Draft II Dieting: Bad

Assignment must have 4 added pages.  Nothing must be repeated.  Any citations or quotes must be in APA format.

WHY DIETING IS BAD 3

10/16/13

Running Head: WHY DIETING IS BAD 1

Why dieting is bad

Dieting is defined as the tradition of eating food mainly in a strictly regulated fashion in order to maintain, increase, or decrease body weight. The practice of dieting is many times combined with various physical exercises that are performed in order to lose weight mainly for those people who are obese or overweight. It is worth noting that some athletes also follow a certain diet so that they can gain weight, which is particularly in form of muscles. Maintenance of a stable body weight can also be achieved through various diets. There are mainly four categories of diets, which promote weight loss, and they include very low calorie, low-calorie, low-carbohydrate and low fat (Rasmus, Anna-Lisa, Mauri, Riittakerttu & Kaj, 2010).

However, dieting is bad for a person’s health since it can lead to various serious consequences if they are not administered without proper professional advice. Dieting mainly has a negative connotation since it conjures various ideas concerning unhealthy weight loss and fad diets. Recent research by authoritative authors has exclusively proved that extreme dieting can indeed lead to another effect, which raises the undue risk of diseases. This research has shown that those people who limit their intake of calories may increase their risk of developing deadly conditions, which include cancer, diabetes, and heart disease since dieting has the tendency of raising stress levels. The study also showed that the lower the calories a person eats per day lead to the person not achieving their required requirements of vitamins and proteins which is very detrimental to a person’s health (Schwabe, 2013).

Dieting makes the body have the perception that it is starving and therefore the body will start saving fat since it is the only option of storing energy. Many people who go dieting do not know that losing weight actually means digesting their own body tissues rather than food since it is unfortunate that dieting never tells the body which parts are supposed to be retained or digested. Severe dieting leads to muscle loss and if that person is unlucky then this loss can be from the heart, which can have severe consequences. Dieting also leads to low self-esteem especially to those people who are not able to achieve their dieting goals and this leads to feelings of despair and guilt (Schwabe, 2013).

Dieting strongly emphasises food mainly as compensation or a reward that is known as comfort eating whereby food is used in cheering up the person and this leads to consumption of a lot of junk food. In addition, dieting has been known to lower the base metabolic rate and this leads to that person eating less food but when they return to their usual normal food consumption, then the food intake is very high and it eventually leads to that person gaining more weight than before dieting. It is worth noting that healthy eating is very different from dieting and the results from the two concepts are not similar (Winder, 2009).

Dieting unfortunately leads to constipation and this mainly causes a concentration of carcinogens and toxins within the bowel for a longer period. Dieting has also been known from a medical perspective to have dire detrimental effects on the urinary system due to its strict and restrictive nature of eating food, which eventually results in fiber, mineral, and vitamin deficiencies. Dieting is closely associated with a high intake of proteins since it leads to a higher weight loss but this is detrimental to the heart since it increases hypertension and cholesterol. However, the notion of high protein diets leading to weight loss has never been proven scientifically and therefore people should desist from such perceptions since the notion can actually act against them (Bergen, 2004).

Dieting is also associated with low carbohydrate intake and carbohydrates are part of healthy eating since they serve the body with the noble fats it requires for the production of energy and sugar that is useful to both the body and the brain. Thus, a restriction of carbohydrates to the body leads to damaging mental effects since the brain is not able to function properly and the last results are feelings of suffering that leads to low self-esteem. Dieting should be discouraged by use of the strongest words possible since researchers for the University of Otago have conclusively discovered that dieting indeed leads to eating disorders, weight cycling, overeating as well as depression. The noble researchers also proved that people dieting often experience flight or fight response effects and this affects their weight gain (O’connor, 2008).

In conclusion, people should be educated on the noble merits of leading a healthy lifestyle instead of practicing dieting since it has detrimental effects to their bodies. Correct awareness should be encouraged so that people are able to live longer and to live healthy lifestyles. Dieting leads to stress which plays an integral part in obesity and weight gain since it restricts valuable calories to the body, which is unhealthy, as well as causing undue stress to the body. Dieting eventually leads to people consuming low calorie diets and they are therefore more prone to eating disorders and depression, which are paramount causes of gaining weight.

References

Bergen, A. (2004). Are Low-Carbohydrate, High-Protein Diets Safe? Clinical Excellence for Nurse Practitioners, Volume 8, Number 3. Retrieved from

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.devry.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=31&sid=6871ddfa-e173-4f6a-9221-f5d59277b9f7%40sessionmgr12&hid=9

O’CONNOR, T. (2008, May 13). Food for thought in diet findings. Nelson Mail, The. p. 07. Retrieved from

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.devry.edu/ehost/detail?vid=8&sid=49f17e9b-a8e7-4f34-8a83-b50f5f523e6b%40sessionmgr4&hid=19&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=n5h&AN=NEM080513000717054121-AI

Rasmus, I., Anna-Lisa, I., Mauri, M., Riittakerttu, K., & Kaj, B. (2010). Psychological distress and risk for eating disorders in subgroups of dieters. European Eating Disorders Review, 18(4), 296-303. Retrieved from

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.devry.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=30&sid=239ca877-e72f-4d33-8b13-cd9fb8edaaaa%40sessionmgr14&hid=28

Schwabe, L. D. (2013, March 22). Fat May Be Bad, But Dieting Can Be Worse. State Journal (WV). p. 20. Retrieved from <

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.devry.edu/ehost/detail?vid=4&sid=49f17e9b-a8e74f348a8350f5f523e6b%40sessionmgr4&hid=19&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=n5h&AN=86441348

WINDER, V. (2009, February 25). Lose weight without dieting! Taranaki Daily News. p. 014. Retrieved from

http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.devry.edu/ehost/detail?vid=6&sid=49f17e9b-a8e7-4f34-8a83-b50f5f523e6b%40sessionmgr4&hid=19&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=n5h&AN=TNL0902250014114024897-CJ