[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Food Psych, a podcast dedicated to critiquing diet and wellness culture, and answering your questions about intuitive eating and the anti diet approach.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Christy Harrison, and I'm a registered dietitian certified intuitive eating counselor, journalist, and author of the books, anti diet, the wellness trap, and the new emotional eating, chronic dieting, binge eating, and body image workbook, which are all available wherever you get your books or at christyharrison.com slash books.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's christyharrison.com slash books.

[SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, on this show, we avoid diet culture details like weight and calorie numbers, but we don't censor swear words or other adult language, so listener discretion is advised.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hey there, welcome back to FoodSake.

[SPEAKER_02]: Today I'm talking with filmmaker and podcast or Kelsey Snelling about her new podcast Camp Shame, which exposes the troubling history of a notorious weight loss camp.

[SPEAKER_02]: We get into the effects of deprivation and starvation, the cult-like nature of the camp, how it whether it's many scandals, whether it's really possible to run a camp for larger body kids that can be weight inclusive or ethical, how she made the podcast and lots more.

[SPEAKER_02]: And just to heads up that we go into a little bit of detail about the disordered eating and dieting behaviors that went on at the camp, we also touch on the self-harm and sexual abuse that happened there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Kelsey did a really great job of investigating all the sorted stories and including many different people's perspectives on the camp, from former campers to counselors and staff to lifers who'd done it all.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think this conversation has a lot of relevance for anyone who's done any kind of group diet program, or even maybe just dieted in general.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait to share the interview with you in just a moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, without any further ado, here's my conversation with Kelsey Snelling.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would love to hear about your personal history with diet and wellness culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, I think I come from actually a pretty healthy diet culture background.

[SPEAKER_00]: If that makes sense, I mean, my parents looking back were really good about not having magazines in the house, not really watching any kind of like entertainment media.

[SPEAKER_00]: My parents were never on diets.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was never really something that was discussed in our household.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, I still succumbed to a lot of habits of diet culture, which I think is interesting and just speaks to the power of our culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was in maybe middle school high school, of course, I started dieting, which is just insane because I was a scrawny little thing and was convinced that I needed to lose weight.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing that's really kind of scary looking back at that time in my life is I was actually an undiagnosed diabetic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was born with this rare form of diabetes called Modi and didn't know it until I was actually thirty thirty one years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'm in middle school.

[SPEAKER_00]: I already don't really know how to take care of myself or how to feed myself properly.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the nine years.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's three or less two thousand.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm eating lucky charms for breakfast.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course, I'm crashing halfway through the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm binging on more food.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm trying to restrict because I think I need to lose weight.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm binging again later at night.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I had this really toxic relationship with food.

[SPEAKER_00]: And didn't even realize it for many, many, many, many years, well into and out of college.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say probably in my late twenties is when I started to realize that my habits were not healthy and there were probably some psychological and physiological things going on there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I really started to get into the anti-diet space and [SPEAKER_00]: Finally got diagnosed with this form of diabetes and I feel like since then I have been on, you know, a much healthier path, but it took a really long time to get there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Tell me about Modi.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would love to hear more about that because it is such a rare condition.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Modi stands for a mature onset diabetes of the young, which I think is hilarious.

[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like some like medieval disease.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your body is essentially it still produces insulin, but it doesn't produce quite enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's not really like type two because type two is insulin resistance and I don't have that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not really like type one because in type one you are required to be on insulin.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't produce your own insulin.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like a weird in between and you have to get a genetic test.

[SPEAKER_00]: for this condition, to prove that you have this condition.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's something like two percent of diabetics are diagnosed with Modi.

[SPEAKER_00]: Although I do think it's underdiagnosed, so I will say that, but it's pretty rare.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so how did you, you didn't know you had it, but you were probably experiencing symptoms of it, like it sounds like the crashing and the response to sugar, maybe it was a clue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely ever since I was a little little kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking like four years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have memories.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a memory of when I was not even in kindergarten yet of eating a full bag of Hershey kisses at my friend's house.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like we had gone with her mom to the the gas station.

[SPEAKER_00]: We picked up this bag of Hershey kisses.

[SPEAKER_00]: My friend Kelly, she had two Hershey Kisses and she was good.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had the rest of the bag.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I was like four years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember being in like fifth sixth grade and eating an entire frozen cheesecake that I found in my parents basement freezer, like a ten inch cheesecake.

[SPEAKER_00]: Things that like normal people should not be able to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I really had this fixation with sugar for a long time and my dad is diabetic and his dad was diabetic.

[SPEAKER_00]: We regularly were going to doctors to do tests and to see if I also had diabetes.

[SPEAKER_00]: The thing about the nineties and the two thousands is really the only way that they would test for diabetes at that time is they would take your fasting blood sugar in the morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my fasting blood sugar was always fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they were like, you don't have diabetes, you're good.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't until I was out of college that I took that awful, the glucose tolerance test where they gave you like that nasty syrup and they make you drink it every two hours and they see how your body responds to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: During that test, this is when I was twenty-one, the doctors were like, no girl, you're diabetic.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are very diabetic the way that you're spiking and then it takes a while for your levels to come back down.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they diagnosed me as a type two diabetic.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was on that foreman for all of my twenties.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really unusual because, you know, every time you go to a new doctor, like, you know, say you go to the dermatologist and they, they want your entire medical history, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Every time you go to a new doctor, I was constantly having to tell these doctors, I'm a type two diabetic.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was always met with a lot of skepticism because typically with type two diabetes, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, that occurs in people who are in their forties, maybe even later, maybe they're not active.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just didn't fit any of those criteria.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there was a lot of suspicion around it, but I was like, I don't know, this is the diagnosis.

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess that's what I have.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have all these symptoms.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I was thirty, thirty one, I found this amazing doctor.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have to shout out Penn Medicine in Philadelphia because she diagnosed me with Modi.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was like, you had type two symptoms when you were too young to be having those symptoms.

[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like it runs in your family.

[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like your dad has the same thing because my dad was the same way where when he was a kid, he just couldn't stop eating sugar.

[SPEAKER_00]: He eventually was put on insulin, but his pancreas still made a little bit of insulin.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so like, is he type one?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is he type two?

[SPEAKER_00]: We weren't sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I did.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was like a saliva test.

[SPEAKER_00]: They looked at the gene.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were like, yep, you and your whole family probably all have the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Modi.

