The most overweight children in North Yorkshire are to be offered an NHS-funded place at a weight management camp in Leeds. STEPHEN LEWIS found out what they could expect to find there.


WANTING to eat is perfectly normal, says Professor Paul Gately. The trouble is, food is just too easy to find these days.

The reason for increasing levels of obesity isn’t because we’ve all suddenly become greedy and weak-willed. It is because society has changed.

We evolved as hunter gatherers, in a world in which food could be scarce. It was our constant hunger that drove us to find the food that kept us alive. “We are programmed to want to eat,” Prof Gately said. “If we hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have survived.”

Nowadays, food is all around us. “We don’t have to hunt and gather any more,” Prof Gately said. “It is already hunted and gathered for us.” So we eat, and we put on weight.

The result can be catastrophic for our health and well-being. Obesity can contribute to a catalogue of health problems, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis and cancer.

It can also lead to depression, anxiety and chronic low self-esteem. And overweight children, in particular, face teasing and bullying that can make their lives a misery.

Health bosses in North Yorkshire estimate obesity costs the NHS in the county a staggering £186 million. That figure is set to rise as the problem gets worse.

As reported in The Press, NHS North Yorkshire and York has launched a £1.2 million strategy to tackle obesity. One element will involve sending the most seriously overweight children from York, Selby and North Yorshire to a “fat camp” in Leeds.

That “camp” is Carnegie Weight Management, a non-profit organisation at Leeds Metropolitan University. And Prof Gately, as well as being professor of exercise and obesity at Leeds Metropolitan, is the camp’s technical director. According to the latest figures, a quarter of all North Yorkshire children are overweight by the time they start school. Now, the very fattest two per cent of them will be eligible for a free summer holiday place at the fat camp.

But what will they do there?

It is certainly not one of those American-style boot-camps where overweight youngsters are put through a strict, almost military regime of diet and punishing exercise, Prof Gately says.

All the evidence is that that approach doesn’t work. It is based on the kind of “quick fix” mindset popularised by so many magazines, with their “lose ten pounds in three days” diets.

It might help you lose weight in the short term, Prof Gately says, but you will only put it back on again.

The approach assumes people put on weight because they lack willpower. But that’s not the case. They put on weight because food is too easy to come by – and because they adopt unhealthy eating habits, such as constant grazing.

Simply trying to starve yourself thin to reach a certain weight target makes your body do two things, Prof Gately says. Because you are taking in less calories, your body becomes less active, to preserve energy, so you become lethargic. And then it sends out powerful signals telling you to eat, eat, eat.

Short, sharp shock diets don’t work because they don’t address your state of mind and your lifestyle. So what happens at Carnegie Weight Management?

The children are given plenty of exercise and organised activities – everything from dodgeball to kick-boxing. And they’re also taught to run, throw and jump – skills that will enable them to take part in (and even enjoy) sport and PE when they go back to school. They won’t need any more notes from their parents to excuse them from PE, Prof Gately says, because they will fit in.

Children taking part in the camp also get three square meals a day. It is not a starvation diet, but proper, healthy, balanced food in appropriate-sized portions, Prof Gately says. The idea is to encourage the children to eat three proper meals a day, so that they are then not constantly hungry and always snacking on crisps and chocolate. The idea of decent meals is to ensure that hunger and food don’t become the constant focus of their lives, he says. “The idea is that we eat, and then get on with our lives.”

The final element of the Carnegie programme is to boost children’s self-confidence, through improving their social skills. They take part in games and social activities, learn what music is cool – and even have a day out shopping at Manchester’s Trafford Centre. That will include a Trinny and Susannah-style session where they will be shown what clothes look good on them.

The idea is to help them lose weight during the course, but also to equip them with the skills, confidence and knowledge to be able to have a happier, healthier life when they go back home, Prof Gayle says.

Which seems to make a lot of sense.


A day at the Carnegie camp

Residential summer camps at Carnegie are held at a Leeds private school. Children are accommodated two or three in a room in small dormitories. There is one member of staff for every three children.

A typical day runs as follows:

8am: wake up

8.30am to 9.30am: breakfast, choice of hot or cold, which might be bacon sandwich or cereal and toast

9.30am to 12.30pm: Three periods of activities, ranging from basketball, tennis, rugby, badminton, swimming squash and football to dodgeball, treasure hunts and capture the flag.

12.30pm to 1.30pm: lunch, such as a jacket potato with salad, or a sandwich

1.30pm to 2.30pm: rest hour

2.30pm to 5.30pm: three more periods of activities, this time activities such as drama club

5.30pm to 6.30pm: dinner, a balanced meal covering all the five food groups

6.30pm to 7.30pm: one hour “chill-out” time

7.30pm to 9pm: social activities, such as cinema trips, quizzes

9pm or 10pm: bedtime


Sadie’s story

Sadie, 16, said: “Before coming to camp I weighed 16.7 stone. My lifestyle was terrible. I would never exercise and would eat fast food and chocolate. The support I received at camp was amazing; the lifestyle lessons prepared me for life back at home and the variety of activities allowed me to make some amazing friends and give me the confidence to do them at home. I now weigh 13.5 stone; I go to the gym every morning before college, attend three classes at my gym and eat three meals a day. I still treat myself to chocolate and crisps, but they taste so much better when you have it once a week instead of every day.”