Risks from Being Overweight

Overweight brings a heightened risk of many serious ailments, including diabetes, coronary heart disease, and many forms of cancer.  A recent study found that adults with unhealthy habits lived an average of 14 years less than their counterparts.  And we know that 89% of overweight teens go on to become overweight or obese adults.  The impact is more than physical, as other studies have shown financial, emotional, and social effects as well.  Click here to learn more.

Recent research has demonstrated that even a relatively small level of weight loss can have a big impact on health and well-being.  If you are concerned about your child’s weight and need help assessing your options,  please review our BMI calculator for ideas on how you can help.

The Solution: Behavioral Change

Scientific research is very clear that long-term weight control is not a result of going on a diet – or even a special “teen diet” – picking up a sport, committing to a teen fitness program, or hiring a personal trainer. Rather, it’s a result of a complex series of actions that lead to lifestyle or behavioral change. The Wellspring clinical program uses cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), dietary management, and physical activity to create a new focus on and commitment to the behaviors necessary to become successful long-term weight controllers.

Clinical Program

Long-term weight control is a manageable athletic challenge. In other words, serious athletes need to consistently stick to certain behaviors, writing down activity, diet, and measurable goals, as well as tracking progress and adjusting strategies. Serious athletes are very focused on health in order to perform at the highest possible level. Successful weight control requires exactly this level of focus. Clearly, if weight control were as simple as going on a diet for a month or two, 2/3 of American adults and 1/3 of American kids would not be overweight or obese. The interplay between biology, environment and behavior makes it a lot more complicated than that.

This is why Wellspring campers are trained on a set of behaviors that have been proven necessary and sufficient for successful long-term weight control. These behaviors include such core self-regulatory behaviors as self-monitoring, journaling, goal-setting, and contracting. In time, these weight-controlling behaviors become habits, and when combined with nutrition and culinary training, success is attainable.

This training is led by each camper’s Behavioral Coach (Masters- or Doctoral- level psychologists or social workers). Behavioral Coaches (BC’s) lead the camper along the journey to success while working to overcome any barriers to mastering the behaviors necessary for successful long-term weight control.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) sessions are provided in both individual and group settings for a total of 4 sessions per week. CBT is used to reinforce the training on these self-regulatory behaviors. Campers also learn to apply the knowledge and skills gained to challenges in their own lives, and improve frustration tolerance and stress management skills.

In these ways, CBT helps Wellspring campers manage their weight and overcome any obstacles to long-term success. Campers develop the healthy habit of self-regulating their food intake and managing their activity. They learn to set realistic, achievable goals while remaining committed to their health and long-term weight control regardless of what stressors or barriers they may encounter over the course of a day, a week or a school year.

Wellspring group CBT sessions generally run as follows:

• Summary of each camper’s progress since the last meeting
• Discussion of a CBT/weight control topic such as coping mechanisms
• Reading Assignment
• Goal setting and behavioral contracts

Individual sessions are similar in that they review progress, but individual sessions also focus on the details of each camper’s self-monitoring, barriers to success and short- and long-term goals and how to achieve them.

CBT employs research-based techniques such as goal-setting, rational emotive therapy or RET, improving frustration tolerance, stimulus control, decision counseling, positive focusing, improving stress management, and relapse prevention training. Some campers take to these new behaviors easily, while others must overcome emotional or other issues before they can be entirely successful. (Obese people are 25-44% more likely to suffer from clinical depression than people of a normal weight- Archives of General Psychiatry, July 2006.) However, for all campers, CBT is the key to long-term success, which in turn leads to improved self-esteem, mood and outlook, more energy and better academic performance.

While there are many differences between Wellspring Adventure Camp compared to traditional weight loss camps, diet camps, boot camps or fat camps, CBT is the most important difference that distinguishes Wellspring from these other less successful camps.

Behavioral Coaches are Masters- or Doctoral-level therapists under the supervision of Daniel Kirschenbaum, Ph.D. A professor at Northwestern University Medical School, Dr. Kirschenbaum is a leading expert on weight loss and weight control. To read more about his work, click here