Changing behavior for long-term health and fitness

New research from top universities shows that overweight children are likely to become more and more overweight, and that nearly 90% of overweight teens will become obese adults. Overweight teens and young adults often face the psychological, social, and medical impact of weight as well. Here is the good news -- research shows that even modest weight loss (a decrease of less than 10%) can produce beneficial health effects and that the heaviest people benefit most from even a modest decrease in weight.

• Assess your child’s weight issue (including your child’s projected adult weight) with the Body Mass Index calculator , the method physicians use to evaluate weight.
• View the dramatic social, emotional, financial, and physical consequences of being overweight (including a heightened risk of heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and many forms of cancer).  Click here.
• The cost of obesity is $550,000 over the course of a lifetime.  To learn more about the financial impact of weight, click here.

Wellspring's clinical program includes cognitive behavioral therapy, dietary management, nutrition training, and physical activity and has been proven successful in helping children, adolescents and young adults lose weight and keep it off.

Wellspring's Clinical Program

Wellspring starts by training campers intensively on the set of behaviors proven by research to sustain weight loss permanently—such as self-monitoring, journaling, goal-setting and contracting. This is in addition to the nutrition and culinary training campers receive. Then Wellspring Behavioral Coaches (Masters- or Doctoral-level psychologists or social workers) work with campers to overcome any barriers to mastering these behaviors.  They are called Behavioral Coaches because they actively coach campers toward achieving rapid weight loss and successful, healthy, long-term weight control.  The clinical program at Wellspring is comparable to the coaching that world-class athletes receive from sports psychologists.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) can help overweight people manage their biology more effectively. CBT helps them become better self-regulators who can set effective goals, observe themselves systematically, stay committed and manage the stress of everyday living.

Research published in the 1990s compared very overweight children who had received CBT for weight loss with equally overweight children who didn’t received this treatment (the control group).

Ten years later, the control group actually gained weight and averaged 60% overweight whereas the CBT group lost weight and averaged only 30% overweight.

Wellspring campers receive at least 4 sessions of CBT each week – twice in group, and twice in individual session. A typical group CBT session at Wellspring is as follows:

• Review of each student’s accomplishments in the prior day(s). The tone of these reviews will be consistently positive, oriented to problem solving and reinforcement of specific accomplishments.
• Integration of a CBT/weight control topic, such as stimulus control, 5-step problem solving, decisional counseling, and stress management/coping.
• Quiz (on readings assigned in the prior session).
• Assignment of new readings.
• Review of behavioral contracts (goals).
• Individual sessions will also review progress and self-monitoring journals, focusing on the details of each student’s efforts.

CBT utilizes methods such as iterative goal-setting, stimulus control, decision counseling, rational emotive therapy, relapse prevention training, positive focusing, and improving frustration tolerance and stress management. Many campers will take to these behaviors like fish to water. Others will have emotional issues to address and overcome before they can be successful. (Researchers have concluded that obese people are 25-44% more likely to suffer from clinical depression than non-obese people.)

By meeting at least four times each week with Wellspring Behavioral Coaches, campers become master weight controllers. This process is facilitated by the ongoing weight loss, which improves self-esteem, body image, energy, and general willingness to engage in the Wellspring Plan.

Wellspring Behavioral Coaches are professional clinicians under the direct supervision of Wellspring’s Clinical Director, nationally renowned weight control expert Dr. Daniel Kirschenbaum, a professor at Northwestern University Medical School. In addition to lasting behavioral change and immediate improvements in physical health and well-being, other important results will be marked improvements in self-image and mood. In a very real sense, Wellspring changes habits and lives.