Cooking Skills and Recipes for Home
Campers learn how to cook the same very low-fat, low-density meals, snacks, and desserts they have enjoyed at Wellspring Vancouver -- an important reason why Wellspring campers are so successful at maintaining or continuing weight loss when they return home. With regular nutrition instruction and culinary classes, Wellspring trains campers to prepare the delicious meals they enjoyed so much at camp. Parents often communicate that the entire family benefits from the camper showing off his or her skills in the kitchen once the summer is over!
Find easy low-fat, low-density recipes like those Wellspring Vancouver campers will enjoy.
Knowing What to Eat
We are all inundated with misinformation about weight loss—miracle foods that will take off weight without effort, diet drinks that promise to melt away pounds, exotic berries that will keep you from being hungry. All of the advertising and media messages about diet add to the frustration and confusion your child likely already feels—frustration from trying to lose weight many times without success, and confusion about what actually works for long-term weight loss.
Wellspring Vancouver’s nutrition education program teaches campers what they need to know about weight loss and weight control. Instead of overloading students with information that doesn’t feel relevant to the typical teen, 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 market showing campers what to look for and what to buy when at home
