|
I agree with including nutrtion and exercise programs in chapter planning, but I think it is important to keep it more focused on improving members' health (and mood since exercise can make you happy!) rather than presenting the information with the emphasis on weight control. Eating a healthy diet and participating in regular aerobic exercise can improve self-esteem and improve one's health independent of weight loss whereas focusing on weight loss is more likely to alienate women who already feel separate because they have a more "unconventional" body type (unconventional for a particular school's system, not unconventional in the general population) while it may drive sisters who are already obsessive about calories and maintaining an unhealthily low weight further towards developping a full-blown eating disorder.
From working with women with disordered eating patterns, I've realized that it is not enough to try just to drop unhealthy patterns -- it is great to replace them with something else. No one of any size or weight should have to focus all their energy all the time on maintaining or achieving a certain ideal.
|