Not Fat Camp

Simple, scientific, and sustainable weight loss

Wellspring is a fitness and weight loss camp based on decades of scientific research. 

While our program is simple and sustainable, Wellspring is NOT a fat camp or boot camp.  In fact, Consumer’s Digest rated weight loss camps and found Wellspring’s approach most effective. Click here to read Consumer’s Digest article on weight loss camps.

Wellspring is renowned for equipping campers with the skills they need to make healthy choices.  Unlike fat camps which restrict food, or boot camps that demand activity, Wellspring exposes campers to a range of exciting activities and provides campers with a safe environment in which to learn to regulate their food intake and activity levels.

Fat camps and boot camps force campers to lose weight, without regard to what will happen once campers return home.  In fact, most of these camps want campers to return again and again, signaling that they’re not focused on long-term success.

Wellspring’s focus is not on how much weight campers lose (although they do lose a lot – the most ever reported by any weight loss camp), but rather on the behaviors that lead to long-term weight control.  In fact, the New York Times reviewed Wellspring’s program.  The following is an excerpt from this article:

One of the more promising programs is offered by Wellspring Camps.

Unlike traditional weight-loss camps, Wellspring uses a cognitive behavioral approach. Campers set goals and monitor themselves, techniques that are components of behavior modification, one of the most widely accepted approaches to long-term weight-loss success.

Each camper is responsible for her own eating and exercise habits. At meals, for example, campers get "controlled" foods, like measured entrees and dessert, and "uncontrolled" foods: berries, melons or fat-free soups. They can eat as much of the uncontrolled foods as they want, but they have to jot down the calories and fat grams in a journal, with the goal of staying under 20 grams of fat and about 1,200 calories a day.

They use pedometers and are told to aim for a minimum of 10,000 steps a day. The overall goal is to change eating habits and make new ones.

"Self-control is a process in behavioral terms - keeping track of target behaviors and systematically evaluating these behaviors and goal setting," said Dr. Daniel Kirschenbaum, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern who helped design the program, but has no financial involvement in the camps.

Dr. Kirschenbaum said self-control could be taught like any other skill through instruction, modeling and encouragement

So far, the camps have had encouraging success. A recent study by Wellspring found that 91 percent of all its campers had maintained the weight or continued to lose six months after camp ended; the weight loss afterward averaged 7.4 pounds. The camps plan to continue tracking campers' long-term weight loss to try to persuade health insurers to cover the programs.