Weight Loss And Diet Essay, Research Paper

The Truth on Dieting and Weight Loss About one-third of Americans are extremely over-weight, which may be why crash dieting is beginning to plague America. It’s estimated that Americans alone spend 80-100 billion dollars on weight loss tactics. People go on these diets to get quick results but are these results hurting them more than helping? The answer is Yes! The safe and effective way to lose weight is through old-fashioned exercise and the right diet. You cannot successfully lose weight by simply cutting food from your diet or taking some pills; it is necessary to work for your results. Without depriving your body of necessary nutrients through dieting, you can lose fat and get the body you’ve always dreamed of, or at least one you’re more comfortable with. The quote “The effects of the current obsession with dieting can be devastating”, said by Mr. Woodworth, a long time exercise and nutrition expert, summarizes the dangers of dieting. The many dangerous methods of losing weight: so called “dieting” or starvation/fad diets, pills and drugs, over-exercising, surgery, and eating disorders, have taken many casualties. Many people go on “diets”, a word so commonly misused, to get quick results of weight loss. Perhaps the most common is minor starvation and fad dieting. This method is when people become over concerned with calorie intake. Many deaths have been associated with low calorie diets. By trying to shed pounds simply by cutting all fat from the diet greatly increases the risk of getting cancer, heart disease, and other health problems. That “low-fat” trap gets people hooked on reduced-fat snacks or possibly not eating at all. So now the body is being deprived of necessary nutrients not available in any pill or liquid form. Yes cutting fat and cholesterol reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes, but nutrient poor diets have an even larger risk of getting those diseases along with many others. Of course a large percent of dieters will lose weight but they will feel depressed afterward and gain back even more than before they started the diet. The reason they are losing healthy weight along with the fat they were hoping to lose. In an infomercial with Tony Little, he showed a graph of what the body loses when someone goes on a diet. By cutting back on foods, the body becomes deprived of very important nutrients. Then when it seems you are losing weight, what you are actually losing is fat AND MUSCLE. Many times, more lean muscle than fat will be lost. And although they may look slimmer because their size is smaller, they are actually weaker and more susceptible to injuries due to losing “healthy” weight. Healthy weight is muscle and bone weight, the things that support your structure and enable you to perform rigorous activities. A lot of the time “healthy” weight is misinterpreted, especially in females. Which leads to an amazing fact that 62% of women and 44% of men that are dieting aren’t even overweight! But they are misled when they step on the bathroom scale and “My God” looks at what it says! They are not realizing that muscle outweighs fat over 2:1. Therefor, many people may think they are fat even though they may be healthy. I myself am an example of that. On a height and age chart it says my ideal weight for my height is 155 pounds. I am 168, so does that mean that I am overweight? Not necessarily. Charts and stuff are made for averages and trends because when doing a body fat testing I had only 10.8% body fat which is below the average for people my age and size. So the bathroom scale scares many people into believing that they need to lose weight when it may not be necessary. On top of overweight people dieting we also have healthy people dieting, both of which are extremely dangerous. Thus, the fad diet/starvation method should be completely avoided because simple “dieting” is just a stepping stone that may lead to much more serious things that become life changing or life threatening. It starts as a simple “diet” progressed into another dangerous way of losing weight with the help of pills or drugs that lead to eating disorders. How wonderful it would be if we could all take a couple of pills a day and not worry what else we may eat all while obtaining that body we yearn for. Unfortunately, we don’t have that pill and probably never will so avoid the dangerous imitations out there. What is not told about these miracle pills that make you have the body of your dreams is that they cause fatigue, hyperphagia, insomnia, mood changes, irritability and if really abused psychosis. While claiming to boost your metabolism, reduce fat, and suppress your appetite they may become addicting and your body may eventually depend upon them. Many of these pills contain untested chemicals and slip by the FDA by claiming that they are food supplements not drugs. And while each year many deaths are due to these products they are still being used by seven percent of adolescent girls in the U.S. and thirty-four percent have at least tried them. Furthering the risk of complications in life and leading many times to death along with dieting. People with eating disorders are believed to be the result from the 70 million Americans who diet each year, lose the weight, regain the weight, and then diet again. They, instead of going back to dieting once more, become anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Anorexia is when an individual is more than 15 percent under expected weight, fears gaining weight, females have amenorrhea (males lose sex drive) and abnormal eating habits. They simply restrict food because the pleasure in eating food is overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety. About 1 in every 100 girls between 12-18 years of age are affected. The complications of anorexia are dehydration, gastrointestinal bleeding, chest pain, low heart rate, abnormal temperature, bone growth retardation or osteoporosis, infertility, dry skin and hair, constipation, epileptic seizures, the list still goes on. An awful lot just to lose some weight don’t you think? Many people who simply use the fad diet method get the urge to lose more weight and that is when they resort to the life threatening disorder of anorexia. Approximately one-third of anorexics become bulimia nervosa. There are people who binge eat and then purge themselves by vomiting. They become isolated and depressed and have a low self-esteem. What’s worse though is that physically these people seem healthy but if you look close they develop finger calluses or lesio