Fat Camps: How Wellspring is Different
The term 'fat camp' is often used in popular culture to describe fitness and weight loss camps where kids and teens are sent to lose weight, often against their will. It's important to us at Wellspring UK that you understand the difference between a fat camp and what we offer at Wellspring UK.
Fat Camps Do Not Focus on Behavioural Change
While there are other weight loss summer programmes that are effective in helping students achieve temporary weight loss, Wellspring UK is Britain's only weight loss programme that changes behaviour so the weight loss is sustained and continued at home. At typical fat camps, students lose weight at camp, then return home with understanding the behaviours that led to the weight gain, or how to change them.
At Wellspring UK, students work with Masters- or Doctoral-level therapists, whom we call "Behavioural Coaches" to identify and change the core behaviours that led to the initial weight gain. They also create a plan for changing those behaviours in the future, managing stress in healthier ways, and learning to set and meet daily goals. The result is that our students leave camp having lost a considerable amount of weight, and understanding what needs to be done to keep the weight off long-term.
Fat Camps Do Not Offer an Integrate Approach to Weight Loss
Before finding Wellspring, many students tried other ways to lose weight—joining a sports team, trying a diet, or maybe even attending a traditional fat camp. Unfortunately, most of these efforts have led to temporary weight loss, followed by additional weight gain and the feelings of failure that come with it. The issue is that all of these other methods—including fat camps—do not offer an integrated lifestyle approach to weight loss. Instead, fat camps offer a temporary quick-fix that often leaves students more frustrated with their inability to adapt their experience at fat camp to their home environment.
At Wellspring UK, students have a fully integrated weight loss experience, combining a healthy diet that is easy to maintain at home, new activities that are easy to measure to gauge progress, and training to improve self-regulatory skills and motivation for continued success. We also train families on the Wellspring Plan so they are able to best support students when they return from camp. During free weekend Family Workshops, family members learn the programme so that the entire household can adopt healthy new habits, easing the student's transition from camp to home, and allowing their camp lifestyle to become a permanent healthy lifestyle. We even offer a £250 Family Workshop Award to attend the workshop because we believe so strongly in the importance of integrating the camp experience with the family's home life.
Fat Camps Do Not Offer a Proven, Scientific Approach to Weight Loss
At fat camps, students follow a weight loss programme that has not undergone scientific evaluation. Fat camps are very prone to following the fad diets and current exercise crazes that promise quick weight loss, with no evidence to back up the safety or effectiveness of the programme.
In contrast, Wellspring UK is based on decades of scientific research by leading researchers in the field of adolescent weight loss and obesity. Our Scientific Advisory Board is led by Dr. Daniel Kirschenbaum, Ph.D., ABPP, a professor at Northwestern University Medical School. Wellspring UK's Scientific Advisory Board includes Dr. Nicholas Finer, MBBS, BSc, RCP, of University College London. Wellspring's weight loss results have been published in leading scientific journals and presented at scientific and medical conferences.
If your child is struggling with his or her weight, wouldn't it be better to give the gift of an incredibly fun summer that also resolves your child's weight issue once and for all?
Losing weight at a fat camp, boot camp, or after-school programme can be a positive experience at first, but ultimately, it's what happens when students return home that really matters. If the approach isn't intensive, immersive, and based on behavioural training to help students change their lifestyle, the programme likely won't work long-term, leading to even more frustration and lack of motivation to try again in the future.
It's important to us that you have a clear understanding of what separates Wellspring from traditional fat camps. For additional information, please contact Programme Director Jane Morrison at jmorrison@wellspringcamps.com, or by phone at 0203 014 8921.
