Are Fat Farms a Thing of the Past?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve heard jokes about people going off to “fat farms,” but I’ve never seen one or even seen an advertisement for one.

Do such things exist? Did they ever? How much do they cost? How do they work?

And most importantly, how do I google it?

FTR, I would love to go to a fat farm for a few months, if I could only talk my HMO into paying for it.

2

Camp Shane’s a fairly well-known fat camp. Try using fat camp as your search criteria instead of fat farm.

3

Camp Shane’s seems to be for children, teens & adult women. As do the rest of the “residential weight loss treatment” centers that I googled. As an adult male, I gues I’m SOL.

BTW, if you wanna make a million dollars, open up a fat camp that focuses on what happens when you leave the place. Have a chef teach you how to make low-fat meals. Have a fitness trainer with you every step of the way, so you’ll know what to do when you get to the gym back home.

And make it fun! Have rock climbing, surfing, soccer, volleyball, etc. The fat camps that I googled have touchy-feely stuff like hikes and massages. Bleah.

4

Just as an aside, the word “farm” informally used to mean any sort of rural facility devoted to some specific purpose. Funny farm was a somewhat derisive term for mental hospital, and the federal government even established a “narcotic farm”, for the treatment of drug addicts convicted of drug crimes. This usage, plus the inherent alliteration, probably led to people using the term “fat farm”.

5

There’s Pritikin.

6

Try looking under “weight loss spas” or something like that. There are certainly get-aways that restrict food and are designed to result in (at least temporary) weight loss.

7

There’s the Rice Diet Program in Durham, North Carolina. It’s only for people who are incredibly obese and who want to live on 700 calories a day for the rest of their lives.

8

They’re called Spas now and are generally not aimed at only the obese. You can stay in one anywhere from $400/weekend to $30,000/weekend. You are fed some famous chef’s dietary cuisine and work out as many times a day as you want.