How did I get involved in obesity?

The answer is by complete chance. When I was 18 years old I was an athlete at a reasonable standard, I was a member of the Junior National Middle Distance Running squad, I wasn’t the best, but I could certainly hold my own.  Then I became ill with glandular fever and had to take several months off running.  I was devastated I couldn’t run and I didn’t want to spend the summer watching my friends at races across the UK.  So I applied to work on a Camp in America. 

I was a keen sports person and was happy to try everything, my interview went well and I got a place.  I was excited my first time on a plane and only the second time I had left the UK, the first being running in France a few years before.  I received information saying I was going to a sports camp, perfect, I thought.

I arrived in New York and spent most of the first night walking the streets looking at the amazing sites.  The next day I got on a bus and headed to the camp.  I arrived at the bus station and was met by guy called Jason, on first impression I thought that he didn’t look like much of an athlete/sportsman.  We jumped in his car and headed to the camp, as the conversation progressed I started to realise all was not what it seemed.  We were about a mile away from the camp and Jason said “You do realise you are going to a Fat Camp?”- “What?!” I said, “Yes it’s a camp for fat kids”.  I could not believe what I was hearing.

We arrived at dinner time so we went straight to the dining hall, in the room was about 40 people.  I could not believe my eyes, in the room were several normalweight people like me, but there was a range of severely obese people, one guy who weighed about 43 stone (600 lb/270 kg).  I’m sure I must have had the weirdest expression on my face, not sure whether to laugh or cry!!

The next day the kids arrived there were a range of shapes and sizes however the largest child on the programme weighed in at about 40 stone (560 lb/250 kg).  I wasn’t sure this was the right place for me, I didn’t think I would be very happy, I was so different to most of the people on the camp. 

I recognise now that I had the same negative attitudes as most people about why people are overweight or obese.  I thought it was simply down to them being lazy and greedy. I made up in my mind they didn’t want to do sport/ exercise and they didn’t want to look after themselves.  Oh how wrong can someone be!!  That summer was one of the best of my life, I realised how wrong I had been about this group of people.  They were not lazy and greedy they were just simply normal like me.  Yes they had a weight problem, but who's perfect, I soon realised. 

That was it, my life was on a new path, I was fascinated by the issue of obesity and weight loss in children I had lots of questions buzzing round in my head. 
• Why are some people overweight and some not?
• Why did some people like exercise and some did not?
• Why in the safe environment of the camp did the kids excel? 

After a couple of years working at the camp I started to ask other questions. 
• Why did the kids lose lots of weight only to return back to the camp a year later having gained all their weight back and more? 
• What was going wrong? 
• I soon realised it was the programme that was wrong and Fat Camps don’t work. 

Therefore I have made it my life mission to design, develop and deliver the most successful weight loss programmes for children anywhere in the world.  However, it would be fair to say there were some aspects of good practice which I kept.  So my experience at the Fat Camp taught me how not to do it.

Having now run 10 of my own camps, worked on/lead 8 camps in the US and undertaken nearly 20 years of scientific research.  I still cannot believe that the commercial fat camps are still in business.  They just don’t work, they have no science behind them.  It is like a drug that has not been through the proper testing. “Would you give your kid one?” The reality is that these programmes continue to survive because people are not clear what they should do and because they are desperate.

A major problem with poor programmes is that when they don’t work the kids and families involved begin to believe it is them that have failed.  However, my view is that most of the programmes failed the participants.  That is why we have designed a high quality approach to weight loss, which makes sure that the people not only know what to do to be healthy, but more importantly how to do it.

So my journey so far have involved lots of fun, I have met some amazing people who have taught me a lot. One of the most important lessons is that a high quality programme is the only way to really help people overcome their weight problem.