Trigger Warning: Anorexia Nervosa
Generally, a diet is a temporary change in eating habits, usually in order to lose or maintain a certain weight. The keyword here is temporary. Dieting is not meant to last more than a month or so, and most of the diets you can find online or in magazines are extremely unhealthy for the body. However, many young girls turn to diets when they don’t feel inside the borders of what is socially “acceptable” for their bodies. There are a number of other ways to lose weight in a way where you can be healthy at the same time or even just being safe when changing your eating habits to live a stronger life. For whatever reason you want to change your body for the better, dieting does not need to be a part of it.
First, and possibly the most important, is the compromise between mental health along with physical health. As I said earlier, online diets are not trustworthy and are more often than not more harmful than beneficial to the body. They can call for extreme cuts in calories that will end up causing malnutrition. This can lead to horrifying mental illnesses like anorexia and bulimia. It is so easy to find diets online simply by using a search engine to look up, “weight loss diets.” A specific diet I found online from www.caloriebee.com calls for only eating fruit on day one of the diet, along with twelve glasses of water. A body cannot properly function on only eating fruit for 24 hours. Day four of their diet consists of eating eight bananas and one cup of vegetable soup. Bananas are particularly high in potassium, and too much potassium leads to heart problems, as well as kidney disease. Apart from the high potassium, eight bananas and one cup of vegetable soup comes to around 900 calories, which is 300 calories below the minimum amount.
Secondly, if someone really needs to lose weight in order to be healthy, dieting is temporary, but a change in a diet is permanent. Because diets are provisional, it makes them useless. Changing a diet for good will give you better results in the long run. “Cheat days” are now irrelevant and not a temptation because your diet has been changed forever. Eating “right” is unique to everyone, considering everybody’s physique is completely different. This further proves why “Easy Online Diets” are misleading and damaging to the body. The internet is not a reliable source to conduct research about the huge decision to transform your eating habits. If it is necessary for a change in your eating lifestyle, you should acquire professional help from a nutritionist and a personal trainer. Eating is something that is done every day, and there are resources out there for help, so use them.
Finally, dieting doesn’t make you happy. There is nothing optimistic about the word dieting. Weight loss or just getting healthier has the potential to be a life-altering, progressive experience. However, diets are never something anyone really wants to do. The negative connotation with dieting is unbelievably accurate. Dieting will not boost self-esteem or give you body positivity. As soon as the diet is over your body will start forming back to the way it was, so why continue the taxing cycle? A fitting quote from the website, www.psychologytoday.com says, “Counting calories, obsessing about your body fat, and reading diet books is likely taking time away from more meaningful pursuits.” There are so many other ways to feel better about yourself. Go for a bike ride, take a vacation, or go to a yoga class. Most likely, the “ideal body” you are searching for will not come from dieting, and because of the stressful situation that is dieting, you will undoubtedly never be satisfied with your body anyway.
Dieting is looked at by some people as a first step to leading a healthier life. It could be looked at as an advantage that diets are temporary because it’s similar to a stepping stone before completely revising your diet. However, this tactic rarely works and it is much healthier for the mind and body to start the weight loss process with a positive energy. Using a diet as a stepping stone could cause someone to diet once or twice, stop, give up, and never think about getting healthy again. Or, it could start to pave the way to mental illness. These two possibilities are much more likely than the use of a diet really working to anyone’s benefit.
The concept of dieting is not sensible. The bad outweighs the good by far. Unfortunately, the social pressure for a perfect body is not going to change anytime soon. But the resistance can start now. If you are really striving for a healthier lifestyle, see a nutritionist so they can tell you what is the utmost perfect thing to do for your body type. Never rely on the internet or magazine articles to know what is the best option for you. Mental illness is serious in this day and age. A static from the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa website states that every 62 minutes at least one person dies as a direct result from an eating disorder. Dieting is for sure a part of the cause for some of those deaths. It is depressing that a concept that is supposed to encourage people to live healthy is causing such harm, but there is a way to stop it. Don’t diet. Seek other ways of wholesome living and inspire others to do the same. Being healthy is important, that is precisely why dieting is the wrong choice.
