IF there was one thing Jackie Campbell didn’t want for her daughter’s future, it was for history to repeat itself.

After spending much of her own adult life consumed with fad diets and slimming clubs, she hoped that things would be different for overweight teenager Ashley.

So when her daughter declared that she wanted to spend her summer at a weight-loss camp, Jackie gave her full support.

“I have been really successful in my degree and career but the one thing I have never been successful in is managing my weight,” says Jackie, 47, a former international banker.

“I didn’t want that for Ashley. I have read every diet manual going. It doesn’t matter how much you educate yourself, it’s how you feel inside. “Adults carry a lot of baggage and when you get to your 40s there’s a lot to overcome. “But if you catch a child early on, you don’t have so much to battle against.”

Weighing 14-and-a-half stone and wearing size 16 clothes by the age of 15, Ashley was desperately unhappy.

A pupil at Perins School in Alresford, she started to put a lot of weight on when she reached her teens.

“I closed myself off at school because I didn’t want people to be mean to me because of my weight,” she says.

“The more I weighed the more I didn’t want to go out and do anything.

“I was really shy and didn’t feel like I fitted in. I didn’t talk much so no one really talked to me.”

The teenager became so self-conscious of her size that she would suffer panic attacks during PE lessons.

And worst of all, when Ashley felt miserable, she would comfort eat to make herself feel better.

“When I got in from school was the worst time.

“I would be upset about my day and no one would be in so I would watch TV and raid the cupboards.”

Whenever she felt down, Ashley loved to bake cakes, and her portion sizes were often too large.

She enjoyed fatty foods and her family liked to treat themselves with takeaways or visits to the local coffee shop for cake.

After trying and failing on a number of diets, and feeling too self-conscious to go to exercise classes, Ashley decided that drastic action was called for.

“I was just fed up of being so heavy and nearly bursting out of my size 16 jeans.

“I didn’t want to get size 18s because that would be awful. I wanted to be prettier and better looking.”

Searching the Internet one day, she came across a website for Wellspring UK.

The company runs residential summer camps to help 11 to 24-year-olds to lose weight – Ashley believed she had found the answer to her prayers.

“I just thought ‘Wow!’ when I saw the site,” she says. “It looked so nice and everyone I watched on the videos looked so happy.”

Proud that their daughter was taking control of her life, Jackie and her husband Ian said they would pay for her to go.

“Ashley had seen us obsessively watching weight-loss TV programmes and trying all the diets,” says Jackie.

“She saw me lose six stone with a slimming club and put it back on again, but she wanted to make a real commitment to change her life.

“This was a place where she would feel like she belonged. At Wellspring she knew everyone would be in the same boat.”

Embarking on an eight-week stay away from her home in Alresford last year, it would be by far the longest that she had ever been away from her parents.

But she threw herself into the Wellspring experience, making the most of the programme of physical activities combined with daily outdoor activities and lessons in nutrition and cooking.

And when she discovered she had lost ten pounds in a week at her first weigh-in, a delighted Ashley became even more determined.

By the end of the two months, as well as learning a sensible new approach to food, Ashley had lost a total of two stone.

A year on, Ashley, now 16, has continued exercising and eating healthily, and has lost a further stone.

Her family has supported her all the way and she is now a completely different girl .

“My self-confidence has been given a huge boost,” says Ashley. “I talk to people so much more and my friends talk to me more.

“Before, no one really noticed me but now I put myself forward. I feel more confident in the way I look and I’m so much happier.”

• For more information on Wellspring UK, visit www.wellspringcamp.co.uk