Diets don't work, they can be pretty miserable, and by dieting you place yourself at a greater risk for the development of an eating disorder. Diets don’t cause eating disorders (ED), but most people who develop an ED were dieting at the time they got into trouble. Dieting also tends to lead to an increased focus on watching calories, fat or carbs – a focus that can become a fixation for someone predisposed to an ED.
Save yourself the misery – diets just don’t work, and worse, they can harm. Learn the facts.
Dieting Facts
- Dieting slows the metabolism. Your body "thinks" it's in a period of famine, and slows down to conserve essential energy and nutrients.
- Dieting can lead to nutritional deficits. Vitamin deficits are linked to a host of cancer and calcium deficits can lead to early osteoporosis, weakened thinning bones, and fractures.
- Your body needs food energy, and when it gets insufficient caloric intake, things start to go badly. Dieting can result in thinning hair, dizziness and a lack of co-ordination, dehydration, slowed heart rates and weakness, and a loss in muscle tissue and strength.
- Dieting even affects your mind, both your intellect and your mood. People on diets have less mental energy; a lessened ability to concentrate and even reduced neuro-muscular reaction times. Regular dieting is also linked with increased rates of depression.
Who Diets?
- About half of all American women are on a diet or trying to lose weight at any one point in time.
- Of college women, 91% had dieted and 22% dieted with frequency.
- Between 40% and 60% of still growing high school girls are on diets at any one time.
- 46% of 9-11 year old girls have dieted.
- Americans spend 40 billion dollars each year on dieting products.
Diets Don't Work!
- An astonishing 95% of dieters regain any weight lost through dieting within 1-5 years, and that cycle of weight gain and loss reduces heart health, and impacts on metabolism in long-lasting ways.
All statistics from the National Eating Disorders Association
Be healthy – yes! Eat healthy – yes! Diet – NO!!!
Be happy in your body, and if you're overweight, lose weight through lifestyle changes that include healthier eating and greater physical activity. Real changes that take commitment and results that won’t appear overnight, but that can last forever.
Diets hurt your body, they won’t help you lose weight, and if you're thinking you'll be happier if that diet does help you lose that excess weight, be very careful, as thoughts like this can get people in trouble.
No one factor triggers an eating disorder, but diets and a fixation on food and eating can so easily push you across that invisible line. And once concern becomes compulsion, and focus - a fixation, the challenges and dangers mount tenfold.
Be happy and proud, and enjoy each healthy bite you take!
Page last updated Aug 05, 2010
