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Last resort school for overweight teens
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Celebrating success
At the homecoming ball, Cassi, the former queen of perfectionism now knows she doesn’t have to be flawless to be accepted. She was voted homecoming queen at AOS.
Five months since they arrived, the students find out how much weight they’ve lost.
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Dateline NBC Left-right: Shari Lininger, Allison Cole, Jonny Dalo, and Cassi Harp pose for a photograph on their transition day. They've collectively lost a total of 322 lbs. |
Back in January, Cassi weighed 245 lbs. In June, she’s lost 14 inches in her waist and reached her goal of losing 60 lbs.
Shari, the singer, who wouldn’t reveal her weight before is now confident enough to tell us she started at 343 lbs. Shari lost 8 inches off her waist and 86 lbs., also surpassing her goal.
Allison, the actress, who weighed 323, lost 6 inches in her waist and 61 lbs., 11 more than her goal.
And Jonny, the rebel, who weighed 365 lbs., is a rebel no longer. He lost 17 inches off his waist and a whopping 115 lbs., 15 more than he’d hoped for.
Five months ago when they came to AOS, they all thought weight was their problem. Now they know it was masking something deeper: All the feelings they’d been hiding inside. They may look different, but the biggest transformation happened on the inside.
They’re seeing people they hadn’t seen before – themselves.
“I look and I see like a new person,” says Jonny. “Right now, I would appear to be almost like a normal human being.”
Jonny is no longer ashamed to look in a mirror, passing classes instead of failing, turning his schoolwork in on time and no longer depressed.
As for Allison, she doesn’t have to always be another character. She’s a lot more satisfied being herself. “I’m never going to be like gorgeous and stuff, but I don’t think people are going like, ‘Look at that.’ I’m content with how I look and like I’m a lot more satisfied with who I am,” she says.
For Allison, the hardest part will be saying goodbye to her friends.
Transition day
It was bittersweet when this first AOS class, 32 strong, gathered in June to say goodbye. They called this ceremony "transition," not "graduation," because they say you never graduate from weight control, you transition back to the real world.
The youngest member of the class, Kevin Marema, was just 12 years old. He lost 89 pounds.
The students are not worried about how they’ll stay on the program once they leave here, but they're worried about leaving their support group, all the new friends who’ve become like family.
For Shari in particular that means her deputy clinical director Molly Carmel. "She has seriously like saved my life here," she says of the woman she now considers her friend. "I’m just amazed that she cared enough about me to do that. Even when she didn’t know me that well, even when I wouldn’t talk, even when she knew that I was avoiding stuff and not talking about it, she still like was there for me and she still stuck it through. She just never gave up on me.”
For six months they will keep in daily touch with AOS by e-mail or phone. After all, AOS wants to know as well whether its results are lasting.
They were just a bunch of teenagers acting like teenagers, but together, they lost more than 300 lbs. Together, they gained a new way of life.
Since "Dateline" last saw the students in June, they all say they've continued to lose weight —at least 7 lbs. each. The corporation that started AOS has helped launch a pilot program with some Washington D.C. schools called "Stepping Up To The Plate." The project uses some of the methods similar to AOS to help school kids get more exercise, and eat better at home.
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