[SPEAKER_02]: that sounds like your specific way of relating to sugar was very much explained by this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting too that it sounds like you weren't particularly like shamed or made to go on a diet or something because of this relationship with sugar, which I feel like happens for a lot of people who for whatever reason might be eating large quantities of sugar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right, I mean, honestly at the end of the day, I was a thin kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: So even though I had this really toxic relationship with food and eating, and the other side of that too, as I was eating all this sugar, I wasn't really eating any real food.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like to this day, I don't really like food.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really only want to eat dessert.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you know, you could see for like a really active growing kid that could be a problem, but because I was then nobody ever flagged it.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's like the interesting flip side of weight stigma, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Mostly affects people in larger bodies and like the higher up the spectrum you go.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's more weight stigma, but it also affects thinner people too in these weird ways and sort of round about ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about how you got into this work you do now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your filmmaker and you just made a podcast called Camp Shame with an M that is about Camp Shame with an N.

It was a famous long running weight loss camp.

[SPEAKER_02]: and a very problematic one as you detail in your show.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you ended up being a counselor at Camp Shane in college, right, or just out of college.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm curious how you got involved with that and how it's sort of affected your relationship with food and your body from there.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when I was a preteen and a teen and in high school and in college, I became really engrossed with what we now would probably call the body positivity movement.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I had had all these issues with food and body image when I was younger.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was a freshman in college, I stumbled upon this book called The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe she was a professor at Cornell and I actually attended Ethica College in the same town.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this book really blew me away because what she did is [SPEAKER_00]: She basically catalogued a bunch of journals from Victorian era girls and women and she kind of annotated when these girls were describing body image issues and weight loss and you know how they were tracking the food that they ate.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really mind blowing to me because when I was in high school, all of my friends were very thin.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was really skinny as a kid, but after puberty, I, I wouldn't really say I got bigger.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was just, I was muscular.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was really active.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't super scrawny like the rest of my friends were.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had internalized this at the time and thought like, wow, I really felt like for a long time I was the only person who was dealing with these body image issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this was really before YouTube.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was way before social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one was really talking about this stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: I felt like everyone was just kind of secretly dieting and you weren't supposed to discuss it with your friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when I found this book, it really blew my mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh my god, this is so much bigger than me.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is an issue that goes way back before, well before I was born.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was really the first time that I realized that and was able to acknowledge that the problem wasn't with me and my relationship with food.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem was much deeper than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that kind of sent me on this mission where, you know, I just started reading as many books as I could and watching as many documentaries as I could about the topic.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so by the time I was a junior in college, the summer between my junior and senior year.

[SPEAKER_00]: My sister had sent me this summer job opportunity from a place called Camp Sheen.

[SPEAKER_00]: So my sister and I were both interested in working at a summer camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had never been camp counselors before.

[SPEAKER_00]: We both really love being outside.

[SPEAKER_00]: We think kids are hilarious.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we signed up.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were like, why not?

[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of ties everything together that I had always been interested in.

[SPEAKER_00]: So June, two thousand eleven, we show up at Camp Shane for concert orientation and what a summer it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was not anything like we were anticipating.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so what were you expecting it to be and what was the actual reality?

[SPEAKER_00]: So at the time, back in twenty eleven, if you were to Google Camp Shane, you would have found this really colorful website that advertised all kinds of wild activities.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's paintball, there's go cards, there's, you know, a lake and a banana boat, and you see these kids on a rope course, and everybody is having fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a nine week program for the kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a sleep away camp and overnight camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: It really seems like a cool opportunity to just like, [SPEAKER_00]: get in there and make some friends and meet some cool campers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, make some friendship bracelets.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why not?

[SPEAKER_00]: So we were really, really excited about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there were also at the time a lot of media pieces about Camp Shane.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were featured on Tire Banks on the Dr.

Oz Show on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

[SPEAKER_00]: And everyone just made it seem like it was this really [SPEAKER_00]: and powering place for kids where they were free from the bullies.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were encouraged to be active and find activity that they loved.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were being helped nutritionally along the way and kind of learning all the things that I wish I had known as a kid, you know, like don't eat a ton of cheesecake that's gonna make you crash later in the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it just really seems like a wonderful place and that's one hundred percent what we were expecting.

[SPEAKER_00]: We thought that we would be going in and helping kids develop their body image.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't make sense now when I look back, but at the time we thought that there was a much more body positive angle to the whole thing and to the programming.

[SPEAKER_02]: From what you say in the podcast, too, it sounds like that comes from the founder, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: The woman who founded the camp seemed to have that angle somewhat in the sense of wanting to create a safe space for kids in larger bodies to feel good about themselves, to not feel like they're being picked last all the time for sports, to be able to have relationships, you know, and so that aspect of it seemed, I can see why you would assume maybe that there was a little more body positivity than there actually was.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, at the time, too, I think that's what was selling.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a big push toward body positivity around that time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think Camp Shane was trying to capitalize on that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a registered dietitian as you know, and when I was in school in my training and sort of the final stages, my dietetic internship was right around the same time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember there were rotations available at Camp Shane for dietitians, and I didn't do it, but I think that some people in my cohort did and [SPEAKER_02]: What?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they were like, diatetic interns coming from, you know, New York City schools.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm so curious.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk more about this soon, but like, you know, the leading, the nutrition groups and stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I wonder how much these interns who were not yet credentialed and qualified were sort of involved in doing the work that should have been done by a registered audition.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right, happy to talk about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, but before we do, I would just love to hear more about your experience there and sort of what you saw.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what was the reality of this camp and what did it do to the kids relationships with food and their bodies?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, immediately when I arrived, I realized very quickly that things were not quite as advertised.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of the counselors had to show up about a week, week and a half early, depending on your role, to essentially set up the camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were cleaning, we were hauling mattresses back and forth, we were sweeping, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, things that a maintenance team really should have been doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there wasn't any training, which I found very, very odd.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we would do some ice breakers.

[SPEAKER_00]: We, I think, did a couple of like role playing what to do if there's conflict between your campers.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there was absolutely nothing specific to the content and the mission of the camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we were not taught to identify disorder to eating.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were not even really taught with a nutritional philosophy was supposed to be at camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: To this day, I'm not really sure what their approach specifically was, other than just, you know, calorie restriction and extreme deficit.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there was a lot of information that was missing from that orientation.

[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't really get any education on what these kids might be dealing with.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them are really troubled and traumatized and they're bullied at school and they have these issues with their parents who are constantly berating them about their weight.

[SPEAKER_00]: None of that was explained to us or made clear to us or we weren't prepared for that in any way.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, that was a problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, as counselors, we were going to the cafeteria every day and we're being fed these meals that are [SPEAKER_00]: insane.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, no human would classify what we ate at Camp Shane as a meal.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, my most specific memory is we were given two French toastics at breakfast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, she's those little spongy, like, bready cinnamon.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was bizarre.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of figured, okay, it's orientation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once the campers get here, things will get better.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was not the case.

