Fat Camps: The 'Mean'ing for Kids and Teens

Overweight children typically experience prejudice and rejection. In one classic study first done in the 1960s and repeated in 2003, 6-year-olds preferred playmates who were blind, deaf, missing limbs, severely deformed, or in a wheelchair to overweight children. They described a fat child as "lazy, lying, cheating, stupid, dirty, and ugly." A government study found that "personality traits among obese teenagers are similar to those... typical of youngsters in oppressed minority groups who are victims of intense prejudice." A large national survey of overweight children found that 36% were depressed, and 24% had thought about suicide.

Overweight children can experience rejection as early as nursery school. "When I was four, I wanted to wear a Strawberry Shortcake dress to my graduation," a girl posted on a website called I was a fat kid. "But my mother said it wouldn't be pretty because I was too fat."

Their problems often continue through the elementary and high school years. "My name was Blubberbutt," writes another. "From the time I was about ten years old, perfect strangers would stop me on the street and say, 'Why don't you go on a diet?' My high school gym teacher made me run extra laps because I needed to lose weight. Even in college, I remember a group of guys followed me around campus yelling 'jiggle, jiggle, jiggle' with every step I took."

Well-meaning parents often try to help, but in the wrong ways. "My mother began putting me through as many diets as possible, every one failing. She made me look through fashion magazines and pick bodies I liked and she kept food from me and weighed me every week," another recalls. "I went through exercise clubs, guilt, threatening and more complex diets. There are more terrible scenes and memories than I could ever record."

Sending a child away to a fat camp is another well-meaning parental intervention that usually backfires. As Abby Ellin writes in her memoir of fat camp, "The majority of campers were not there of their own free will. They had been sent by parents who couldn't bear to look at their fat children anymore." At these old-style fat camps, the overweight child had to endure more embarrassment, often from day one.

"On the first day of camp, you take a before picture and then later they take an after picture," Shanna Baronoff told The New York Times. "I'm so embarrassed standing there. You have to take off all your clothes except your bathing suit. No one is comfortable with the way they look in a bathing suit."

Often campers tease one another. They form cliques that exclude severely obese kids and those campers who had not attended in years past. "Everyone was overweight and yet people were still being made fun of a lot about their weight," camper Danielle Rottman recalled. "I was one of the thinner kids and people would say, 'why are you here?'"

Laura Sapora remembers how children from other camps teased them. "They called us the Fat Farm or Little Piglets," she said. "When we played ball with them, they'd say 'We'll give you a Snickers bar if you let us have this goal.'"

Fat camps are no fun. Much of the day is spent doing calisthenics in indoor gymnasiums, and fat camp food tends to be scant and terrible. Most of the counselors in these old-style fat camps are unpaid adolescents trying to lose weight themselves. They do not have the professional expertise to teach campers about good nutrition and physical fitness and how to deal with emotional problems.

Dr. LeRoy Engel, a pediatrician and expert on childhood obesity, said that most parents simply do not consider overweight as an emotional issue. "They can see the emotional problems that result from it, but not the emotional problem in its origin," he said. "Their child is fat and they want a diet and some pills. If you try to approach the emotional aspects too directly, you scare them off."

Weight Loss Camps DO Work

Today's modern weight loss camps like those offered at Wellspring do address emotional issues. Many of these newer camps have professional counselors on staff who work with children individually and in group sessions. Their basis is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is about goal-setting, problem-solving, and stress-management training. These psychologists and behavioral therapists realize that the child's family must be involved if she is to maintain her weight once she goes home.

The modern approach is not to send a child away to "get fixed." New weight loss camps are not necessarily about weight loss, though most children lose weight when they attend. The new emphasis is on teaching children how to make wise food choices, to enjoy exercise, and to create a lifetime of good health. It is not about how the child looks, but how he feels about himself. This underlying attitude makes all the difference to a child who does not need any more criticism and failure, but rather kindness and encouragement to sustain a new lifestyle of healthy eating and exercise.