pounds. Last December, Marquard’s daughters chose a return trip to the weight-loss camp over a family vacation in Barbados.

Since many families put on weight together, it makes sense to lose it together. Program options include high-end camps like Pritikin (two weeks cost $6,500 for adults and $2,500 for kids, sometimes partly covered by insurance), as well as less expensive outpatient services. Most of these offer a combination of fun activities mixed with group therapy, parenting classes and medical checkups. Experts say these types of programs, where kids and parents make a commitment to losing weight together, tend to have lasting results. The idea is to change the whole home environment, rather than putting the kids on a diet. “If the changes made are familywide, they have a very good chance of sticking,” says Dr. Bill Dietz, a pediatrician and director of the Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity. In Marquard’s case, she and her kids cut back on restaurant meals and started carefully monitoring fat and calories in prepared foods. They now cook mostly fish and vegetables at home.

Our top picks for the week  

See “The Horse,” at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The exhibition examines the relationship between these magnificent creatures and human beings, showing how horses have influenced war, transportation, agriculture and other aspects of human life. (May 17, 2008-Jan. 4, 2009; amnh.org)

Rent “The Fire Within.” Louis Malle, with elegant, eloquent anguish, observed the last 24 hours in the life of a dissolute, suicidal playboy (Maurice Ronet) in this little-seen 1963 gem. Set to a spare Satie piano score, it’s a haunting study of depression—but too artful to be depressing itself.