Weight Loss Essay Example For Students

Weight Loss Essay About one-third of Americans are extremely over-weight, which may be why crashdieting is beginning to plague America. Its estimated that Americans alonespend 80-100 billion dollars on weight loss tactics. People go on these diets toget quick results but are these results hurting them more than helping? Theanswer is Yes! The only way to safely and effectively lose weight is throughold-fashioned exercise and the right diet. You cannot successfully lose weightby simply cutting food from your diet or taking some pills, it is necessary towork for your results. Without depriving your body of necessary nutrientsthrough dieting, you can lose fat and get the body youve always dreamed of, orat least one youre more comfortable with. The quote The effects of thecurrent 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 orstarvation/fad diets, pills and drugs, over-exercising, surgery, and eatingdisorders, have taken many casualties. Many people go on diets, aword so commonly misused, to get quick results of weight loss. Perhaps the mostcommon is minor starvation and fad dieting. This method is when people becomeover concerned with calorie intake. Many deaths have been associated with lowcalorie diets. By trying to shed pounds simply by cutting all fat from the dietgreatly increases the risk of getting cancer, heart disease, and other healthproblems. That low-fat trap gets people hooked on reduced-fat snacksor possibly not eating at all. So now the body is being deprived of necessarynutrients not available in any pill or liquid form. Yes cutting fat andcholesterol reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes, but nutrient poordiets 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 feeldepressed afterward and gain back even more than before they started the diet. The reason why is because they are losing healthy weight along withthe fat they were hoping to rid of. In an infomercial with Tony Little, heshowed a graph of what the body loses when someone goes on a diet. By cuttingback on foods, the body becomes deprived of very important nutrients. Then whenit 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 lookslimmer because their size is smaller, they are actually weaker and moresusceptible to injuries due to losing healthy weight. Healthy weightis muscle and bone weight, the things that support your structure and enable youto perform rigorous activities. A lot of the time healthy weight ismisinterpreted, especially in females. Which leads to an amazing fact that 62%of women and 44% of men that are dieting arent even overweight! But they aremisled when they step on the bathroom scale and My God look what itsays! They are not realizing that muscle outweighs fat over 2:1. Therefor, manypeople may think they are fat even though they may be healthy. I myself am anexample of that. On a height and age chart it says my ideal weight for my heightis 155 pounds. I am 168, so does that mean that I am overweight? Notnecessarily. Charts and stuff are made for averages and trends because whendoing a body fat testing I had on ly 10.8% body fat which is below the averagefor people my age and size. So the bathroom scale scares many people intobelieving that they need to lose weight when it may not be necessary. On top ofoverweight people dieting we also have healthy people dieting, both of which areextremely dangerous. Thus, the fad diet/starvation method should be completelyavoided because simple dieting is just a stepping stone that maylead to much more serious things that become life changing or life threatening.. What started as a simple diet may have progressed into anotherdangerous way of losing weight through pills or drugs and eating disorders. Howwonderful it would be if we could all take a couple of pills a day and not worrywhat else we may eat all while obtaining that body we yearn for. Unfortunately,we dont have that pill and probably never will so avoid the dangerousimitations out there. What is not told about these miracle pills that make youhave the body of your dreams is that they cause fatigue, hyperphagia, insomnia,mood changes, irritability and if really abused psychosis. While claiming toboost your metabolism, reduce fat, and suppress your appetite they may becomeaddicting and your body may eventually depend upon them. Many of these pillscontain untested chemicals and slip by the FDA by claiming that they are foodsupplements not drugs. And while each year many deaths are due to these productsthey are still being used by seven percent of adolescent girls in the U.S. andthirty-f our percent have at least tried them. Furthering the risk ofcomplications in life and leading many times to death along with dieting. Peoplewith eating disorders are believed to be the result from the 70 millionAmericans who diet each year, lose the weight, regain the weight, and then dietagain. They, instead of going back to dieting once more, become anorexia nervosaor bulimia nervosa. Anorexia is when an individual is more than 15 percent underexpected weight, fears gaining weight, females have amenorrhea (males lose sexdrive) and abnormal eating habits. They simply restrict food because thepleasure in eating food is overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety. About 1 in every100 girls between 12-18 years of age are affected. The complications of anorexiaare dehydration, gastrointestinal bleeding, chest pain, low heart rate, abnormaltemperature, bone growth retardation or osteoporosis, infertility, dry skin andhair, constipation, epileptic seizures, the list still goes on. An awful lotjust to lose some weight dont you think? Many people who simply use the faddiet method get the urge to lose more weight and that is when they resort to thelife threatening disorder of anorexia. Approximately one-third of anorexicsbecome bulimia nervosas. These are people who binge eat then purge themselvesby vomiting. They become isolated and depressed and have a low self-esteem. Artificial Intelligence2 EssayBibliographyWSOC Health Team 9 (1998, Editors) Dangerous Dieting 1998 TheAssociated Press on the web Retrieved 12-10-99 from World Wide Web http://www.gocarolinas.com/living/health/nutrition/_dieting.htmlLane, Theresa (1996) Foods That Harm Foods That Heal The Readers DigestAssociation Limited, London Berg, Francis M. (1995) Health Risks of Weight LossHettinger, ND : Healthy Weight Journal Little, Tony (Producer) (1997, May 24)Healthy Living w/ Tony Little Infomercial on CBS Woodworth, M. (1998Sept) At Walled Lake Central High School