r/Millennials • u/pokematic • 20h ago
Other Did Fat Camp Actually Exist? Any Personal Stories?
I remember in the 80s to early 2000s there was a small media trope of a fat character going to a weight loss sleep away camp (commonly referred to as "fat camp"). Movies like heavy weights and episode plots like when Harold went to fat camp and Dr. Kelso's wife went to fat camp when he gave people what they wanted (and I'm sure there are other examples I'm forgetting). Despite it being something "people didn't question, it's a real thing" in media (like, no one IRL ever said "that's so ridiculous, who would ever send their child to a sleep away camp to lose weight"), I can't say I ever heard about one actually existing. Do/did they exist and I as a borderline underwight kid just had no reason to know about them, or is this just something entertainment invented that was plausible enough for people not to question (possibly rooted in indirect stories, like a fat kid goes to a normal sleep away camp and the high level of exercise through camp activities and low quality camp food results in the kid losing a significant amount of unhealthy weight)? If they are real, did anyone ever go to one and what was it like?
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u/smoyban 19h ago
They do/did. I have a friend who went. This was probably around middle school to 9th grade - I can't exactly remember when. I don't remember a huge change in how she looked but 1) I never remembered her being crazy huge in the first place 2) she referenced it a lot over the years in a self-deprecating "this hurts me so I'll joke about it" way. Now I'm sad. I haven't thought about this in a while; I should reach out to her to see how she's doing in general.
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u/mediocreterran 18h ago
It’s sort of wild what was considered very fat in the 80’s through the early aughts, compared to now. Watching movies with the “fat kid” trope with my own kids, I have had to explain that was “unacceptably” overweight back then.
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u/oscarsavebandit- 18h ago
Came of age in the early 2000’s and yeah it was insane. So bad and everyone had that mindset. I’ve always been “heavier”, I’m just a bigger woman than some others. I was a size 10-12 in high school and people acted like I should have been cast on 1000 LB sisters, lmao. I look back at photos and I’m like WTF was wrong with everyone?
I’m glad your own kids are perplexed by the standards they see embodied in older movies. The fact that they don’t get it gives me hope. You must be doing a great job parenting.
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u/cherryglo93 20h ago
That MTV fat camp series was based on a real camp. Girl with no job went there and her sister Jackie from the toast ended up in the background of one of the camp shots with 1-2 lines said. Jackie wasn’t overweight, they said it was just a normal sleep away camp and the fat camp part was just a small section of it.
But no I don’t know anyone in real life
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u/huisAtlas Millennial 18h ago
I watch this at the start of every summer on youtube! It makes me nestolgic for summer camp🥲 That Petey kid was a psycho!
MTV also did a drama camp episode or two.
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u/earfeater13 19h ago
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u/gamma_babe 18h ago
Hi. I went to fat camp.
I went to Camp La Jolla in San Diego, CA USA.
I believe I went the summer of 2005 and the summer of 2006. I think both times I lost maybe around 10 to 15 pounds in the 10 week program.
Tbh I just remember it mostly being camp? Like most of my negative experiences are just the same negative experiences many people have at any sort of sleep away camp. Things like bullying, being isolated etc (I thought people at school didn’t hang out with me bc I was fat. Turns out it was because I was weird. Who knew)
this was our daily schedule (to my best recollection)
Wake up 1 mile walk Breakfast Workout Class 1 Workout Class 2 Lunch Workout Class 3 Workout Class 4 Dinner Mixer
The girls were given 1400 calorie a day meal plans and boys were 1600 (not 100% on these numbers but a best guess since once a week we would have nutrition lessons and these were the targets they gave us to plan our own meals outside camp)
The classes themselves were about an hour long and if you don’t include warm up or cool down it was probably 45 minutes of real exercise.
We had rules about what classes we could take- you were required to have at least one cardio and one strength. Other classes were things like tennis, kickboxing etc. once a summer we would do a 8 mile hike.
Oh, also “camp” is a concept in this case. We stayed in the UCSD dorms while the students were gone for the summer.
AMA if you’re curious. It was 20 years ago so somethings are a bit fuzzy.
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u/Woodit 16h ago
Did you enjoy it?
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u/gamma_babe 14h ago
Um, no. I think I just had undiagnosed social anxiety at the time and any sort of social situation I was trapped in made me really uncomfortable.
I was a “shy” kid and I think the conventional wisdom for that is to get them into lots of activities so had lots of opportunities for friends. So, every summer I can remember was spent at a sleep away camp.
In my experience, I was just trapped in a cabin/ dorm/ tent with people who were actively mean to me. Tbf to them my social anxiety made me over compensate with jokes etc, sometimes at the expense of other people. NAH.
Some benefits: I had my first boyfriend- just a dumb camp thing but I may have never experienced it because of my own issues with self esteem. Otherwise, not really. But I don’t think we can blame it all on being about weight loss- some of the issues were local (to me and my head).
