Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I consider Wellspring California instead of a more traditional weight loss program?

In order to achieve weight loss, teens must change their diet and activity level. In order to sustain weight loss after the end of camp, teens must make these changes permanent.

When campers arrive at Wellspring California, almost none have experience surfing or backpacking, although they are excited and a bit apprehensive as well. The important point is that they don’t start out with a negative attitude. They are willing to give it a go. And when they hit the surf, or climb the mountain, they find they’re having the time of their lives, and their overall attitude towards activity changes fairly quickly.

Wellspring California launches campers on an active lifestyle that they will continue long after returning home.

My child is not interested in attending. What can I do?

Many Wellspring campers come to camp with some level of reluctance or resistance. This is perfectly normal and makes a great deal of sense based on their life experience. Most campers have struggled with their weight for a long time, perhaps as long as they can remember. They have tried many diets and programs and have not succeeded. These failures make it difficult for them to get excited about trying something new, regardless of the program’s credentials or approach.

In other words, when they hear about yet another approach for them to try to lose weight, they think: “Here is another thing I can try to do that won’t work. I’ll fail at it like I failed before. I’ll miss my favorite foods and it won’t work anyway. So, what’s the point?”

In many cases, adolescents and young adults who struggle with their weight are trapped in a negative cycle of weight gain and failed attempts at weight loss; they often resort to a sedentary lifestyle and comforting foods as coping mechanisms for dealing with the resulting feelings of frustration. It becomes almost impossible to see a way out, and much easier to simply stay home and just get by using the coping mechanisms to which they’ve become accustomed (e.g., Internet, cell phone, food).

Over the past five years, we have worked with thousands of families in exactly this situation.

When they’ve asked for help, we have recommended the following approach. Countless families have found it to be an effective way to help their child start down the road to a healthier life.

1. At an opportune time, sit down with your son or daughter and ask how they feel about their weight. In this conversation, help your child process any negative experiences or emotions that have resulted from being overweight. Research informs us that being overweight as an adolescent or young adult creates a substantial emotional burden. So help your child recognize these emotions. Both of you have undoubtedly recognized this and discussed this in various ways in the past.

2. Next, talk with your child about how they think things might be different if they were able to return to a healthy weight. Specifically:

• What would you do that you won’t do now?
• How would you feel differently when you get dressed in the morning?
• Would you feel different in class or talking to friends?
• How would you feel about meeting new people?
• Would you feel better about yourself when you’re doing sports?
• What job opportunities might you consider that don’t seem realistic now?

3. If your child indicates an interest in confronting the problem, but is decidedly gun-shy from prior experiences, ask her to spend some time with you watching the Wellspring DVD (much of which is also available at the Wellspring Web site). Make it clear that you’re only asking for an investment of 20 minutes to check out what you believe is a new and far better alternative to anything you’ve tried at home before.

4. After viewing the DVD, see what your child thinks of this as a possibility. Then let your child know that Wellspring would be happy to have one of its Directors and/or former campers call to talk about it some more.

5. If you still feel considerable resistance to the idea of losing weight, you can try asking your child to complete a Decision Balance Sheet. Completing this sheet can increase commitment to change in a positive direction. This aspect of decisional counseling works because when all aspects of a conflicted or difficult decision get put on paper in one place, then the best course of action often becomes more apparent. The negative aspects of the status quo (remaining overweight, in this case) become clearer and the potentially huge benefits of the more favorable alternative (losing weight) are magnified. When paired with a positive direction for action (e.g., attend Wellspring), this can lead to a shift in attitude – seeing weight loss as possible, desirable, and achievable.

Here are the steps to create a Decision Balance Sheet

• Select a goal (e.g., lose 40 lbs. during the next year).
• Write out the “Pros and Cons” of trying to reach this goal. The “Pros” will be the benefits of achieving the goal. The “Cons” will relate to how hard it will be, and the risk of failure.
• Look at the example of such a balance sheet below together and see if it suggests some additions or modifications to your list.
• Rate each “Pro” and “Con” – use a 10-point scale where ten means “extremely important” and one means “not at all important.”
• Review the ratings and add up both columns. In most cases, the “Pros” clearly outweigh the “Cons.”

Remember, you don’t need to get your child bubbling over with excitement about coming to Wellspring. Wellspring’s admission criterion is simply that the camper can view Wellspring as a worthwhile or potentially worthwhile opportunity. Many of our most successful alumni will tell you that they didn’t want to come to camp, but realized it could be an opportunity for them; so they gave it a try.

If you can’t get your child to see Wellspring as an opportunity, then you might want to consider another approach. Many parents have successfully made the decision for their child. Once the decision is made, it can be easier on both the child and the parent.

If you are willing to follow this path, you might sit down with your child and tell him or her:

I care about you so much. Nothing is more important to me than your health, and that’s why I’ve made the decision to send you to Wellspring this summer.

It’s the most effective program available, and as your parent, I want to give you this opportunity. It’s a very important opportunity for you – the opportunity to get to a healthy weight by this time next year.

After you’re at the program for a week, if you really can’t stand it, we can talk about other options for addressing your weight and for the rest of the summer. But the decision has been made.

Most of the time, when the decision is approached this way your child is likely to begin viewing the situation in a more favorable light. Be sure to leave the brochure in the living room. You can make it clear that you’re willing to be flexible about which camp to choose. But, if you remain firm about the decision and the potential value of doing this, your child is quite likely to give it a chance.

