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A Summer of Fun, a Lifetime of Health

The Weight Control Challenge

Being overweight can lead to health risks and conditions in almost every part of the body, including many forms of cancer, diabetes, asthma, coronary heart disease, and stroke.  Of course, the effects of excess weight in children and teens are more than physical. Many families recognize their child’s unhappiness, negative outlook, and low self-esteem as connected to overweight or obesity. To read more about the physical, social and emotional impact that weight is likely having on your child, click here.

Wellspring understands that weight loss and long-term weight control are a difficult challenge and that many factors conspire to frustrate successful weight control. Not only do we live in an “obesogenic” society where a sedentary lifestyle and poor food choices are the norm, but we also live in a society that discriminates against those who are overweight.

Overweight adolescents often face social hardships that others don’t face. Most overweight teens share the experience of being picked on in social settings or feeling discouraged that they can’t join their peers in many activities. These experiences can have a significant effect on how overweight individuals view themselves and the motivation and vision they have for being successful in many areas of their lives.

The Solution: Changing Behavior to Change Lives

Wellspring is based on years of scientific research, which shows that the only path to successful long-term weight control is changing one’s lifestyle. “Weight loss” regimens or diets are not successful in the long run. On the contrary, equipping campers with a new set of behaviors and skills for successful weight control is the key to changing their lifestyles.

Wellspring’s program utilizes cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), nutrition education, and physical activity to create a new focus on and commitment to these core behaviors necessary to become successful long-term weight controllers.

An Effective Clinical Program

While there are many differences between Wellspring Texas and traditional weight loss camps, diet camps or fat camps, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most important difference that distinguishes the Wellspring experience.

Long-term weight control is a manageable athletic challenge. A serious athlete keeps a log of activity, thinks about what to eat, sets goals, discusses progress and strategies with others, and adjusts routines as a result. He or she is 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. It’s a lot more complicated than that.

That’s 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 within reach.

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 the 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. Individual sessions focus on the details of each camper’s self-monitoring, barriers to success and short- and long-term goals and how to achieve them. Group therapy helps reinforce the Wellspring Plan and allows campers to support each other in their efforts.

In these ways, CBT helps Wellspring campers manage their weight and overcome obstacles to long-term success. Campers develop habits 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.

CBT employs research-based techniques such as goal-setting, rational emotive therapy (RET), improving frustration tolerance, stimulus control decision counseling, positive focusing, improving stress management, and relapse prevention training. Some campers take to these new behaviors like fish to water, while others must overcome emotional 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.

Wellspring Texas Behavioral Coaches are Masters- or Doctoral-level therapists under the supervision of licensed professionals, and trained by Daniel Kirschenbaum, Ph.D., ABPP. 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.