Lori Dowd is a St. Louis-based filmmaker whose documentary Weighed Down: Finding Hope for Childhood Obesity chronicled one summer in Imperial, Missouri, at Camp Jump Start, the only nonprofit weight loss camp in the country. Starting in September—which is also National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month—the documentary will be aired nationwide on PBS.
We chatted with Dowd about what she’s learned:
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What have you learned from working closely with adolescents struggling with obesity? I was amazed at how brave these kids were and how willing they were to be open about the complexities of being overweight in this society. We’ve all heard those numbers—1 in 3 young people are overweight—but what does that really mean? We see them as little icons in an article, but these are real kids who have real struggles. We interviewed one young woman who was 10, but she sounded like she was 35. She was able to verbalize a lot of this pain that she felt. She told me she eats junk food, comfort food, and stress food because her parents were getting a divorce and it was hard on her. Here was the straight truth from a 10-year-old.
How, specifically, did Camp Jump Start help these kids? They focused on healing at the base of the issue so that positive changes—making healthy choices, getting outside, being less isolated—can become a possibility. Their success stems from the fact that they don’t just have fitness experts; they have social workers. They have counselors who know how to work with some of these deeper wounds that cause people to overeat.
How do you introduce healthier choices without lecturing kids? I’m not an expert on screen time and obesity, but anecdotally, screen time leads to isolation, and then kids are not engaging in physical activity. At home, many kids would eat while watching TV or going on their phones, and that lack of mindfulness about what they were doing caused them to overeat. At the camp, they have to walk to the mess hall to eat, so they could understand food as more of a social activity and as the fuel they needed. When the kids check in, they have to give their phones to their counselors. They only get one hour of screen time a day, so they absolutely have to engage in the natural world. You watch them become more and more comfortable without having devices at the ready. It was awesome for me to watch kids begin to connect to the natural world and each other.
What can parents learn from your film? A lot of people say, “I really felt for these kids.” Parents can see that these emotional issues are complex. There’s so much backstory for each person struggling with obesity, and as adults, we have that, too. It’s easy to look at kids who are obese and have judgments about them, about their parents, and about their way of life.
How can we have healthier discussions about obesity and weight loss? I hope people can see beyond the statistics and that they will see that these are young people growing up in a really tough time. These kids are trying to navigate life as well as they can. If we, as adults, can bring compassion and understanding, I think real change can happen.
