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Behavioral Change for Weight Loss

Overweight and obese young women face social and psychological challenges that can have permanent effects. Being overweight as a young woman greatly increases risk of asthma, coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and many forms of cancer. Overweight young women are 17 times more likely than normal weight girls to become overweight or obese adults. To read more about the impact of weight, click here.

Losing less than just 10% of one’s body weight can yield positive health effects. So, if you or your daughter weighs 200 lbs., losing just 20 lbs. can have significant physical and emotional benefits. As a point of comparison, the average 8-week Wellspring New York participant loses more than 30 lbs.

Wellspring recognizes that weight control is an immensely difficult challenge and that many factors combine to frustrate permanent weight loss. Not only do we live in a society where a sedentary lifestyle and poor food choices are the norm, but we also live in a society that discriminates against young women who are overweight.

Overweight young women often face social hardships that others don’t face. Most overweight girls share the experience of being picked on in an athletic setting or feeling discouraged that certain styles of clothes don’t fit them. These experiences can have a significant effect. Wellspring New York has a deep understanding of these issues and has a scientifically based solution to the challenge of weight control. Best of all, participants at Wellspring New York are surrounded by young women their age who understand the impact of weight.

The Weight Loss Solution: Behavioral Change

Science shows us that the only path to successful long-term weight control is changing one’s lifestyle. Fad diets, teen diets, restrictive eating plans, teen fitness programs, boot camps, fat camps, diet camps and other programs are not rooted in science, and not able to demonstrate consistent successful outcomes are highly unlikely to be successful for your daughter in the long run. They simply won’t work. Education, training, and a new set of skills are effective. Wellspring’s clinical program utilizes cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in conjunction with training on a set of specific, scientifically based behaviors to create a new focus on and commitment to becoming a successful long-term weight controller (LTWC).

Wellspring’s Clinical Program

Wellspring views long-term weight control as a manageable athletic challenge. In other words, if someone is a serious athlete, she monitors a number of things very closely. An elite athlete probably keeps a log of progress, thinks about the foods she is putting into her body, sets goals, discusses progress and strategies with coaches, and adjusts daily routines and behaviors accordingly. She is probably very focused on her health in order to perform at the highest possible level. Successful weight control requires the same level of focus. The bottom line is that if weight control were easy, we would not be as overweight as we are.

Wellspring New York’s clinical program is the most comprehensive, intensive, simple and sustainable weight loss program ever developed for young women. Wellspring New York participants are trained on a set of behaviors that have been proven to effect and maintain significant weight loss. Self-monitoring, journaling, and goal-setting become habitual for participants, and when integrated with the nutrition and culinary training, success is attainable. The success achieved at Wellspring New York serves as motivation to continue the newly formed habits upon returning home.

Training on the proven set of behaviors is led by each camper’s Behavioral Coach (Masters- or Doctoral- level psychologists or social workers). Behavioral Coaches (BC’s) lead participants along the journey to success while working to overcome any barriers to mastering the behaviors necessary for successful long-term weight control.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) sessions in individual and group settings strengthen this training. Participants learn to apply the knowledge and skills gained to challenges in their own lives. Strategies for returning to the home environment and facing the challenges of continuing weight control are examined. Through this examination, frustration tolerance and stress management skills that can be applied to all areas of life are sharpened.

CBT helps overweight young women effectively manage their weight and overcome barriers to successful weight control. Participants become self-regulators who can set realistic, achievable goals and stay committed to health and long-term weight control while managing the stress that we all face in daily life.

A group CBT session at Wellspring generally operates as follows:

• Summary of each participant’s progress since the last session
• Discussion of a CBT/weight control topic such as coping mechanisms
• Dialogue on reading assignment from last meeting
• Goal setting utilizing SMART goals

Individual sessions are similar in that they review achievement but focus on the details of each participant’s self-monitoring, barriers to success and short- and long-term goals and how to achieve them.

CBT employs goal-setting, stimulus control decision counseling, relapse prevention training, rational emotive therapy, positive focusing, improving frustration tolerance, and stress management. Some participants adopt these new behaviors easily while others have emotional issues to overcome before they can be entirely successful. (Obese people are 25-44% more likely to suffer from clinical depression than people of a normal weight- Archives of General Psychiatry, July 2006.) CBT is the key to successful long-term weight control, which leads to heightened self-esteem, improved mood and outlook, and an increase in energy level.

Wellspring New York BCs are Masters- or Doctoral-level clinicians under the direct supervision of licensed Clinical Director Kristina Pecora Kelly, Psy.D. and trained by Daniel Kirschenbaum, Ph.D., ABPP. A professor at Northwestern University Medical School, Dr. Kirschenbaum is a leading expert on weight control. To read more about his work, click here.

In addition to improvements in overall health and mental well-being, lasting results are achieved at Wellspring. Let Wellspring change your life.