[SPEAKER_00]: So right out of the gate, there were issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then once the campers arrived, day one.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was actually my birthday, the day that all these campers showed up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I turned twenty one that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what a birthday it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was pouring rain.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kids were miserable.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were crying.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a couple of kids were excited because they were return campers and they were happy to see some of their friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for the majority of my campers, there was a lot of emotion, a lot of negative emotion, a lot of crying, not wanting their parents to leave them behind.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I had never been a camp counselor.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, you know what, nine weeks is a long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kids are upset.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then once everybody kind of settled in, I started to hear these stories about like, oh, I've been coming here for three years and they don't feed you and all the counselors are really mean and they yell at you and I was kind of starting to piece together that like this was more than just homesickness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had the thirteen year old girls, so you know, they're not super young.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, they're aware of what's going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I trusted what they were telling me.

[SPEAKER_00]: and things really just as the summer went on got worse and worse and worse and it's crazy because sometimes I think about things that happened at camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it was years that I was at the summer camp and then I go back in my journal and I'm like holy shit that happened on day three.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And really the way that I would describe the counselor experience is just constant chaos with no direction and with no support.

[SPEAKER_00]: So again, these kids are coming in with some of them already very serious issues around food, around self-worth, around relationships.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, it seemed like every twenty minutes, there was a camper [SPEAKER_00]: you know having a breakdown and crying because they hated their bodies and they wanted to lose more weight and I only lost pounds this week and I should have lost pounds again these are thirteen-year-old kids really really disturbing stuff and you know eventually it it kind of escalated campers were threatening to cut themselves campers were threatening suicide [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, these are thirteen-year-old kids and I understand not all of this was legitimate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of this probably was for attention, but I was a twenty-one-year-old child and I wasn't trained to know the difference between what is a real threat and what is not a real threat.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was no system in place for like, who do we report this to?

[SPEAKER_00]: What happens?

[SPEAKER_00]: How does this type of thing escalate?

[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of just us counselors running around [SPEAKER_00]: shouting to you know various higher-ups like this is a problem this is a problem and then they would kind of nod their heads and they would move on with the day so it really came to a point where I felt and I know a lot of other counselors felt like [SPEAKER_00]: the actual literal lives of these kids were in our hands.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we were not equipped to handle that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was, I really don't like to use the word traumatizing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that word gets overused a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in this case, it was extremely traumatizing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I left camp at the end of the summer, I was really messed up after that experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was [SPEAKER_00]: anxious and afraid to go in public for many months.

[SPEAKER_00]: I started my senior year of college at the end of that summer and I remember going a couple of weeks early thinking like, oh, you know, hang out with my friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get drinks.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm finally twenty one.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll kick off the senior year right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was unable to leave the house many times before nightfall.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would only go out when it was dark.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think part of that was that I had developed a lot of self-consciousness around my body in the way that I looked while I was at camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think another part of that was just an emotional shutdown where [SPEAKER_00]: I had been in this high-stakes situation for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and it just got to a point where I didn't have an emotional response to anything anymore and I was kind of self-conscious about being around other people because [SPEAKER_00]: You know, normally where I would laugh, I didn't feel compelled to laugh.

[SPEAKER_00]: When someone would tell me something sad, I didn't feel compelled to cry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just kind of felt like a sociopath after that summer.

[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like you numbed out and response to all that pain that you saw around you, which is understandable and like such a common experience, I think.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder how much of also like what you experienced and what the kids experienced, you know, the sort of behavioral volatility and stuff that they were going through and the emotional shut downness and sort of agorphobia, I guess, a little bit of what you were going through was like related to the starvation, the deprivation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because you mentioned in the podcast that kids were so starved and deprived that they were like sneaking in food, there's a black [SPEAKER_02]: market in food right they would like order food to a whole in the fence of it you know smuggled in and black market candy being eaten in the toilets and stuff like that like this is the behavior of desperate people right and the kinds of portions and weeks and weeks of calorie deprivation that you talked about in the podcast was like [SPEAKER_02]: just staggering to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and made me think of things like the Minnesota starvation experiment, which is very old at this point, but it's kind of like one of the only real studies on starvation that we have because now that kind of study would never get approved by an institutional review board, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But at the time, they were like doing it for the war effort.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so they were able to subject people to what they called semi starvation, which was really drastic.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we now can see that that level of calorie deprivation, which is like, [SPEAKER_02]: what gets recommended on popular diets, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like seen as, oh, this is sort of a light diet or whatever, but it was taking away half of their energy half of their necessary calories.

[SPEAKER_02]: And these men like totally went bonkers too, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody, I think he tried to chop his hand off or something like it was just like wild wild stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: The mental and physical toll that it took on people was extreme.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was certainly the case with the campers as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's why everything felt so high stakes.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the highs were higher and the lows were lower.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's where a lot of like the compulsion to self-harm came from.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I do think that's where a lot of the for lack of a better term drama stemmed from.

[SPEAKER_00]: Was that these kids were not being fed?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing about Camp Shane that I think is really strange and really will give you insight into kind of like how psychologically damaging it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of terrible things happening, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Kids are being starved.

[SPEAKER_00]: kids develop this hatred of their bodies, kids are becoming really competitive about weight loss, they're becoming competitive about the dating and the opportunities they're at Camp Shane.

[SPEAKER_00]: You would wake up in the morning and there would be a camper crying and talking about how she wanted to purge because she ate a potato chip.

[SPEAKER_00]: and then you hear this announcement over the loudspeaker that's like there's a parade after lunch and then everybody's like cheering because there's gonna be a parade and then you hear that like [SPEAKER_00]: A camper is cutting and no one is doing anything about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then there's a bonfire.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really a mind-fuck when you're there and it's constant.

[SPEAKER_00]: Minute after minute, day after day after day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know for me, and for a lot of the people that I interviewed, when you leave Camp Shane at the end of the summer, you kind of feel like it was a fever dream.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, what the hell was that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Once you removed from it, you're like, oh my God, was that even real?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that kind of scared a lot of people into silence.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we all sort of gaslit ourselves into being like, was it that bad?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, am I crazy?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I look back at the pictures.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I see these pictures of, you know, these floats and these costumes and people doing dances and everybody's playing soccer and they're cheering.

[SPEAKER_00]: But my actual memories are so much darker than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so [SPEAKER_00]: That was really the catalyst for me starting to do this investigation and do this research is I wanted to know, am I crazy?

[SPEAKER_00]: Was my experience unique or did other people see what I saw?

