Wellspring Family Camp Offers
Weight Control for the Entire Family

The first and only family camp for weight control is back for its second season in 2007.

Because the first season of Wellspring Family Camp was such a success, the staff is making very few changes, according to Rachel Yudin, camp director. The Wellspring Family Camp in the upper peninsula of Michigan is the only camp where parents or grandparents can enroll as a family with one or more overweight children.

Last year's campers lost an average of 4.2 pounds a week, but more importantly, they learned how to maintain lifestyle changes once they got home. Ms. Yudin said that even family members who did not participate in the camp themselves lost weight as a result of the changes in grocery shopping, exercise and cooking methods adapted by the campers. The majority of campers continued to lose or maintain their summer weight losses throughout the year.

Ryan Craig, director of seven Wellspring Camps for older children, said that the staff wanted to develop a program to reach younger children ages 5 to 13 years. Research indicated that the best way to help little ones would be through their parents.

Wellspring Family Camp is set near Clear Lake in the 600-acre Hiawatha National Forest. Activities offered include water sports like swimming and canoeing, as well as soccer, softball, hiking, bicycling, yoga, miniature golf, bowling and Tae Kwon Do. In the evenings campers like to look at the Northern Lights over the lake, and enjoy campfires, sing-alongs, movies, dances, and theme nights like Talent Shows.

A spokesperson for the American Camping Association said that more and more adults are going to summer camp with their children. In fact, the number of family camps has grown 215 times in the last decade.

However, the unique aspect of the Wellspring Family Camp experience is that campers have personal behavioral coaches who guide them into a healthy lifestyle of increased physical activity and low fat eating. They learn to self-monitor food intake and daily physical activity on online blogs or journals. They also attend workshops and receive cognitive behavioral therapy from counselors with Master's and doctoral degrees. They learn about the genetic factors can put certain people at risk for being overweight and how to overcome them. They study how modern culture has become "obesogenic" -that is, a culture that promotes overeating and sedentary life styles.

Behavioral cognitive therapy helps campers understand emotional issues involved in overeating and how to avoid relapses once they are home. The emphasis in the Wellspring program is not to merely lose weight during the summer, but to get a jumpstart on a permanent lifestyle of healthy eating and exercise.

The Wellspring Summer Camps are one of the very few that qualify for insurance reimbursement as a medical treatment. The program has been featured in news media like CNN, People, Forbes, USA Today, Good Morning America and Dateline NBC.

Wellspring Family Camp offers three two-week sessions beginning June 24, July 8, and July 22; and two one-week sessions beginning August 5 and August 12. For more information and applications, see http://www.wellspringfamilycamp.com/index.asp