Childhood Obesity Articles
Aftercare Essential for Successful Weight Loss Camp Experience
By Jane St. Clair
America is in the middle of an epidemic of childhood obesity, and not even our doctors are sure what to do about it. No one has any magic pills or cures – the only safe treatment for children is a change in lifestyle.
The "old way" of thinking was that it is best not to intervene even when a child is obese. Studies showed that forcing a child to diet could backfire and create eating disorders in adolescence or actually perpetuate the problem and make the child gain even more weight. Parents were told not to nag, and to hope their child would “grow into” his weight.
However, the more modern way of looking at the issue of childhood obesity is that some children are so overweight that they are at great risk for health challenges that are usually not experienced until middle age.
Doctors are treating children as young as seven years old who weigh 200 pounds or more -- and health problems such as abnormal cholesterol readings, clogged arteries, Type 2 diabetes, joint problems, sleep apnea and heart disease are showing up in teens. Many overweight and obese children also suffer from bullying, isolation, low self-esteem, and other social problems.
Comprehensive Solutions to a Serious Problem
Because of the health and social implications for overweight children, doctors and parents are rethinking the old laissez-faire attitude and intervening with more comprehensive measures, such as bariatric surgery and immersion therapy (enrolling in a residential weight loss program for children, adolescents, and teens).
“Immersion therapies,” or residential weight loss programs for young people, are becoming more popular. In the past, many doctors did not recommend programs such as weight loss summer camps because they thought it was too difficult to transfer the child’s new eating and exercise habits from the camp into the home environment.
Almost all children lose weight in “weight control immersion” environments such as a residential weight loss program or a weight loss summer camp, and many lose as much as five pounds a week by eating controlled portions of nutritious food and engaging in rigorous outdoor exercise. However, studies showed that once participants returned home from a residential weight loss program or a weight loss summer camp, fewer than 10 percent maintained the loss for a year or more.
The Need for Effective Aftercare
Within the past decade, researchers have learned that certain components of weight loss immersion programs for children can significantly enhance the likelihood that the weight loss will be permanent.
A research effort that was led by Dr. Daniel Kirschenbaum, the clinical director of Wellspring camps and healthy living academies, determined that the most important component is family-based involvement when the child returns home from a residential weight loss program or a weight loss summer camp. Parents can help the child by duplicating some of the elements of the camp environment in the home, such as providing positive encouragement for efforts, limiting the availability of junk food and sweets, promoting exercise, and discouraging sedentary activities such as watching television and playing videogames.
The more effective camps have developed elaborate follow-up care programs that last as long as a year after the camp experience itself. At these weight loss camps, all campers keep daily food and exercise diaries that they submit to their counselors. Once they return home, their self-monitoring continues. This type of self-monitoring has been determined to be extremely important to weight loss -- another study by Dr. Kirschenbaum found that if a person missed even one day of monitoring, the weight loss for the week was likely to be cut in half.
Family Support is Essential
Camp counselors at weight loss summer camps for adolescents and teens also work with parents to help them support their children when they return home. Think of what it is like to be one of the few children passing up burgers, fries, and milkshakes in the school cafeteria line. Or to be a young child who has kept to her self-monitoring and exercise program but has not lost any weight for several weeks. When they've returned home from a successful experience at a summer weight loss camp, children need all the encouragement they can get.
Many studies indicate that adults who are trying to recover from alcoholism and drug addiction do better in environments where these substances are unavailable. The same is true for children in weight loss programs and weight loss summer camps. Thus, the adults who do the grocery shopping have to help them by buying healthy foods and not keeping foods with high fat and high sugar content in the home. These parents must be willing to take them to sports practices and limit TV and computer time. They must be committed to preparing healthy meals and eating as a family.
When you enroll your child in an immersion program like a weight loss summer camp, take a good look at the follow-up care plan. Summer camps for weight loss can put children on the path to lifelong fitness, but effective follow-up care from family members and camp counselors is necessary to prevent backsliding and weight gains.
In the absence of effective aftercare, the successes that a child has during weight loss summer camp can transform into one more bad experience, one more failure, and one more way of chipping away at her self-esteem. Follow-up care and support from you are vital to your child’s permanent and successful weight loss.