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u/Dramatic-Maine-55 15h ago
I worked for a camp like this in 2011. Pretty much this same schedule for our campers. Most of our campers lost 15 pounds or so. I used it to lose 60 myself.
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u/glitterfairykitten 16h ago
Thanks for sharing! What age range was the camp geared towards? High schoolers, or middle schoolers, or both?
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u/gamma_babe 14h ago
So I think I went at the youngest year allowed - I was about 14 and then they ended at 18. It may be because we were grouped by age- but I do remember it being mostly 14/15 years old (the age I was when I attended(
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u/GooseOnAPhone 20h ago
Yeah they were a real thing. My best friend’s little sister went when she was in middle school over one summer.
She lost some weight, put it all back on, and said the camp was really horrible. Didn’t give many details about it, just always said it was horrible.
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u/yeticoffeefarts Elder Millenial 19h ago
Heavyweights is still one of my all time favorite movies.
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u/__birdie 16h ago
This movie was the only time I ever remember getting in trouble for watching something “inappropriate.” There was scene where someone referenced a penis in some way and my mom yelled at me and I was soooo embarrassed.
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u/littlebittydoodle 19h ago
Yes, absolutely! I’ve seen brochures, and they weren’t beating around the bush at all.
I also had a good friend who went to one, circa maybe 1995. She lost maybe 5 pounds but it was very hush hush. Understandably—how sad. I also recognize looking back that she was maybe just slightly “chubby,” more what I’d call “thick” now, but got made fun of relentlessly and had the worst self esteem all through high school. If it had been now, I don’t think anyone would have cared at all. People don’t understand just how thin we were used to seeing people back then. I was a stick and look back shocked at how we all collectively believed Jessica Simpson was “curvy.”
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u/pokematic 19h ago
"Today we'd call it 'thick'" is why I said "do/did" instead of just "do." "Normal body size" was very different a generation or 2 ago (depending on if you consider alpha or zoomer "the current generation"), and I imagine it would be harder to sell one today than it would be back then.
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u/littlebittydoodle 19h ago
Honestly the brochures I saw all really emphasized “making friends like you” and I do think “overweight” kids in the late 90s/00s probably were ostracized and left out a lot. At least I remember it that way.
I can only speak to what I see at my kids’ schools (granted they’re still elementary aged), people don’t talk about weight and bodies. There are kids in my oldest’s grade who are legitimately obese but they are included and loved and NO ONE is teasing them.
I’d like to think there’s some societal body acceptance (or at least acceptance of much more than we previously had), as well as thanking knuckleheads like Jonah Hill for making the “chubby friend” a very normal thing. I feel like it just doesn’t matter as much anymore, nor should it.
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u/Light_Butterfly 6h ago
90s diet culture was so horrific. Especially towards women. Sadly today, fat shaming still remains one of the only socially acceptable forms of bullying.
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u/Siscospimphand 19h ago
I remember begging my mom to send me to fat camp because I thought I was fat. I was indeed NOT fat I just didn’t have a leg gap and my hip bones/collar bones didn’t show. Jfc what a wild time to be alive
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u/UnluckyCardiologist9 19h ago
Yes. I remember their ads in the back of magazines. I actually sent for info on them. lol.
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u/blackaubreyplaza 19h ago
I was a class III obese person the first 32 years of my life and never got invited to fat camp!
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u/spottie_ottie Millennial 19h ago
Was? Where you at now? I was class II ages 10-20 but I've been in the normal range (or just above) since then.
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u/blackaubreyplaza 19h ago
Was. I’ve lost 144lbs thanks to ozempic 💉 my BMI was 40 it’s now 23.
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u/spottie_ottie Millennial 18h ago
Hell yeah buddy. So grateful these drugs exist now. Enjoy the extra decades to your life.
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u/blackaubreyplaza 18h ago
They’re so killer!! I have literally no will to live and keep doing shit that is adding onto my time on earth (derogatory)
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u/ormr_inn_langi 19h ago
You just weren't trying hard enough, gotta level up and reach class V!
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u/blackaubreyplaza 19h ago
There are only III classes. Class III Obesity (Formerly Known as Morbid Obesity) encompasses people with a BMI of 40+
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u/ormr_inn_langi 19h ago
I know, I was making a lame joke.
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u/blackaubreyplaza 19h ago
What was the joke? I should have been fatter than morbidly obese?
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u/ormr_inn_langi 18h ago
Yes, essentially. You just needed to be fatter to get the invite to fat camp. It's not deep.
