Camp Shame: Tiger King, But Make It Fat Camp

Real Talk, Whole Life

Cloud10

Alternative Health, Health & Fitness, Nutrition

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The tenacious Kelsey Snelling is back to give us the inside scoop on the viral Camp Shame podcast. What started as a documentary project over a decade ago has become a genre-blending podcast that unpacks the rise and fall of Camp Shane, the infamous weight loss camp for kids, many epsiodes in which I'm featured! Stacy and Kelsey go deep on what it means to tell the truth when shame is baked into the story. We talk about the creative shift from film to podcasting, the surprising reach of Camp Shame, and the vulnerability that surfaces when you share your story without being on camera. Expect everything from behind-the-scenes chaos to family feuds, diet culture takedowns, and the emotional aftershocks that follow you well into adulthood. It’s messy, it’s real, and it’s necessary. If you’ve ever felt unseen in your experience with body image, shame, or being the “before” in someone else’s narrative—this one’s for you. And if you think this conversation doesn’t apply to you… you might be the exact person who needs to listen. 0:00 | Origin Story: From Documentary to Podcast 3:00 | Safety in Audio: Vulnerability Without the Visuals 6:00 | Unexpected Reach: Who’s Really Listening? 9:00 | Audience Response: Validation, Gaslighting, and Shared Truths 12:00 | Genre-Bending: True Crime Meets Diet Culture Meets Cult 15:00 | Behind the Gates: Camp Shane's Real Impact 18:00 | The Ripple Effect: Trauma Beyond Camp Walls 21:00 | Sneaky Education: How Storytelling Sparks Awareness 24:00 | Trolls, Trolls Everywhere: Real-World Fatphobia 29:00 | You Don’t Know What Someone’s Going Through 34:00 | Call to Action + Listener Stories Find the Camp Shame podcast on any of your favorite platforms! Find Stacy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠realeverything.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/realstacytoth⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠missionmakersart.com⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, listeners.
0:11.2	Welcome back to Real Talk Whole Life.
0:14.0	I am excited to talk again with Kelsey Snelling, who is now officially the producer.
0:22.8	I don't even know what your title is of the Camp Shame podcast series.
0:29.0	You heard Kelsey on this show last year.
0:33.4	I shared a bit about my story as a middle schooler going to Fat Camp for two summers.
0:42.3	And you have now finished the project that was originally a documentary is now a podcast.
0:50.8	It is out in the world.
0:52.5	Please introduce yourself.
0:54.1	Tell us about how that's going. Hi, Stacey. It's out in the world. Please introduce yourself. Tell us about how that's going.
0:56.7	Hi, Stacey. It's so good to see you again. I think it was probably a couple of years ago at
1:03.7	this point that I was on your show last. And at that time, I was trying to create this project called Camp Shame as a documentary.
1:16.3	And I actually had been working on that documentary for about 10 years.
1:21.3	I had gone to Camp Shane as a counselor in 2011, pretty much since then, had been trying to get this story out and just kept
1:29.4	running into issues with funding and grants and I opened an LLC and I closed the LLC and
1:36.3	like just nothing was going right. I was millions of dollars short of my goal. And about two years
1:43.0	ago, I decided to pivot and do this as a podcast instead. It had
1:48.2	been suggested to me several times by various people. And my background being in film, I was very
1:54.3	resistant to that for a while. But pivoting to the podcast was really the best thing for this project.
2:02.7	Number one, the logistics, the cost, much easier and much less of a cost than a full-length documentary.
2:11.4	And what I realized is I started interviewing people on Mike is that especially for people who have these body image issues and these
2:18.6	self-confidence issues, and that, you know, that's very common with former Shainers, you get a much more
	...

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