If this doesn’t happen, please contact our admissions office and let us work with you and your child in this effort. Nearly 100% of our most reluctant campers arrive at Wellspring and find they are having new and exciting experiences, meeting other campers from around the world in an emotionally-safe environment where they’re not being judged based on their weight; as a result, the resistance decreases dramatically in the first day or two (oftentimes in the first few hours). Then, once campers begin enjoying activities, making friends and losing weight, it disappears.

Should my child enroll for 4 weeks or 8 weeks?

At Wellspring Camps, we pride ourselves on helping participants make major changes in the way they think, behave, and function as it relates to their weight (and health and well-being more generally). We immerse campers in a healthy lifestyle, surround them with positive role models, get them talking about themselves and how their weight affects them every day, and help them learn critical concepts in nutrition and key self-regulatory skills. The results speak for themselves. Many participants make the transition to a much healthier life, full of opportunities in virtually all spheres of functioning. These outcomes also appear much better than those typically reported for outpatient programs.^1-4

The purpose of this paper is to summarize factors that lead to the best outcomes, based on several decades of research. The scientific literature points to many possibilities, but two related factors jump out as the most influential ones: length of treatment and amount of initial weight loss during treatment.

The figure below shows the pattern of weight change for the average camper in Wellspring who stayed for 4-weeks versus 8-weeks and the average student at Wellspring Academies, formerly Academy of the Sierras.  These patterns show that the longer interventions tend to produce better long-term outcomes. Two experiments demonstrated this5,6 and almost all of the dozens of reviews of the outcomes of treatments for obesity (for children, teens and adults) conclude that overweight people do far better with longer interventions. ^1-4

Those who lose more weight within a particular course of treatment often fare better when evaluated months and even years after treatment. At least five studies documented this pattern. ^7-11

Longer treatments allow participants to lose more weight, in part, by mastering key skills (like self-monitoring and stress management). Longer interventions also help them truly establish the kind of lifestyle change, sometimes called a healthy obsession,^12,13 that can withstand challenges from a culture that isn’t supportive of eating very little fat and consistent activity (an obesogenic culture) and from their own vulnerable biologies and emotional challenges. Very clear evidence supporting this point comes from some of our own research. We found that campers who self-monitored most consistently during camp were more than twice as likely as the least consistent self-monitors to maintain clinically significant weight losses when evaluated 6-9 months after the 2004 camp season and found a related significant result in a 1.5 year follow-up following the 2005 camp season.

Substantial weight loss within a program can also create momentum, providing motivation to sustain changes. When weight controllers no longer look overweight, others treat them better and they often treat themselves better. They can also do more physically and have more emotional energy (vitality, less depressed), as well. Maintenance, of course, biologically, is far easier than weight loss. The body doesn’t fight maintenance as much as it does weight loss.¹²

Combining these observations leads us to suggest that participants who haven’t achieved enough weight loss to put them into roughly a normal weight range (e.g., < 20% overweight) or haven’t fully mastered weight controlling skills (e.g., consistent self-monitoring) will have better long-term outcomes if they extend their treatment in a structured way. To recap the rationale for this recommendation:

• Longer treatments produce better weight losses in the long run.
• Those who lose the most weight during a course of treatment maintain weight losses better over time.
• Longer and more effective interventions achieve better outcomes via increasing mastery of weight control knowledge, self-regulatory skills, and motivation.

References

1. Goldfield, G.S, Raynor, H.A., & Epstein, L.H. (2002) Treatment of pediatric obesity. In T.A. Wadden TA & A.J. Stunkard (Eds.), Handbook of obesity treatment (pp.532-555). New York: Guilford.

2. Bennett, G. A. (1986). Behavior therapy for obesity: A quantitative review of the effects of selected treatment characteristics on outcome. Behavior Therapy, 17, 554-562.

3. Wadden, T.A., Brownell, K.D., & Foster, G.D. (2002). Obesity: Responding to the global epidemic. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 70, 510-525.

4. Kirschenbaum, D.S., & Fitzgibbon, M.L. (1995). Controversy about the treatment of obesity: Criticisms or challenges? Behavior Therapy, 26, 623-635.

5. Baum, J.G., Clark, H.B., & Sandler, J. (1991). Preventing relapse in obesity through posttreatment maintenance systems: Comparison of the relative efficacy of two levels of therapist support. Health Psychology, 17, 367-370.

6. Perri, M.G., Nezu, A.M., Patti, E.T., & McCann, K.L. (1989). Effect of length of treatment on weight loss. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57, 450-452.7. Jeffery, R.W.,

7. Wing, R.R., & Mayer, R.R. (1998). Are smaller weight losses or more achievable weight loss goals better in the long term for obese patients? Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66, 641-645.

8. Braet, C. (2006). Patient characteristics as predictors of weight loss after and obesity treatment for children. Obesity, 14, 148-155.

9. Epstein, L.H., Wing, R.R., Koeske, R. & Valoski, A. (1985). A comparison of lifestyle exercise, aerobic exercise and calisthenics on weight loss in obese children. Behavior Therapy, 16, 345-356.

10. Kramer, F.M., Jeffery, R.W., Forster, J.L., & Snell, M.K. (1989).Long-term follow-up of behavioral treatment for obesity: Patterns of weight regain among men and women. International Journal of Obesity, 13, 123-136.

11. Wadden, T. A. et al. (1997). Lifestyle modification in the pharmacologic treatment of obesity: A pilot investigation of a potential primary care approach. Obesity Research, 5, 218-226.

12. Kirschenbaum, D.S. (2006). The Healthy Obsession Program. Dallas, TX: BenBella.

13. Kirschenbaum, D.S., Craig, R., Tjelmelland, L. (2007, in press). The Sierras Weight Loss Solutions for Teens and Kids. Toronto: Penguin.

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