Nutrition and Culinary Education
We understand that our campers love food. We just want them to know how to choose the foods that love them back! So at Wellspring Vancouver, campers learn to select, buy, order and cook foods that enable them to independently continue their weight loss success, without parents having to act as “food police.” We refer to these foods as being “Wellspring-friendly.” Campers quickly learn that their favorite foods can almost always be purchased or made in a more Wellspring-friendly manner, allowing them to continue loving food, but in a much healthier way.
Through our Nutrition and Culinary Programs, Campers at Canada’s first and most effective weight loss camp learn how to cook many of the same very low-fat, low-density meals, snacks, and desserts they have enjoyed at Wellspring Vancouver – an important reason Wellspring campers are so successful at maintaining or continuing weight loss when they return home.
With regular nutrition instruction and culinary classes, Wellspring campers learn that they can still enjoy many of their favourite foods, just prepared in a healthy way. The entire family benefits from this training as well, with campers returning home to show off their newly acquired skills.
Explore some of Wellspring’s low-fat, low-density recipes. Click here!
Focus on Effective Ways to Eat Healthy Foods
Before Wellspring, many teens have tried all kinds of teen diets, weight loss programs, dietitians, nutritionists, and gym memberships. Unfortunately, these attempts typically meet with failure. Why? Because weight loss is very challenging, and only a comprehensive, integrated and intensive program like Wellspring is likely to be effective in the long run.
Wellspring Vancouver’s nutrition education program trains campers on what they need to know about weight loss and weight control. Instead of overloading students with information about vitamins and nutrients or the “food pyramid,” Wellspring focuses on what really matters: learning to love foods that love you back.
Some topics covered in weekly nutrition classes are:
- Deciding when a diet has a scientific basis, and when it’s simply a fad diet, or a teen diet
- Understanding scientific credentials: when to trust someone, and when to recognize that someone is taking advantage
- The science of weight gain: why is it so easy to gain and so hard to lose?
- What science shows us about weight loss
- What science tells us about successful long-term weight control
- Fad diets for teens
- Ways to stay satisfied while continuing to lose
- Restaurant training -- how do we do go out to eat without regaining weight? Includes visits to local restaurants to test campers’ new skills.
- Portion sizes
- Grocery store training: games and exercises at the grocery store showing campers what to look for and what to buy when at home