[SPEAKER_00]: And what did you find?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, turns out I'm not crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I found is that things were much worse than I had even experienced.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned, you know, I saw a lot of disordered eating and I saw a lot of self-loathing and I saw that side of things at Camp Shane for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: But as I started interviewing more and more people, I learned that [SPEAKER_00]: It was much more malicious than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: In my reporting and my interviewing, at this point, I've talked to probably maybe two hundred and fifty people just because since the release of the podcast, I've been getting so many additional messages and I've been talking to so many more people.

[SPEAKER_00]: and the stories that just keep coming out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they shouldn't surprise me at this point, but they continue to surprise me.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, stories about, oh, in the nineties, our snack was a diet coke, or was an ice cube with splendor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely terrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or, you know, you hear these stories of like the skinny kids that got sent to camp, because they knew that they would be the most popular.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now they're put on this diet and they're losing weight and then all kinds of sexual assaults going on between campers but also between counselors and campers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, all kinds of issues came out of this camp and stemmed from the fact that kids had low self-worth.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had low self-esteem oftentimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was just reinforced at camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was reinforced that the smaller your body is, the more respect you get, the more applause you get, the more valuable you are.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, when I heard some of those stories of sexual abuse and assault, I think it was Seth maybe who had sort of the biggest story around that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just described this horrible abuse he endured from a counselor.

[SPEAKER_02]: It made me think about the cults that break down their members self esteem by starving them, you know, and like the way that [SPEAKER_02]: people who are sort of seeking something right or not feeling good about themselves can be lured into these like high demand places and you know these additional restrictions put on them where they're not eating enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're not in contact with the outside world because that's the other thing about Camp Shane too is like they restricted peoples like kids access to their parents right they weren't able to call out unless they were being supervised by [SPEAKER_02]: a counselor or a monitor for like five minute phone calls and if they set anything negative about the camp, the counselor was trying to hang up the phone.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just, it really does feel in some ways very cult-like and very just a breeding ground for that kind of abuse.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did you experience that as well?

[SPEAKER_00]: Totally, I had an interesting perspective at Camp Shane because I came in as kind of an outsider.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was only there for one summer.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really know anything about camp before I arrived.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the people at Camp Shane are what we call lifeers.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you'll hear us talk about that in the podcast where you go as a camper, you're a return camper year after year, you become a counselor.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are people who were at Camp Shane for ten plus years.

[SPEAKER_00]: So for me as an outsider, I do remember feeling kind of like, you know, I'm not really part of this in a way.

[SPEAKER_00]: I felt much more like an observer.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I started to produce this podcast with my production team, that cult topic came up a number of times.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually hadn't really thought about it before.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, as I was talking to people about their stories, [SPEAKER_00]: My producers once in a while, they'd be like, you know, you and these other shaners, you're talking about these stories as if like, this is a hilarious story, but like, you know that's really screwed up, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd be like, yeah, I know it's screwed up, but it's also like, when you're at camp, it doesn't feel that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of started to piece together, like, this is very much like a cult where when you're in it, [SPEAKER_00]: You're not really thinking about how weird it is to the outside world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when other people come in with a fresh set of eyes, they're the ones who make you realize, you know, this is not normal.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a normal place.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's so fucked up and it's so insidious.

[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like because I mean, I'm curious the lifeers that you interviewed, how they experience that, how they were able to sort of keep coming back year after year, because you know, it sounds like some of the kids were like dreading it and felt the sort of horror of the situation they were like, [SPEAKER_02]: very aware of that or just knew that they didn't want to be there and that's something felt off.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then other people maybe were able to suppress that somehow or didn't get that feeling because maybe their experience was different or for whatever reason and not sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm just curious about that sort of what made lifeers able to just stick it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of get chills sometimes when I talk about this because this is the part that I think is so emotional.

[SPEAKER_00]: because a lot of these lifers were fully aware that this was not enough food to live off of.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were fully aware that camp was not being run properly and the supervision was not as it should have been and there was negligence abounding and the equipment was all broken like they knew this.

[SPEAKER_00]: But these are people who are in higher weight bodies who in the outside world.

[SPEAKER_00]: are completely ostracized.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not getting asked on dates.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their parents are embarrassed to have a bigger kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: They just don't feel like they belong.

[SPEAKER_00]: They feel like they can't be themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they want so badly for this camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: to be all that they want it to be that they're willing to overlook all of those red flags.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that to me is so heartbreaking and that's a big part of what made camp so dangerous is they knew they could be negligent.

[SPEAKER_00]: They fully were aware that they did not have to put much effort into the camp, much money into the camp, and that people would still come back because that's how desperate people are to fit in.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that is profound and so sad.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think really speaks to the toll that Wade stigma has on people and anti-fat bias has on our society, like something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we haven't even gotten into all the nitty gritty details of like lack of supervision or the lack of equipment and the safety issues and all that stuff, which just like, I mean, it is madness.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is just pretty bad.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's really bad.

[SPEAKER_02]: to go through all that, to endure that, to be aware of that, especially as they're growing up, because these campers would go from kids to adolescents to some cases of adults who would come back and work there, to be in a growing awareness like that of all the things that are so messed up and not right about this place, and to still choose to come back, because it's better than the alternative, is just heartbreaking.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so sad and transparently when I started this project, I went into it fully with the expectation that this was an expose that I was going to bring this camp down, that I was going to reveal everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the more that I interviewed, it weirdly became this love letter to Camp Shane because [SPEAKER_00]: the more people that I talked to, the more I realized, like, this really was a meaningful place to so many people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I was coming in as an outsider.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was only really seeing how screwed up it was from that lens.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the more that I interviewed these lifers, especially the more that I understood why people continue to go back.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually had this really profound moment when I was interviewing [SPEAKER_00]: So shout out to Nelson.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nelson was a life for it camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: He started as a camper.

[SPEAKER_00]: His mom was a camp nurse.

[SPEAKER_00]: He became a counselor.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was there for years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Nelson and I worked together in twenty eleven.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't talk too much to the boys at camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of stayed away from boys camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were kind of insane.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do know Nelson, you know, he was super gregarious and he was always down for anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was a counselor at the time that I was there.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was always like the first one to like dress up or like lead a team like just this like larger than life personality.

[SPEAKER_00]: And during my interviewing, I talked to Carl Evans, who was also a life or camper turn counselor.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Carl was the one who told me that Nelson had actually been going to camp since before my time.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was a counselor there, I had no idea what anybody's history was.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when I talked to Carl, he was like, oh, yeah, Nelson was one of my campers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like he had been going to camp for years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Carl told me that when Nelson first came to camp, he was shy.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was reserved.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was quiet.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that made me like so emotional.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could see that like camp is the place where like he was his best self.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a, in a homo moment for me where I was like, okay, I get it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kimberly does transform people.

