The CAMP System: Learning to Live in Balance and Harmony with Food

The CAMP system is a step-by-step guide to a new way of eating.

In today’s increasingly dark tangle of diet programs, fads and outrageous promises, the CAMP system stands out as a clear, simple approach to defining new balance and harmony with food and eating relationships. Under the CAMP system, you can recapture control over food--control that you’ve given away or simply do not use.

There are three paths to personal power in regaining this control: Attitudes, Mindful Eating and Portions. The book provides detailed exercises and activities that give you practice on each of these paths.

You will learn to adopt a new set of attitudes about food and eating, attitudes that reshape your whole approach to food.

You will learn how to bring mindfulness to all aspects of eating. Your eating will slow down, become deliberate and purposeful. As a result, you’ll come to appreciate food far more than you thought possible.

You will learn potent strategies about portions with food and setting boundaries for yourself. With portions, you’ll challenge all your eating behaviors and rewrite your own eating rules from scratch.

Thus, the CAMP system---Control, Attitudes, Mindful eating and Portions---is the most important alternative to diets and other forms of self-torture to come along in a long time. The system is a permanent, enjoyable, life-changing approach to eating that will serve you and your life’s mission.

As the author of the CAMP System, I developed it as a result of my own health problems, stemming mostly from my obesity. At 60 pounds overweight, I had developed a herniated disk and had sleep apnea. I knew that I had to lose weight, but I knew that I couldn’t exercise (I was in too much pain) and I vowed to myself that I’d never, never go on a diet again.

This crisis point in my life led me to examine carefully my eating behaviors. I realized that the problem really wasn’t with food--it was with me: my attitudes about food, the way I ate mindlessly and the lack of any boundaries with my portions.

So slowly I began to change how I ate. I didn’t worry about what types of food I ate; indeed, I continued to eat the foods I loved. The significant changes occurred in my view of food, in how much attention I was paying to the food as I ate it, and in how I could create boundaries for myself that made sense.

Almost immediately, the pounds began flying off. It was as if my body was saying to me: “Finally, you got it right. Now I can get rid of all this excess weight, and you don’t even have to exercise to do it.”

Eight months later, I found myself 60 pounds down. My apnea was gone. The pain in my back had withdrawn. At 53 years old, I was back to the weight of my youth.

But more importantly I had changed at a fundamental, core level. My worldview about eating and food has shifted in a big way. Food was no longer my enemy. Cookies and doughnuts and fried chicken were as much my allies as were broccoli and carrots. All were welcome in my world, because I knew how to regard food, how to control it and how to bring personal power to every bite.

In 1999 I taught my first CAMP course and have since taught many more. My story is not unique. My simple message of slowing down, enjoying food, changing attitudes and controlling portions appeals to a wide audience of individuals who have given up on diets and are seeking something more permanent, more rewarding, and more enriching than counting calories and food exchanges.

For myself, I have maintained my new weight for nearly a year. I enjoy all foods and look forward to eating. I know the CAMP system can work for me for the rest of my life.

Frederick Burggraf is a native son of Indiana, Pennsylvania, where he attended undergraduate school at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

During his career, Fred has taught high school science and has worked in the private sector as a business writer and editor, graphics specialist and communication specialist. In 1983, he received a Master’s of Education degree from the University of Maryland.

Since 1992, Fred has worked as a consultant with smoking-cessation groups, helping people quit through a program similar to the CAMP system.

Fred is the author of "Thinking Connections: Concept Maps for Life Science" (published by Critical Thinking Books and Software) and his self-published "Quit Smoking for Good: A Workbook for Success in Smoking Cessation."