When overweight children go to weight loss camps they are surrounded, usually for the first time, by people who struggle with the same problem. For most kids, this kind of environment fosters more confident, outgoing behavior, which can be very helpful when trying to focus on the goal of losing weight. By removing large amounts of pressure, teen weight loss camps can enable your child to accomplish his or her goals.
Having a social network of people who are going through something similar to what you are going through drastically increases your chances for success. This is why camps are so successful, and why so many kids report satisfaction and increased self esteem after coming home from summer weight loss camps.
The truth about our culture is that unhealthy eating habits are the norm, and teens trying to develop healthier eating habits often have a hard time finding the support they need from their friends or the people they go to school with. At summer camps, everyone eats the same thing, and your kid will have the chance to form healthy habits that will become second nature by the time the summer is over.
Most parents try to limit what their children eat, but at the same time they have the responsibility of providing their children with discipline. These days, everyone is pushing positive reinforcement, and there are only so many rewards parents can offer kids for appropriate behavior. It is hard to find rewards that are more effective than candy, junk food, and time in front of the television. Every parent uses these things to reward their child occasionally, and therefore it is particularly difficult to reward a child for abstaining from them.
At weight loss camps, the parents are not the ones enforcing a healthy diet, so the child does not consider former systems of reward and punishment to be necessarily related or relevant. Camp counselors have the benefit of seeming more like an outside perspective than a figure of authority to the child.
When your child is presented with the absence of everything he or she is familiar with, replaced by a new, structured, and accepting environment, he or she will have a much easier time making lifestyle changes and becoming a more confident and outgoing person. Making friends quickly becomes both necessary and easy.
In addition to making friends, kids attending a weight loss camp have the opportunity to talk to trained counselors who plan the time spent at the camp in a way engineered to best facilitate physical activity, weight loss, and a positive attitude. Planned, friendly, competitive activities get kids active both physically and socially.
While a summer camp can help your child lose weight and become a healthier person, it is important to keep in mind that when your child comes home, he or she will be like a different person, and it will be important for the rest of the family to adopt new, healthier habits to show their support.
