Dieting And Weight-Loss: Facts And Fiction
Diets and Weight-loss: Why Diet?
Most people diet because they think that they are "over"weight. However, the reality in Canada is that:
- One out of five women in Ontario between the ages of 20 and 34 are underweight.
- 40 % of 9 year old girls have dieted, despite being within healthy weight ranges.
- 80% of 18 year old women have dieted.
Clearly not all restrictive eaters do so because they are fat. They just feel fat, which has become a way to express feeling bad.
Why Diet?
In a culture where acceptance and self-esteem are often linked to physical appearance, it increasingly appears that we are judged by the way we look. So it makes sense that we want to "fit in" and look our best. In doing so, we feel better about ourselves. Unfortunately, because thinness is a fetish in our culture, we now automatically tend to believe that:
Thin = attractive, successful, in control, healthy, popular etc.
Fat = out of control, unattractive, lazy, weak-willed etc.
Of course, this is untrue. Many thin individuals are unhappy, unhealthy and unpopular. Many fat individuals are smart, attractive, successful, healthy and popular. These attributes do not automatically come to us depending on our physical shape and size. They are determined by many things, such as strong self-esteem based on what we can and do achieve, and how we value ourselves and others.
But still we go on restrictive diets to lose weight. Why?
We are flooded with information telling us that we can shape our lives by shaping our appearance. For women in particular, this usually takes the form of dieting. When we feel unloved, ineffective, out of control or unlovable in our lives, we try to take back control.
If we don't have good coping strategies that allow us to understand what the basic problem is, and how we might deal with it, then we tend to displace our unhappiness onto our bodies. And we feel FAT. So we decide to lose weight in order to feel better.
Sometimes we go on a diet because we believe that it will increase our health. (And sometimes we fool ourselves that this is the real reason, not a desire to look "better".)