[SPEAKER_00]: sometimes and not so great ways, but when you are in this world where your body is removed from the equation, you can really be yourself and you can really be confident.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a really beautiful thing about Camp Shane.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, that's why people were so drawn to it and they went back year after year.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and why it must be so like confusing and hard for people to make sense of it now so many years later, right, when they're, you know, reflecting back on it because it was a pivotal time and so many people's lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: It gave them so much and yet all that was wrapped up with so much bad stuff, so many darker things that they probably are still having to sit through now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of people that I've spoken with also, I think if I had talked to them ten years ago, they would have said, Oh, Camp Shane was the greatest experience of my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: But now that they do have some distance, they can look back and they can say, Yeah, it was great because I had my first boyfriend.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was great because I made good friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was great because I remember this fun activity.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they're better able to parse it now and realize that, you know, if those things were removed, this would have been a horrific experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: the good stuff was enough to keep people coming back and keep their parents sending them there and keep it from being totally exposed much sooner sounds like and curious how how the camp was able to pull the wool over so many people's eyes right because there was just such fraud really going on between what they what they promised and what they delivered [SPEAKER_02]: And even, you know, in some of the sounds like in later years, there was even more promises of greater stakes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like we have a doctor on staff that can take care of all your child's medical needs and the reality of that was like, no, there was no doctor.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was barely even a nurse there.

[SPEAKER_02]: How did that continue for as long as it did and sort of with heightening levels of promises not being delivered?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's incredible to me and one of the core questions of this project for me was, how did this place stay open for so long?

[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, David Attenberg, the owner of Camp Shane, is not a charming or convincing person.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a story about a con man who, you know, he swept people off their feet and he could, whatever the phrase is.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, this wasn't a charismatic leader that was, you know, getting people to bend who is well or whatever, go along with some massive, like, vision that he had.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was not that at all, at all, and still parents believed this man.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's absurd to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I truly believe that the reason this camp was an operation for as long as it was is solely because of this desperation around weight loss.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think, of course, a part of it is kids wanted to go back year after year and see their friends and maybe they didn't tell their parents the whole story because, you know, they didn't want their parents to withhold them from the camp, the camp experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I really think a bigger part of it is a lot of these parents were kind of absentee parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a camp for pretty wealthy kids who come from wealthy families.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, that's not true of everyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were some great parents who just didn't know what to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: They saw their kids struggling and they thought this was an answer and, you know, sure, I'll do anything to help my kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I would say a lot of the parents were the ones who caused body issues in their kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of these parents were sending [SPEAKER_00]: their thin children to camcene.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of these parents were telling their kids, you know, you better lose weight for your bot mitzvah, your bar mitzvah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we had a ton of twelve and thirteen year olds at this camp for that reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that people are just really willing to turn a blind eye.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: You say the ropes course has the ropes of being eaten through by rats?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you're losing weight, it's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or, oh, the quote unquote nurse gave you broth when you broke your rib.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: You still lost pounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember how happy you were when you came home and you could fit in all these clothes?

[SPEAKER_00]: Really, it has to be that because if this was any other type of camp, parents would have pulled their kids immediately.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would have called the police.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would have alerted the media, camp would have been shut down right away and we wouldn't be here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it was this bigger promise of weight loss and like what that would mean for the kid and in some cases the family, right, like this sort of parents that were felt like their kid was a reflection on them and that their child needed to lose weight in order to reflect better on them or whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: and yet like he said not all parents were like that and there was some I mean it was interesting to hear that some of the kids had actually convinced their parents to let them go like the kids were the driving force which also speaks to like how insidious weight stigma is and die culture you know really hooks kids at a young age in some cases and [SPEAKER_02]: makes them think that they would need something like that or, you know, the experiences of stigma that they've had made them feel that they need a place like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: It does make a lot of sense that, you know, without the diet culture piece, a lot of that stuff would probably have come to light earlier and resulted in the camp, not existing, much earlier than it jumped down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing that is really fascinating to me is that David was not the only adult at this camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were plenty of adults there through the years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And some of those adults that I've spoken with still don't believe anything was wrong, which is really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a number of things that contributed to this camp being an operation for as long as it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: And until things got so, so bad, that literally a state investigation was open against them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They continued business as usual.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's terrifying as a parent to think about that and think about places you could send your kid.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I would never in a million years, send my children to weight loss camp at any sort of camp, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So a fun activity for the summer and, you know, something to do while schools out.

[SPEAKER_02]: kind of scary to think like how do you really know and how do you really choose because this camp was being inspected you know on a regular basis I assume like camps they at least renew every year and is my understanding I know at least in my state I don't know about New York or they were based or no they were Connecticut right they were in New York they moved to Connecticut for the last couple years yeah that's right how did that go on you know [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I did pull a number of inspection reports through the years and Camp Sheet did not have the most outstanding grade on many of those reports.

[SPEAKER_00]: The thing with summer camps is there really are not a lot of laws around how they're run, who is operating them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's something like only thirteen states require background checks for their staff.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Kempstein obviously was not doing that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think Simon tried.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think he had his staff from what I've heard like Google people.

[SPEAKER_00]: But again, a lot of this is before social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, what are you even gonna find on Google?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's just really not a lot of regulation and it varies.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those regulations do vary state to state.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes city to city.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as a parent, I mean, you don't have time to investigate every single summer camp that, you know, you just assume it's a summer camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's past inspection.

[SPEAKER_00]: The staff are safe people for my kid to be around.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you think otherwise?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I have signed my daughter up for things and retrospect and like, oh, I wonder if there's any sort of reports on this place and looked into it and been like, right.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's so sad too is like, I really don't mean for this project to be [SPEAKER_00]: anti-summer camp I think especially in the age of helicopter parenting summer camp is a wonderful thing for kids to experience especially for kids like shaners who come from these wealthier families a lot of them grew up in the city and you know you get to be outside in the woods and you're in a cabin and there's bugs and you're learning all of this independence and all of this responsibility and your forming relationships and [SPEAKER_00]: I think all of that is so crucial to development.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just wish that it was much safer environment.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think the original promise of Salma, who is the founder of the camp, of like creating a safe space for kids, you know, the part of it that was sort of in line with body positivity or fat acceptance, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because there were other parts of her original vision that were very much die culture.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was variance, got some die culture from the beginning.

