Urge Home
Your Body
Your Mind
Drugs and Alcohol
Relationships
Sex
Beyond School
Our Society
Connecting YouDieting
Last Updated on Monday, 15 March 2010 14:20
| Article Index |
|---|
| Dieting |
| Alternatives to Dieting |
| Fat Phobia |
| Dieting vs. lifestyle |
| All Pages |
Page 1 of 4
Dieting includes any changes you make to what you eat with the goal of losing weight.
Dieting can be not eating particular food groups, cutting back on the amount you eat, not eating anything and/or only eating certain types of foods.
[Copyright Kaz Cooke. Used by kind permission. www.kazcooke.com.au ]
Dieting makes promises it cannot keep. It promises us the perfect body… and the perfect body promises us popularity, success, boyfriends and/or girlfriends, sexiness, health, no more teasing and an almost perfect life.
Why do I feel pressured to diet?
Dieting is now so common that it seems like a normal way of eating. Many of us have friends, family members, teachers, or read magazines that encourage dieting. If everyone around us is dieting it can be hard not to join in.
Did you know that 95% of all diets fail within 2-5 years?
Did you know that 95% of all diets fail within 2-5 years?
Some of the other things that can happen when we diet are;
• Our metabolic rate drops – if our body has to exist on smaller portions it will use this food more efficiently. Our bodies are amazing and if we had lived years ago when famines were more common, then they would have adapted to eating less food.
• The longer the diet, the more our bodies fight against weight loss. With each attempted diet, weight loss occurs more slowly and is regained more quickly.
• We stop eating according to when we are hungry, which means we can lose the ability to know when we are hungry and when we are full. This can lead to binge eating: not knowing when to stop eating.
• We can lose our enjoyment of eating, and feel guilty and disappointed if we break our diet.
• We start to crave the food we are not allowed on our diet.
• We can become obsessed with food and eating.
• We lose concentration and our energy levels drop making it harder to do the things we enjoy.
• We might develop eating difficulties which can lead to eating disorders.
• The longer the diet, the more our bodies fight against weight loss. With each attempted diet, weight loss occurs more slowly and is regained more quickly.
• We stop eating according to when we are hungry, which means we can lose the ability to know when we are hungry and when we are full. This can lead to binge eating: not knowing when to stop eating.
• We can lose our enjoyment of eating, and feel guilty and disappointed if we break our diet.
• We start to crave the food we are not allowed on our diet.
• We can become obsessed with food and eating.
• We lose concentration and our energy levels drop making it harder to do the things we enjoy.
• We might develop eating difficulties which can lead to eating disorders.
If dieting doesn’t work why do we do it?
Part of the reason is that the diet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It depends on people feeling bad about themselves to make money. In addition we are encouraged to be a certain size to be healthy and are warned about the dangers of gaining weight. There are lots of confusing messages about what is an ‘ideal’ weight and how we ‘should’ achieve it. These ‘ideals’ fail to acknowledge the huge diversity in body size and shape.