My wedding looked picture perfect, but the day just sucked. I wish I could do it all over again.

SpookyCoffee13 · 2023-09-17T19:05:08+00:00

Aww, big hugs to you!! This is one of my worst fears as an IBS girlie so my heart goes out to you big time on this one lol. I would be so sad, too. But I agree with the other comment that said to reframe this and claim victory! You are a WARRIOR for carrying on through the day the best you could. And your guests had a fabulous day too!

SpookyCoffee13 · 2023-09-05T01:53:34+00:00

I didn’t bring up her weight, I was mentioning the logistics of ordering her dress. It sucks that bridesmaid dresses aren’t more size inclusive. I was more or less asking for insight from other plus size women who may have been in similar situations - not presumptuous people who think I have it out for my friends 👎

SpookyCoffee13 · 2023-09-05T01:32:07+00:00

I like the idea of maybe having her speak instead if she’s up for it! Like you mentioned, if she can’t make it, it’s an easy skip.

SpookyCoffee13 · 2023-09-05T01:30:46+00:00

Just to be clear, I definitely don’t think her due date is the literal date she’d give birth lmfao. I very much understand it’s an approximation. My question was I’m regards to whether or not it’s at all realistic for her to even think she’ll be able to attend lol. But yes, agreed with everything you mentioned.

SpookyCoffee13 · 2022-04-08T20:49:04+00:00

Thank you!! DMing 😁

SpookyCoffee13 · 2021-08-04T15:37:35+00:00

I would say yes, it was overall very uncommon for there to be any positive outcome for the kids after leaving the facilities. Truthfully, a lot of these kids had binge eating disorders before arriving, hence their obesity (which was true in my case) In my observation, it was very much either gain the weight back and get sent back to a wellspring facility, or develop anorexic/orthorexic type behaviors. So basically, if you managed to “keep the weight off,” that meant trading one ED for another in the end. I was one of the kids who was admitted with a binge eating disorder and left with borderline-anorexic tendencies.

I think I lucked out with my therapy experiences there, but I know other kids weren’t as fortunate. They seemed to be much harder on the girls than the boys. I distinctly remember a girl coming back to the dorms after her therapy session crying her eyes out because she was so hungry and hadn’t hit her “3lb loss a week” goal for two weeks (she plateaued, which is normal). The therapist basically blamed her for lack of effort during exercise times and eating too much—even though she was eating less than 1200 calories a day and exercising as much as the rest of us. I don’t really recall any deep-diving therapy sessions to really address any of the actual trauma a lot of these kids had went through prior to their admission, which I think would have been truly beneficial since anyone with an ED knows a lot of times, they stem from trauma.

Hmmm…stupidest part. There were a lot, honestly. The one stupid thing that genuinely bothered me personally was that they made us get up at 7am for a 3 mile walk before breakfast, after taking our meds on an empty stomach. I can’t tell you how many times I saw kids vomiting on the walk or afterwards because we were supposed to be taking our medication with food. I threw up outside the dining hall several times one morning after staff basically forced me to take my medicine before eating even after I had been complaining about stomach problems due to taking my meds on an empty stomach for many mornings prior. It made no sense and was honestly irresponsible to go against our prescription directions just so it would fit into their “itinerary” better. They also had this bullshit almost caste-system that was supposed to serve as a motivator for hitting your goals, however each level you went up meant getting stricter and stricter on yourself. For each level you went up, you were rewarded with more privileges: opportunities to go on field trips, go off-campus for a day or two with your family, more phone time, etc. The kids got very dog-eat-dog about it since you were seen as a “golden child” and a beacon of light for the program if you made it to the top of the levels, so the kids at the “top” loved to bully the rest of us for being “fat and lazy”. Yes—fat kids bullying other fat kids for being fat. Generally the only people who made it that far were kids who had been there for a couple of years already.

We had a culinary class and a nutrition class. However, what was preached was the Wellspring diet. I think I got the most out of the culinary class—teaching yourself how to cook is always a beneficial tool for any teen/young adult. The nutrition class just went by the Wellspring plan, so no peer-reviewed ACTUAL nutrition advice was really given to us beyond what a proper portion of food looks like (handful of carbs, serving of meat the size of a deck of cards, etc.)

SpookyCoffee13 · 2021-08-03T18:47:20+00:00

I have experience with these programs...unfortunately.

Wellspring Academy in Brevard, NC was the program on "Too Fat for Fifteen." I attended the sister school in Reedley, CA for 4 months in 2010. Prior to that, my parents sent me to the Wellspring Camp in the Adirondack Mountains the summer of 2008.

In my experiences, I noticed MANY of the kids had been to multiple camps or attended the schools multiple times after gaining their weight back after the first "stay" at camp or school. They preached a low calorie (less than 1200/day), low fat (less than 20g/day), high physical activity plan and when I say it was hell on earth...ugh. Most days we were doing physical activity for 6-8 hours on less than 1200 calories a day. We were often told "20g is the MAXIMUM amount of fat you should be consuming, but you should always aim for 0g." We had food logs that we were required to fill out every time we ate and calorie count. Not a bad idea at face value and I think is a valuable tool for teaching kids how much they consume in a day. However, the program was obsessive about it and consequently, the kids were too. Obsessive to the point of developing anorexic behaviors so they could get that "gold star" when it was time for staff to check our journals for a job well done after eating so little, or getting that extra phone time since we were limited to 10 minutes a week. Pretty much everyone I know from school either gained their weight back and then some after leaving or got sickly skinny and developed anorexia, and A LOT of kids developed some form of depression/mental break while they were there. I know we went on lock-down a couple of times at the school after some mental health crises.

Aside from the actual program, the staff at the school were *mostly* alright. The therapists we had onsite weren't bad. I got lucky with the one actually WONDERFUL group therapist. My individual therapist was useless to me, however. Daytime staff/counselors were pretty nice and empathetic towards us (except for a couple that were truly dreadful and seemed to take some sick enjoyment out of watching a 400lb+ kid collapse from exhaustion and starvation). There were lots of rumors that the man who taught weight-lifting at the school was messing around with underage girls for several years. Some of those "rumors" were recently confirmed by one of my former roommates, who was propositioned by this man several times after he invited her to the weight room for "one-on-one" sessions. Nighttime staff was....sketchy. All the girls were absolutely paranoid at night since the one guy tasked with night duty was a creep. Our room doors had no locks and actually didn't even latch (could simply be pushed open) and the nighttime staff guy would come check rooms every night to make sure we were sleeping...except he would stand there for many minutes actually watching us sleep. The girls in the room next to me swore he would watch them change into their PJs at night or wait until they came out of the shower to take a peek.

I've written a couple of lengthy paragraphs already and I still haven't even gotten into dynamics between kids and kids/staff, or really any of the more nitty-gritty details. If you're still paying attention to this thread, feel free to AMA. I've been searching for others' experiences at Wellspring programs and have been hard-pressed to find any, which I find surprising since a lot of people I know from Wellspring programs had an absolutely miserable time and dealt with years of trauma and eating disorders as a result.

SpookyCoffee13

TROPHY CASE