Many students in Ewha are interested in losing weight. Some choose to exercise, others choose to go on a diet and many do both. Unfortunately, not all students choose a safe way to lose weight. However, the Ewha Health Service Center offers a safe and healthy weight control program during the school term for students who are overweight and also students who are underweight or are of average weight but lack muscle. The program aims to create healthy notions of diet and weight loss to students, as well as to check on students?health.
Three departments run the program together: the Department of Food and Nutrition, the Department of Sports and Recreation, and the Ewha Health Service Center. The Department of Food and Nutrition evaluates the diet of the students involved in the program and recommends the precise dietary treatment. The Department of Sports and Recreation checks on the students?health and proposes specific types of exercise. The Ewha Health Service Center is in charge of the entire program and checks on the students regularly and manages their schedule.
The program lasts eight weeks and is scheduled on a week-to-week basis. The first week is for the evaluation of the students?health according to their daily habits, such as eating habits, amount of exercise, their medical history, a physical diagnosis, and a body composition test. On the second week, a diet and exercise schedule based on the test results, are given to the student to put into action. The diet program is based on each student? dietary habits, such as how many calories they take in daily and how often they eat. It focuses not only on regulating the amount of calories taken in (on the premise that three meals are eaten daily) but also on supplementing food from a major food group that the students lack in their regular diet. The exercise schedule focuses on balancing the amount of fat and muscle in the body. Both schedules should be followed on a daily basis, and include details such as what food to eat at every meal and what kind of exercise students must do for how long. Students are required to come every week to check on the progress of the program with the doctors in the Ewha Health Service Center, and have a body composition test during every consultation to see if they are following their schedules properly. In the fourth week, the diet is readjusted according to the results of following the schedule, and the exercise schedule is altered as well in the following week. The eighth week is for final inspection and evaluation of the results.
The focal point of the weight control program is to change the perspective most students have when they think of losing weight,?says Kim Ju-young, the health educator who is in charge of the program. ?tudents who are interested in the program mostly come here to lose weight, but our focus is on making a healthy body, by balancing the proportion of the muscles and fat. Losing weight is secondary.?Kim stressed, however, that the success of the program depends greatly on the students?effort to control their weight after their visits to the health center end. Many students tend to depend on the program to lose weight, but make little effort to take care of their bodies afterwards, she said. ?he effort of the individual student is worth 80 percent in making the program a success.?
Kim says it is important for students not to be overly conscious of what others think about their bodies. ?he media is implanting unhealthy notions about how a woman? body should look, and the society accepts this notion. But if students are too obsessed with their body weight, it just makes the students feel less confident. Of course, if students become too uninterested in their body weight, excessive eating can lead to geriatric diseases,?she added.
Kim emphasized that it is our everyday life that dominates our weight. ?ctually, we have already learned how to keep our weight under control in elementary school. The Honest Living textbook we had when we were eight year olds held the golden rules for controlling our body weight: eating, exercising, and sleeping regularly. Our worries begin when we deviate from these rules.? The initiation date of the weight control program is notified ten days prior by the Ewha Health Service Center. The limit for every session, which lasts two months (two sessions per term), is 30 people. Students who wish to participate in the program should visit the Ewha Health Service Center or call (02) 3277-3178.