[SPEAKER_02]: that vision of giving kids a safe place to be themselves and to be kids and enjoy all the things that childhood should bring if you're not being stigmatized for whatever aspect of your identity like that part of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wish there was a camp like that, you know, that could give kids the opportunity to like feel good about themselves and be among people who are like them and who understand them and support them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that you brought this up because I actually want to ask you what you think about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the core questions for me is, is it possible to have a summer camp like this that is done ethically?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because to your point, the camaraderie and the community, [SPEAKER_00]: is so crucial and, you know, having a place where kids can try new sports that are intimidating in the outside world or where they can learn to love movement, where they can learn about nutrition in an actually like practical way.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that type of camp would first of all, it couldn't be centered around weight loss.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's just no way that that would ever make sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and there would have to be a lot of education around the dangers of diets and eating disorders and there would have to be therapists to help these kids identify their own behaviors.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, and curious what your thoughts are on that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think it would be so tricky to do ethically to do well and to do without tipping over into the sort of weight loss, you know, diet culture stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, it's interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was a place called Green Mountain at Fox Run and Vermont that was sort of a, I can't like this for women for grownups that was, [SPEAKER_02]: You know, centered around body acceptance and giving up dieting and learning to love yourself and learning to, you know, engage in movement in a positive, joyful way and learning nutrition in a way that was like sustaining and, you know, non diet and it operated for many years.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was like forty five years or so.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, founded by one woman and family run.

[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of people had great experiences with it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But their marketing was interesting because they had to, you know, remember seeing discussions in online forums that I was a part of with the, because I believe the owner was a dietitian.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she would talk about, like, sort of the, [SPEAKER_02]: difficulty of threading this needle of like trying to get people to come to a place like this that who maybe didn't know that what they needed was a non-died approach right who like did feel dissatisfied with their bodies who wanted to lose weight the language they were using was sometimes like [SPEAKER_02]: something that people in the, you know, anti diet weight inclusive space were sort of critical of because it would be like, you know, find your healthy weight or something like that, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like, they were trying to appeal to people who still wanted diet culture and were coming out of diet culture, but they were offering something totally different.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I just don't know, you know, it closed the original owner, retired, I believe, and I don't know if I don't know anything about the behind the scenes.

[SPEAKER_02]: I really don't have any insight information about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like, I wonder if something like that for kids could be financially viable or sustainable if they didn't have some sort of die culture marketing or like die culture, Jason marketing attached to capture the parents and the kids who [SPEAKER_02]: you know, thought that they needed to change their body, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I just don't know how, how big of a market there is for something like that that it would be able to operate totally independently of die of culture.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe in a small scale, you know, maybe a really small day camp or small sleep away camp or something like that, but nothing on the scale of what Camp Shane was because [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I just don't know how they keep the volume and like attract the clientele that is going to keep coming back.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's also this piece of like, you know, die culture's business model is so effective and sustaining because it [SPEAKER_02]: creates repeat customers right like people will go on a diet lose weight temporarily almost inevitably gain it all back and then blame themselves or blame you know in some cases maybe blame the diet in the sense of like oh well maybe this one wasn't right for me so I need to try another one or [SPEAKER_02]: be like blame themselves and think I just need to buckle down harder I just need to have more willpower my life got in the way but if I could just get back to you know sticking with this and so I'm going to go on a retreat or I'm going to do this program for six months or whatever three months and [SPEAKER_02]: get myself back on track.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the engine of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I definitely heard in your podcast, like some elements of that too, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: That kids were repeat customers of Camp Shane because they would lose weight temporarily.

[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, it wouldn't stay off because that's how bodies are.

[SPEAKER_02]: The most most cases they want to get back to where they feel safe.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so then sort of had this built in repeat customer base.

[SPEAKER_02]: because of what it was creating versus a camp that was a weight inclusive body affirming type of place.

[SPEAKER_02]: There are so many pressures from diet culture and so much going on in the outside world that maybe repeat customers would be there for it because they need a refuge from all that stuff to a point, but maybe at a certain point once you've internalized it enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I do know people who've graduated from working with me and just kind of gone on their merry way and I've stayed in touch with them and they do not backslide.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they're like happy in their lives and with their bodies and their relationship with food and despite all the sort of diet culture pressures around them, they're able to just keep on going because they have experience the alternative and they don't want to go back there.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder if there were enough people who sort of came out of it with that self-love and those skills and that sense of [SPEAKER_02]: I'm good enough as I am and I don't need anything to feel better about myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: They might not eat champ, but it's more either for that reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's tricky.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know there are a number of people of parents and staff from Camp Shane who saw what Camp Shane promise, the experience, the actual terror of Camp Shane, and then went on to attempt to open their own camps.

[SPEAKER_00]: you know, thinking like, well, there's still this demand.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to do it more ethically, but I've just always kind of been like, I mean, as long as there's a scale, and as long as there's we're talking about kids, like, I don't know that this is, there's a way to do this, you know, I agree.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think if it involves a scale and intentional weight loss and children, it's [SPEAKER_02]: not going to be helpful or ethical or something that's really going to truly help children's well-being over the long term.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think if it, you know, if it were something that was fully weight-neutral, weight-inclusive, it didn't involve the scale that wasn't about weigh-ins and things like that, but actually truly about finding peace in your body and well-being for you, whatever that looks like at any size.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a great idea, but I think still executing it is tricky.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because even with like, you know, Green Mountain of Fox run, which their program seemed generally pretty good even despite the marketing had some dietary flavors.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like to me, it was the program seemed pretty much in line with weight inclusivity.

[SPEAKER_02]: And yet there were still some things that like, depending on where you were in your relationship with food and your body might not have been appropriate.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because if you go to a program for, I don't remember how long it was, a few weeks, whatever, are you really ready to get into the, not necessarily my new show, but like into into the weeds of nutrition a little bit.

[SPEAKER_02]: without turning it into a diet in your mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, they had like a plate model that was this sort of non-diet plate model.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was different from, you know, the government's my plate.

[SPEAKER_02]: But not entirely, you know, I like, still a plate.

[SPEAKER_02]: Still a plate.

[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, still had, you know, sort of ideas about what foods to go wear and how much of your menu they should make up and stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I just think, I don't know if you can really jump to that without, or even if some people ever really want that, once they have [SPEAKER_02]: heal their relationship with food, but especially if you're earlier in your stages of healing your relationship with food and I teach an intuitive eating course.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love the intuitive eating principles, sort of the way they're laid out where a new gentle nutrition is the last principle.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like that for a reason because the authors of the original book into it of eating who developed the model found that people really needed to do all this other work, breaking down the diet mentality, getting back in touch with their hunger and fullness, you know, re-experience in pleasure and food, [SPEAKER_02]: all of that stuff before they could ever sort of look at nutrition in a gentle way and not just turn it into another restrictive depriving sort of diet.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it would be really tricky to do in practice.