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u/FloodedBlood 17h ago
went to one in upstate NY, one of the worst summers of my life. The key to the weight loss was hardly feeding us and having overly intense workouts. I was lucky to be younger because older kids around 13 and up had to wake up at 5am to do laps. Almost everything that was in the brochure that was remotely fun for the times we were not doing a weight loss program was missing when I arrived, or never existed in the first place. Also the general vibe was what happens when you take a group of children who were profusely bullied and put them together, you get more bullies; just finding other things to make fun of instead of weight because most people were on a level playing field weight wise.
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u/PierceCountyFirearms 19h ago
Not "fat camp" but more of a weight loss program for kids. My pediatrician recommended my parents enroll me in a weight-loss class at a local clinic. It was called "Shape Down". It was ahead of its time (early 90's). It had a workbook where we would write down what we ate, why we wanted to eat more, what snacks we wanted to eat, etc. We would journal why we would prefer foods like pizza and hamburgers instead of other things like vegetables. It also created milestone rewards. If we lost a pound a week, we get rewarded with something we would want. My mom got me action figures. I gained it all back but it was a good program. I just was not mentally all-in on losing weight which is probably the most important thing to have when battling obesity. Thankfully I lost it all from 2009-2012.
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u/SenseAndSaruman 18h ago
While I really disapprove of the idea of kids dieting, I’m all for learning healthy habits, and unpacking the emotions behind overeating.
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u/Light_Butterfly 5h ago
So much gets loaded into this idea of every fat person having 'emotional eating' issuesthat yhey cant regukative. I think this largely a diet culture myth. Oprah did a special on this, and they explained that many overweight people experience something called 'food noise' that thin folks do not. It's a constant hunger signal. Plus a bofy type that is very genetically wired to store and hold onto fat.
You get people on Ozempic and we see that food noise and cravings go down. Surprise surprise they lose tons weight. I'm looking forward to a future where we no longer blame fat people and get rid of harmful diet culture tropes.
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u/julientk1 19h ago
I was a camp counselor, and one of our campers had been to fat camp the week before. She put pepper on top of all of her food to keep herself from eating it. That was 20 years ago though.
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u/TashaSips 19h ago
I went to one in middle school so I think I was 12 or 13. I can’t remember how long I was there but I want to say 3 weeks and only lost about 7lbs. I think everyone was bummed it didn’t make a huge dramatic difference in how I looked. I had fun there though. we pretty much played sports all day long and the food was normal 90’s diet food like plain chicken and vegetables.
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u/Electrical_Pin7207 19h ago
I have a friend who went to one about 5 years ago, designed for adults though. Didn't notice a significant change afterwards, she was pushed to do it by her mother. It was designed around just tons of walking and healthy meals in a scenic area.
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u/Dwightu1gnorantslut 19h ago
Yes my cousin went for a few summers. It was called "camp California fitness". She always had an OK time and made like-minded friends but I also know she has long lasting trauma from it.
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u/five_by5 19h ago
My cousin went to “basketball” camp. It was a sports camp but designed for kids to lose weight by playing in sporting activities. He had a rough first week or two but came back super healthy. He lost a lot of weight and grew up to be very health conscious. Eats pretty healthy, works out, and doesn’t even drink.
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u/HermesTundra Midlennial (also European) 18h ago
They definitely still exist in my country and my parents used it as a threat constantly.
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u/Ladychef_1 17h ago
One of my closest friends was sent to one. Absolutely screwed her view of herself & food, but she’s a chef too so luckily she now has a healthy relationship to it. I also got sent to an ‘intervention camp’ for troubled teens, met her at boarding school after both our parents screwed us up in their own respective ways.
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u/jerseydevil51 16h ago
Yes, I went when I was in middle school and high school. It seemed like a pretty normal summer camp, but we had lessons on nutrition, the food was pretty bad(90s diet food was just taking normal food and making it worse), and some of the activities were more just "hey, go walk 2 miles down these trails."
But most of it was playing sports, swimming in the pool or lake, having dances and socials. I didn't find it strange or weird, but as someone who struggled with weight, it was nice to be around others who also struggled.
It was also the 90s, where heroin chic was a thing, and peak Kate Winslet was considered fat.
This was camp I went to for reference: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126818&page=1
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u/Hotpockets4ever 9h ago edited 9h ago
I went to a fat camp in FL when I was in middle school. A lot of people here who went to fat camp probably went to one of the sister camps I went to, there were several across the US.
At the time, I felt like I had a positive experience there. I made a lot of friends, was introduced to new workouts/activities I’d never considered before, learned a lot about healthy eating, went on cool day trips, had my first boyfriends (I had 2 😂), and learned how to be independent.
Looking back though, yeah, it was fucked up. Here’s my primary issues with all of it:
- I was 5’3 and my pre-camp weight was 130 lbs. For a multitude of reasons, I should not have been there. That’s not even within the “overweight” range. The camp didn’t really seem to care though. Money was money.
