Last resort school for overweight teens

At the school, students are served 1,200 calories of controlled food each day and only 12 grams of fat. There are low-fat bagels and soups, buffalo dogs and buffalo burgers.

For Jonny, this is going to be a challenge: He was used to four times the number of calories a day.

“Before I came here, I was on the McDonald’s trip. I’d almost eat it every day after school. It would consist of three double cheeseburgers and a large fry and then a large drink,” he says.

That however, wasn't his only meal. He consumed 4,5000 to 5,000 a day, just of junk food.

That number of calories put Jonny and the others into a downward spiral of depression and anxiety. For a few kids at the school, it was even worse.

According to Dr. Kirschenbaum, of the 40 kids they’ve worked with the past year, two or three were at a significant risk of suicide.

“[The parents were] clinically stressed out to a degree they could easily qualify for serious diagnoses themselves because they are so upset about what’s going on,” says Kirschenbaum.

So the kids’ families get a double helping of advice and less stress, as their kids change to less than half the calories they used to eat.

There’s a lot of choice and every part of a meal is a learning process. Most of the students have been on every diet you could name. At AOS they’re teaching kids a new lifestyle and a new way to eat, because up to now, they’ve all failed dieting.

“I’ve tried pretty much every kind of diet," says Shari. "I’ve tried low-fat, I’ve tried low carb.  I’ve tried diet pills. I’ve tried exercising my butt off. I’ve tried doing the like Slim Fast thing too.”

A big part of what’s going on here is called self-monitoring: writing down everything you eat every day so if you eat too much today you can cut down or exercise more tomorrow.

Unmasking their problems
But there’s much more to saving those lives than losing the pounds. At AOS, they say obesity is a mask, something that covers up emotional problems. If they don’t take off the mask, they won’t take off the pounds — at least, not permanently.

“This is not the end of their life, this is the beginning of their life,” says Molly Carmel, the deputy clinical director. She herself used to weigh over 300 lbs. “This is not a death sentence, this is like the happiest moment. This is great for them, we’re saving lives here.”

Dateline NBC Jonny Dalo

Jonny was the first member of our group to face a crisis. Jonny had been with the program for only 5 weeks and already was breaking the rules: He got caught smoking. 

“Honestly, I was used to getting caught. Like this place, I can get in trouble for something, and they can kick me out and I could never return to this place," he says. "And this is something I really care about.”

But five days after he got caught smoking, Jonny was expelled, shipped off to Texas to an even tougher place — a wilderness intervention program run by the Aspen Education group, the same corporation that runs AOS. Jonny can only return to AOS if he succeeds there.

Smoking wasn’t the only reason he was booted. He broke another hard and fast rule at AOS: no dating.

“I actually got into a relationship with a girl there,” he says. "That’s one of the non-negotiables. That was basically the last straw."

So even though he’d lost 43 lbs. in the first five weeks— almost halfway to his goal— he was failing in the eyes of AOS. And increasingly, Jonny was failing in his own eyes as well.

“In reality, I followed the rules to my own convenience,” says Jonny.

And the rules at the intervention program were even tougher. For a guy who’s a bit of a germ freak, who took three showers a day and refused to eat anything from the salad bar because he didn’t think it was sanitary, the wilderness was a shock.

“We use the same canteen cup, the same spoon, and the same pot for every meal,” says Jonny.  “We also take showers once a week.”

There were no guarantees Jonny could return to AOS. “I definitely see this as an intervention,” he says. “[It's a] kind of stopping you in your tracks, saying you’re going the wrong path.”

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