[SPEAKER_02]: I definitely understand the impulse of wanting to create a space like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe you just create spaces like that that are way inclusive without having to advertise it as such and you don't have food.

[SPEAKER_02]: As a part of it, really, the food is just good food that kids would enjoy and they can people serve themselves like cafeteria style or whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: The activities are fun activities that everyone would enjoy and they have modifications for people of different abilities and sizes and all of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And a place where it's kind of not a thing would also maybe be really beneficial.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know there's, I think it's called Fat Camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the retreat for, I think it might just be women, adult women.

[SPEAKER_00]: Have you heard of this?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think so.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just like a fat positive vacation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that sounds great.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's babe camp, virgin tow bars.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Virgy, of course.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah, there's probably lots of things like this at this point that are, you know, retreats.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think doing it for adults, it's still difficult.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think to create a space like that that's going to be like inclusive of everyone and people come with so much trauma and baggage about their bodies, whether their kids are adults.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, especially, I think adults sometimes who've been in diet culture for decades and just have so much to unpack.

[SPEAKER_02]: like it's hard to create spaces that are able to hold that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think eating sort of treatment centers are also imperfect but one space that can offer some of that like therapeutic support.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's tough.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm curious like how you have seen if you have seen any of those camps for kids open up yet or if they're just sort of in the works and what you think about them if you've seen them in existence.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are a couple that are in operation, but I mean, I haven't been on site.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: After this campaign experience, I'm extremely hesitant to review a place that actually having been there because we know that we know how that goes.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I know there's a few that are in operation.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying, but I can't really speak to how [SPEAKER_00]: Safe or ethical, these camps are.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think that's a good caveat or caution for any parents who might be thinking about sending a kid to a camp like this, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to know from the outside, whether the marketing matches up with reality.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in most cases, what these kids need is not related to their weight whatsoever.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you do have a kid that has issues with food, I certainly had issues with food.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, growing up, what I needed was a medical diagnosis and I needed therapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I got both of those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I actually did binge eating therapy a few years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a program through Drexel.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was tremendously helpful for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, if you are one of those parents who really is, your kid is actually struggling in that way, [SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of other things outside of fat camp that you can do to help your kid.

[SPEAKER_02]: Totally.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the actual therapeutic support they need.

[SPEAKER_02]: I also, you know, had an eating disorder like have a long ago now history of eating disorder and disorder eating, but I remember at the time like looking to so many other things, then [SPEAKER_02]: the actual things that helped me, you know, like therapy and intuitive eating and just sort of letting go of the restrictions and stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was looking for like, what diet can I do that's going to solve all these health problems that have suddenly mysteriously cropped up after I started, you know, restricting my diet.

[SPEAKER_02]: and what kind of treatment is going to help me stop the binging, but sort of allow me to keep the restricting because my disorder was always on the restricting side of things.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'd be restricting and then like binging because of the restriction and then it would be a vicious cycle and over exercise was in there as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was like looking to hold on to the restricting and the extra extreme exercise and just stop the binging, which I now know is [SPEAKER_02]: not possible.

[SPEAKER_02]: Certainly wasn't, you know, for me and is not possible for most people.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like looking to all these different diets and cutting out food and am I sensitive to this?

[SPEAKER_02]: And can I just do this to get rid of the binging and all the things that other than what really was the most helpful?

[SPEAKER_02]: Which is interesting, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I think because of our culture's emphasis on [SPEAKER_02]: weight and how people look and weight loss being such a magic ticket to all the things that you want.

[SPEAKER_02]: The conditioning that we get from diaculture, I think leads us away from thinking about the deeper roots of things and the treatments that are actually going to be effective because I actually was in the beginning of my eating disorder.

[SPEAKER_02]: I enrolled in a study when I was in college.

[SPEAKER_02]: They were doing a study of a [SPEAKER_02]: an online program that was so much of what I teach clients now of like letting go of restriction and making peace with all foods and it felt like very in line with intuitive eating actually looking back on it and there was a lot of body image work as well and sort of [SPEAKER_02]: helping people to try to make peace with their bodies.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember being in the program and just being like, oh, this is not for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm never going to like, like, co like this.

[SPEAKER_02]: How dare you tell me that, you know, I'm not eating enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that I actually need to eat more.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I need to be able to stick to my restricted diet.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I have to figure out, you know, I'm eating too much, quote unquote, because I'm binging.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like, let me figure out how to actually do this.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it was I had to be ready.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think for that kind of [SPEAKER_02]: approach.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when I finally came back around to it, it was like, okay, I can trust and know that this is the right thing for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is actually going to, and so much experience of trying to do it the other way had shown me that none of the restrictive stuff actually worked.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was finally willing to give it a try.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I don't know how I got on that tangent.

[SPEAKER_02]: We love a tangent.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm curious.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear more about how you made the podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: How did you get in touch with all the people that you connected with?

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's just so many interesting people and interesting stories.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the true crime element we haven't even really touched on of all the sort of deception that was going on with the management of this camp.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so how did you go about making this?

[SPEAKER_02]: And was this like a year's long process for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I am happy to answer that question.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was a campaign in twenty eleven and the moment I left, I was like, I need to do something about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do I go to the police?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do I alert a new station?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do I write a newspaper article?

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't totally sure how to go about it at first.

[SPEAKER_00]: My background is in filmmaking, so at the time I wasn't college and in a film program, I'd if I could college.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, you know what, I feel like this actually needs to be a documentary.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've got the skills.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm about to get the degree.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me go ahead and make this into something.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first couple of years out of Camp Shane, I was kind of toying with the idea of doing this project.

[SPEAKER_00]: But quite frankly, it was kind of that like gas lady voice in my head that over and over again was like, was it that bad?

[SPEAKER_00]: did I really experience that was it actually a problem and I would kind of like put it away.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'd hear an ad for dieting on the radio or I would pick up a box of cereal and there was some stupid diet on the back that it was encouraging me to follow.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd go back to the project and they'd be like, no, actually this is really important.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really need to make this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I would get overwhelmed because I didn't have the money and I didn't have a camera and I didn't have a crew and I would put the project away again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I would see one of my former cameras on Facebook posting about how they were, you know, trying to lose weight.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would pick up the project again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this went on and on and on for like five, six years.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, in probably, twenty- sixteen, I committed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't going away.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to make this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I started just out of my own money from being like a good worker in a babysitter, started flying around the country and shooting interviews.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I hired a couple of friends on the cheap to help me do some of these interviews, you know, to do sound and camera.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I cut together a sizzle reel and I ended up pitching to in twenty twenty I think it was I pitched to HBO to Netflix to Hulu to Amazon CNN everybody everybody under the sun and no one was interested I mean people were interested they were intrigued but they weren't interested enough to green light the project [SPEAKER_00]: So for about ten years, I did this.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fundraising and the pitching and shooting interviews when I could.

