Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Aspen Education Group

Wellspring, Academy of the Sierras, Aspen

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Anonymous:
You guys could be right.

All I know is I weighed 200 pounds, my doc wanted me to lose weight, I lost 14 pounds at a safe pace.  I thought I'd only lost ten, and was afraid I'd put a couple of those back on.  I got up the courage to step on the scale and lo and behold I'd lost another four and am down a jean size.

Their advice wasn't all that different from what my doctor was telling me, it was just put in a way that was more inspirational for me.

I didn't apply it all at once and go to extremes.  I took one or two tips that were similar to what my doctor said, I took some inspirational thoughts, and I applied them in sensible moderation to make them work for me.

Extremes are bad for people.

Seeing your doctor before beginning any diet or exercise program is a must.

However, these women are obviously dropping weight and keeping it off.  Which is a horrible thing for them, because it's extreme and the opposite of what they need.

For *me* it was moderate and healthy.  Mostly because I applied it in moderation.

To get back to the whole program thing, it's like when your teenage kid stays out all night and staggers in plastered and smelling of burnt oak leaves.  Normal: Ground the kid for a couple of weeks.  Extreme: Ship the kid out to a Program.

Back to the Aspen fat farm thing, your teenage kid goes through something and gains twenty to fifty pounds he/she can't afford to carry.  Normal:  See your doctor, then a nutritionist (which your doctor would refer you to) and go on a healthy diet and exercise schedule as a family, with your teen, to be supportive.  Extreme:  Ship the kid out to a fat farm.

Same if your kid is anorexic.  Normal: See your doctor, get the kid in therapy, practice healthy food and exercise habits as a family to be supportive of your daughter.  Extreme:  Ship the kid out to a Program.

That's the point I'm trying to make.  Moderation good, extremes bad.

People who go to extremes always have a bazillion rationalizations about why extremes are justified in their case.  More often than not, those rationalizations are wrong and the extremes do more harm than good.

I'm rambling, because I'm still kicking the whole thought of how extremes apply to the Program issue around in my head.

I think we Program critics are fighting against extremism, more than anything.  Program parents, whether the kids are or not, at least view their teens as at the extremes of out of control.

Program Parents then buy into the Programs as a "necessarily" extreme solution to an extreme problem.  Then they pass on the Programs' canned justifications for why the teen is so extreme and why the only or best solution has to be so extreme to us and other people they talk to, and keep repeating those justifications as a mantra to themselves.

That's what we're up against.

How to convey that, whether the teen really is extreme or not, you can't fix that extreme with another extreme?

When I was a young driver, I had a hell of a work schedule and was driving home late one night, really tired.  My attention wavered and I started to drift off the road, onto a low shoulder.  I panicked, and jerked the wheel away from that direction.  I then found myself about to run off the road the other way into a three foot bank of red clay.  So I jerked the wheel again, away from that direction.  Which rolled my car and landed me, stopped, in a grassy field with the (thankfully empty) passenger side of my car caved in.

The right answer to getting me back on the road in that situation would have been a moderate turn of the steering wheel to ease myself back into the center of my lane.

I really was headed for a wreck if I kept going the same way.  It really was a dangerous stretch of road that several people had died on.

How do we get across to these parents that moderation is always a better parenting answer to bad teen behavior than panic and extremism?

Julie

Anonymous:
Just as an aside, a collection of tips can be applied moderately.

No Program is moderate---because they all involve uprooting a kid from home and shipping them away.  That's extreme.

However, there's all kinds of community based help for various kinds of issues teens can have, and those can be moderate.

Fat farms:

There are a whole lot of weight loss strategies your doctor would approve of, in moderation, if you're overweight to the point your doctor considers it unhealthy.  Some of those strategies may even be used in fat farm Programs.  

The difference is that tips and strategies that can be healthy and effective at home, in moderation, become a Bad Thing for a kid when you uproot the kid and apply them to her life by force--because shipping the kid off and forcing them to live by those tips turned into mandatory rules is extreme.

Like the pro-ana tips are the same tips and strategies that, applied in moderation under a doctor's supervision, can be good things if you really are fat, are extreme when you apply all of them at once to the point of obsession when you're already underweight.

Moderate and responsible vs. extreme and dangerous.

The point i was trying to make is that forcing a kid into a fat farm is as emotionally dangerous as her forcing herself into anorexia.

It doesn't matter if some of the Program's strategies are similar to what her doctor would have her do.  Doing them in a Program is, in itself, inherently extreme--that's what makes it bad for the kid.

I didn't express it very well, but that was the point I was meandering around.

Julie

Oz girl:
I got your point. Childhood obesity is becoming and issue over here as well and large amounts of money are being poured into public campaigns which are encouraging a whole family approach. It is interesting that you raise the issue of the kids esteem as i think that often the difference between the kid who is a little chubby and the kid who is morbidly fat is comfort eating. it slowly becomes a viscious cycle. I shudder to think of the "therapudic" aspect.

i also know from first hand experience that an institutional environment is not the best for healthy eating or positive body image. When i was a boarder ( I am 30 this yr) at a normal girls school, food was an obsession.  The food served was all nutritionally sound, the teachers were not bullies or tyrants.
HOWEVER-In the months leading up to a school formal most girls would starve themselves to fit into the perfect dress. I also remember one sunday brunch there was a contest to see how many pancakes could be eaten in one sitting before the girls "threw up" As an adult i recognise that this behaviour is bullimic. As a kid it seemed like as good a way as any to pass the time!
Which reminds me. All girls were required to play a sport or do something physical. There were pretty much 2 factions. the girls who played hockey ot tennis or swam. I was in this faction. we had the most fun and got into the most trouble. We were rowdy and foerver incurring the irritation of the nuns.
Then there were the ballet dancers. The dancers were pretty and vacuous and mainly marking time until they went to university to find a husband. Also they almost all had eating disorders. One had to leave to live in some kind of hospital for a semester. It was not uncommon to go to the loo before heading off to bed to hear one of them hurling away in the stall next to you. One of these girls thought she was pregnant because she skipped her period for 4 months. turned outv she needed to eat something. The thing is that these girls were the envy of the whole school. Their dates to school formals were always the "cool" guys. They all had the most coveted outfits and girls in lower forms (year levels) would fawn all over them. They were poised and waif like. Teachers adored them as perfect models of ladylike behavour.
I also remember that food became a big commodity & obsession. A boarding school tradition here is the tuck box. It is where your parents send you your favourite snack foods from home and you get a box to put it in. By the end of a term girls would trade them for all sorts of favourslike homework, cigarettes, alcohol, introductions to boys. As a girl with attractive older brothers and a mother who overstocked the tuck box I wielded a lot of power.
Did I grow up to be disfunctional overall? probably not to the point of needing therapy, however, i spent my 20s yo yo dieting, obsessed with forbidden foods which would be consumed excessively whenever there was a bad break up or a shitty job interview or some other minor drama. These foods would then be untouched as forbidden till i next fell off the wagon. it was only at 27 that i decided that most women have tits and a bum and it was all too hard so just started eating normally. I have never felt healthier!

Anonymous:
But isn't the whole point of this site that it isn't necessary to move to Russia for that?

Anonymous:
There is that live like prisoner in a gulag thingie they got going on in Russia. I bet after a month or two there you would drop some weight.

I am not really fat but the next time i am condiering a diet ill let you know how that works for me!

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