Diet Dangers: Why Dieting Is Harmful

Dieting has become an accepted "solution" to body dissatisfaction. Each year, an estimated forty-five million Americans go on a diet and spend over thirty-three billion dollars on diet products like weight loss pills and supplements.(1) What people refuse to realize is that it is not only ineffective, but there are numerous harmful effects it can have on the body.

We are constantly bombarded by hundreds of advertisements and unattainable body images daily. We are influenced into the idea behind what we see, which is the main culprit behind diets. This chain reaction of cause and effect is continuously growing and becoming more and more dangerous.

Source

"Dieting represents a physically unhealthy focus on reshaping the body as a way of conforming with societal norms and expectations."(2)

Dieting is not just a simple defined trend; it's a serious problem that many people don't realize.

The effects of dieting are hugely concerning. Dieters are at an inclusive risk of things like menstrual irregularity (in females), secondary Amenorrhea, Osteopenia, Osteoperosis, heart disease and/or, sadly, death. Fifteen studies published between 1983 and 1993 show that weight loss increases the risk of premature death by over 260 percent.(3)

Diets are dangerous and useless, but somehow, their trend has continued to grow, now growing into younger and younger generations. Dieting has become especially popular among adolescence, transmitting irrational and unattainable ideas and causing health issues in children of earlier and earlier youth.

Teenage dieting is the usual antecedent to Anorexia and Bulimia five-fold  to eighteen-fold increased risk of developing an eating disorder.(4)

A cross-sectional study found that thirty-six percent of normal weight girls were dieting, compared with fifty percent of overweight girls and fifty-five percent of obese girls.

Diets are not only completely unhealthy and remarkably dangerous, but they are rather ineffective -- perhaps the opposite. In fact, ninety-five percent of diets will fail and most will regain their weight in one to five years.(5)

"Dietary restraint may create biological and psychological feelings of deprivation that lead to greater reactivity to food cues, cravings, counterregulation, disinhibition, periodic overeating, and weight gain," said Hala Madanat, Ph.D., co-author of two articles reviewing 361 published studies. "Biologically, it is often associated with unhealthy changes in body composition, hormonal changes, reduced bone density, menstrual disturbances, and lower resting energy expenditure. Dietary restraint is further associated with numerous measures of negative effect, diminished cognitive functioning, body dissatisfaction, overvaluation of weight and shape, and eating disorders."

References
1) http://www.livestrong.com/
2) Striegel-Moore et. al. 1986; Brownell, 1991
3) http://newlifeforhealth.blogspot.com
4) Patton GC, Johnson-Sabine E, Woolk Mann AH, Wakeling A, 1990
5) http://www.montenido.com/