Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in our country, because it is so difficult to wade through all of the mixed messages about a healthy diet and lifestyle. Even when you have decided what type of diet plan, lifestyle overview, or fitness program you believe in, it can be astoundingly difficult to implement the plan in your life and to stick with it day in and day out.

Sometimes the best way to break those old habits is to remove yourself from the situation in which your habits have become lodged, and allow yourself to experience a new beginning in a different setting. This way you start fresh and let yourself develop new aspects of your personality that you would not be comfortable developing among the workaday rut that you have become stuck in.

In this sense, a weight loss camp is like a voluntary brainwashing that you enroll yourself in with the full knowledge that your brain has gotten a little grimy over the years. Even better, it's like a rehab program in which you replace your old unhealthy patterns of living with a fresh new set of habits that makes you feel vital and alive.

In another sense, a weight loss camp is just a heck of a lot more fun than trying to do it all on your own. It's like group therapy, where you get to know and interact with people who are going through a similar period in life as yourself and who have similar goals. This way everyone supports everyone else and you build up a real community feeling around your shared goals, struggles, and triumphs.

A weight loss camp is also simply a great excuse to just get away from it all. Many of these programs include spa days and adventure tours; you can go snorkeling and whitewater rafting and hiking and climbing. It's like summer camp but with weight loss counselors. Most of us make a lot of excuses why we'll just stay in town for our vacation time, and end up sitting on the couch watching television for most of t he time. This is a great reason to go out and commune with mother nature, get your muscles hard and your skin golden brown, and sharpen your mind against the smooth river rocks of time immemorial. This is, after all, camping. It's supposed to be fun!

While it is difficult enough to be overweight as an adult, it is simply torturous to be overweight as a teenager. Your hormones are raging, you feel uncomfortable and awkward in your own skin, and you are the subject of endless cruelty no matter how good you look. If you are obese, well, then you can expect it to be even worse than that.

But more than just the negative consequences, and despitethe natural difficulty of adolescence, the teenage years are supposed to be fun. Your supposed to have good times with good friends, and that what a teen weight loss camp experience is all about. Learning to get more and more comfortable in your own skin, to look and feel good, to make good friends and have lots of fun being active and exploring the world.

A good teen weight loss camp will not feel like "fat camp," it will feel like an adventure. A place where you learn to forage for nuts and berries as you trek through the wilderness with your motley band of newfound friends. Everybody has a good time, everybody can lose weight, and everybody comes away feeling better adjusted and more capable than they did beforehand.