New Ideas Shed New Light on Weight Loss Camps

When school lets out and the days are left to mystery and mischief, summer is a sanctuary for kids three months out of every year. Most kids at one time in their life go to summer camp, day camp, or a few overnight adventures with their Boy or Girl Scout troop. Although I only went to summer camp one year, the rest of the years were sufficiently occupied with swimming lessons, bike rides, climbing trees, rollerblading, or playing hide-and-seek. It seems that with childhood obesity rising in America, kids are not getting enough quality time outdoors (or indoors) staying active. There is a different approach to summer camp these days and it’s geared more at keeping weight off for good instead of a purported “fat camp” where bland food is served and activity is forced. Wellspring camps offer a scientific method to diet and weight management.

After years of watching diet camps/fat camps/weight loss spas fail session after session with campers losing and gaining like the roller-coaster quick diet fads advertised on television, the leading obesity and weight loss professionals from America came together to propose a new idea. Based on these five core steps they devised a way to teach participants to motivate themselves to lose weight, keep it off, and have fun doing it: Low-fat Diet, Activity Management, Lifestyle Change, Family Involvement, and Continuing Care.

With 14 locations across the United States, Canada, and even the United Kingdom, Wellspring camps are the most popular form of weight loss camp around the world with a success rate to back up their status. Wellspring doctors, counselors, and campers are most proud of the fact that 70 percent of the campers who have enrolled at Wellspring maintain their weight loss after camp is done or continue to lose once they get home.

By building a new relationship between the camper and the foods they eat and the emotional response behind the behavior of overeating, campers find themselves more involved with food preparation and excited about learning how to eat better and incorporate a better form of nutrition into their diets. Implementing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) also allows the doctors to help campers with emotional issues related to eating such as anxiety, stress, or depression.

The professionals at the camp inspire campers to walk at least 10,000 steps per day and find that some campers get up to 20,000 steps per day throughout their session. Wellspring boasts that most campers tend to lose 4 pounds per week on average through challenging—but fun—activities, assessments with doctors and counselors, as well as constant encouragement from the staff and the rest of the campers.

While not a rigorous boot camp full of non-stop exercise and torment like other “fat camps” trained to shed weight quickly and unrealistically, Wellspring prides itself on the fact that their activities are geared toward what each camper is able to do along with nutrition programs taught by professionals. Wellspring also invites the entire family to adopt new ways of looking at the foods they eat and hopefully change the overall behavior in order to have a completely new lifestyle. Besides the children and teen camps that cater to ages up to 18 or 24 in some areas, smaller more intensive adult camps are available as well as workshops to help the entire family become healthier by participating in the camper’s weight loss goals during their year-long online care program provided by Wellspring once they return home.

Campers are losing weight, learning how to eat and grocery shop better, finding fun things to do outdoors that could become hobbies (think rock climbing, river rafting, surfing, hiking, etc.), and meeting other kids like them who have a chance to better their bodies and their outlook on life. Campers who have shared their stories on the website talk of learning not only how to make great food that they can rely on to keep them fit and full but how being at camp helped them to see inside themselves and not just what he or she saw in the mirror. The positive environment of being around adolescents in the same circumstances made it easier for campers to relate to each other and the group mentality helped the weight drop. Besides making lifelong connections with other campers and adding new recipes and food tips to their repertoire, the development of a new level of self-confidence was the best thing campers take away from Wellspring, and no scale can measure that.

If you are interested in sending your child to one of the Wellspring camps, log on www.wellspringcamps.com and see how they can help you take a stand against obesity and other weight-related health problems in your family.