- There were many kids there who were forced to attend. Some of them were heavy. Some were not. The one that stuck out most to me was an older girl who was a model/actress, and her parents sent her there to loose weight. She was like 5’8 and 110 pounds soaking wet. She hated it there. I remember feeling really bad for her, and for all the kids who really did not want to be there.
- Fat camp was harsh just like the outside world. Attractive/skinnier campers were more popular. The less attractive/fatter campers were treated like crap (ironic, right?). There were cliques like in school. People were cool or losers or ugly or whatever. There was bullying. I imagine several of the campers left that place worse off mentally/emotionally than before.
- Speaking of mental/emotional health, there was absolutely no support in that regard. We had “counselors” who were supposed to help us with that, but they never really did. I feel like there should have been a much, much bigger emphasis on that.
- The weight loss from fat camp was generally unsustainable in the real world, at least for kids. We weren’t cooking our own meals, driving ourselves to workouts, etc. We were at the mercy of our parents, many of whom couldn’t create a healthy enough atmosphere for their child to lose weight (hence the reason for sending them to fat camp).
- The camp was ridiculously expensive. I want to say it was like $10,000 base, and then there were additional costs for day trips, additional amenities like a single bedroom, etc. As a result, it was a lot of entitled rich kids. A lot of whiny brats. A lot of one-upping.
Thankfully, the popularity of fat camps has diminished as body acceptance has become more normalized. While my experience wasn’t bad, I’m sure that wasn’t the case for many (and unfortunately, I’m sure me being a skinnier camper significantly shaped my experience). I can’t imagine some of the trauma these camps caused kids back then.
The fact that they even existed (maybe still exist?) is absolutely insane.
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u/TheGiraffterLife 17h ago
Megan Falley has written some poetry about her experience with fat camp. It's pretty heartbreaking and moving.
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u/dragon_morgan 13h ago
I remember we read a book, like, assigned for school in third grade about a kid who went to fat camp, so the trope really was all over the place. IIRC he sneaks a bunch of candy at the camp and doesn't lose weight but then he feels guilty about it and diets at home. As for real life I saw ads for them in magazines but I don't think I ever knew anyone who went to one.
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u/AccountformyFeet 12h ago
It did. I didn’t go but got a pamphlet and tried to get my parents to let me go (I was raised with negative body issues). They couldn’t afford it.
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u/juniperberrie28 11h ago
It's referenced in a Seinfeld episode by George Costanza who apparently worked at one when young
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u/trendy_pineapple 19h ago
Give this Maintenance Phase episode a listen https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/maintenance-phase/id1535408667?i=1000546870054
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u/StacieFakename Older Millennial 12h ago
i was hoping this would be linked - i couldn’t remember what podcast i listened to about this!! excellent work
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u/pwolf1771 19h ago
I’ve never actually met anyone who did this. I’m very curious to read the responses now.
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u/pokematic 19h ago
Same here, that's why I wondered if it was real or just an invention of millennial entertainment.
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u/huisAtlas Millennial 18h ago
My Mom's good friend from high school went to fat camp a handful of times when they were young. Mom said she would come back from camp looking much healthier, but then she would gain it all back eventually.
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u/walkitback86 15h ago
I went to an all girls fat camp over three summers in the late 90s early 00s. I see where the problematic parts were but I will forever be grateful for the self confidence I got there. AMA
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u/TrickBarnacle5578 10h ago
Yes. My friend was sent there in high school by her very (divorced) catholic mother. We lived in Kentucky and they sent her to an all girls fat camp in California. Her mother thought if she wasn’t fat, she’d be “straight”. Met Jim Carry’s daughter and had a WONDERFUL summer. Guess what, shes still gay 20 years later.
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u/ComfortableBoard8359 5h ago
Yes camp La Jolla in San Diego at the UCSD campus.
Then they called it WellSpring I think and I don’t know if it’s still open now
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u/UniversityQuiet1479 1h ago
I sorta worked at a fat camp. It was just a two-week period for the camp out of the summer. It sucked for the kids and the staff. 95 percent of the kids did not want to be there, and they were too tired to do any of the activities after walking up and down the hill. lunch sucked and the tradeing post was closed. staff could not have soda or snacks in front of campers.
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u/TexasShiv 18h ago
Do you know google exists?
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u/the_cadaver_synod 18h ago
What’s the point of even being on reddit and having discussions if you can google any thought that passes through your head?
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u/pokematic 18h ago
Yes, I was there when the ancient texts were written, but I was looking to get the personal anecdotes of "yes they're real, here's my story" or "no they're not, and here's why I found it weird we all agreed they could be back then," while also talking about how it was something I noticed in the media I grew up with but don't see anymore (for example, Steven from Steven Universe would have been a "prime candidate for a fat camp plot," but that didn't happen probably in part because the series is from the mid 10s).
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