[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, about two years ago, I decided to transition into a podcast because that had been suggested to me a couple of times.

[SPEAKER_00]: Podcasts are much less expensive to produce.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out people were much more willing to speak to me when they were in on camera, which I think a lot of that stems from, you know, the different body issues that were developed and emphasized at Camp Shane.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another part of it, too, is a lot of people that I spoke with were afraid of [SPEAKER_00]: retaliation from the yetten birds.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they were not willing to go on camera or to be photographed, but they were maybe willing to have their voice recorded and just have it anonymized.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the podcast ended up being the right format for this project, and we spent about two years putting together the podcast, and then we just released it this summer.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a decade plus labor of love on my end, and then for the production team that helped with the podcast, it was like a full two years, over time, every single week, trying to [SPEAKER_00]: get people to do interviews or to corroborate evidence or to pull court documents.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's just so much that went into this project.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't believe it's out now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, here we are.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm sure that must be wild to have I also like my first book anti diet was a ten year labor of love and also picked it up put it down, you know, was circling around the idea for that for a long time.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then started the podcast food sake and worked out a lot of the ideas and that was what kind of honed enough that I could.

[SPEAKER_02]: pitch it as a cohesive book and make what I made with it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it was just a wild experience when I held up a book in my hand and had the release date and was like, okay, it's in stores now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like this thing that I've been working for the ten years is finally here and what now.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was pretty wild.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's amazing and I've also held that book in my hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I have also been just your entire podcast and loved it and just I'm sure we could talk for many more hours about what was left on the cutting room floor and all the things that you'd threads you didn't get to pull in it but it turned out really well and was just fascinating listen from beginning to end.

[SPEAKER_02]: I felt a lot of feelings, definitely cried and laughed and, you know, all the things.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, well done, creating something that was both entertaining and also like really meaningful and just, I think it gets people talking.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's certainly, I was just like itching to talk to you about all of this and been talking about it to my husband, to friends and stuff, just the sort of, it's a wild story and I think it really says so much about [SPEAKER_02]: die of culture and it's hold on us and why people are are willing to put aside so much like you said to sort of for this promise of weight loss.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I mean, we were really excited to have a narrative way to get all of this information out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: because I think people are much more inclined, especially if they're not already in this space of fat activism or body neutrality.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're much more likely to listen to a true crime podcast and get sucked in that way than they are to, you know, be handed in encyclopedia and like forced to read the history and the science of dieting.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's great for intriguing people and making people think about these issues who would not otherwise think about them.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think there's a lot there also for people who are already into the anti-diet, weight-inclusive body positive spaces, but I think it's a good introduction, especially in this age of Ozenpeck and people being maybe less inclined to question dire culture, sort of another window to open for people to start thinking about those issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what is something I want to say about OZEMPIC that's so fascinating is obviously on one hand, OZEMPIC has kicked off this kind of like backwards trajectory in terms of fat liberation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, of course, we see that everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what no one is talking about is OZEMPIC proves that fat people were right the whole time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting that it's kind of like destroying this like body positive wave.

[SPEAKER_00]: When really what it was epic to me says is fat people, they haven't been lazy this whole time.

[SPEAKER_00]: They haven't been unhealthy this whole time.

[SPEAKER_00]: This drug proves that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that that's [SPEAKER_00]: of really interesting side of the OZEMBIC Cray is currently.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is it's fascinating and I think the backlash to it among some Maha types and others, but I think, you know, we see it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've been noticing it a lot in the Maha movement where people who are really wedded to this idea of diet and exercises, the cure all for everything and that your size says something about you as like a moral being and it's morally wrong to [SPEAKER_02]: be larger body than to not quote unquote watch what you eat or whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think the backlash there is like you know the sort of holding on to the personal responsibility narrative when there is yeah this drug that proves you know that has so much wrong with it and the side effects and all the unknowns I think are really scary but I think and then it's you know detrimental effect on [SPEAKER_02]: body liberation and body acceptance and people finding comfort at larger sizes without it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's challenging a lot of people who are trying to do those things and kind of pulling people off the movement.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I also think, yeah, it does show that it's not about willpower.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not about personal responsibility.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's [SPEAKER_02]: This is an appetite suppressing drug and so when people go off it, their bodies go back to where they want to be and their appetites sort of are programmed to be, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Which it is really fascinating the way it's impacted the discourse and [SPEAKER_02]: And so quickly, yeah, I mean, which says a lot about how diaculture never went away, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It was always, always here, always with us.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was waiting, yeah, took new forms, not even entirely dormant, but you know, just was disguised as wellness and now it's kind of shaking off that cloak.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, it's actually about thinness after all.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you so much for everything you shared here.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is a fascinating conversation.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love talking with you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell people where they can find you learn more about your work and where they can listen to podcasts?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you can listen to the podcast on any app of your choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you can follow us on Instagram at Camp Shame with an M.

If you went to Camp Shame, we have a little pinned post there where you can share your story in the comments.

[SPEAKER_00]: We love to have all of those additional stories for people to see.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I make a lot of memes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody appreciates my meme.

[SPEAKER_00]: So go to the Instagram and like a meme for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll put links to that in the show notes and yeah, definitely encourage people to check out the podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you again Kelsey.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is great.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's our show.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again to our guests for being here, and thanks to you for listening.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you found this podcast helpful, I'd be so grateful if you take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can see all the places to subscribe at christieharrison.com slash subscribe.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you're looking for help healing your own relationship with food, grab my free audio guide, seven simple strategies for finding peace and freedom with food.

[SPEAKER_02]: Just go to christieharrison.com slash strategies to get it.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's ChristyHarrison.com slash strategies.

[SPEAKER_02]: To get full show notes in a transcript of this episode, go to ChristyHarrison.com slash food psych, and to get the transcript find the episode page and scroll down to the bottom to enter your email address.

[SPEAKER_02]: A big thanks to software sounds for audio editing and production, and to administrative assistant Julian Wattasik for helping me out with all the moving parts that go into producing this show.

[SPEAKER_02]: Our album art was photographed by Abby Moore Photography, and the logo was designed by Melissa Alam.

[SPEAKER_02]: Our theme song was written in perform by Carolyn Penny Packer-Riggs, and I'm your host and executive producer Christy Harrison.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again for listening, and until next time, stay psyched.