An article written by Behavioral Nutrition talks about dieting and how it can cause eating disorders if taken too far. It also talks about how to prevent dieting from reaching that extent.
A diet is what a person eats. When people go on diets, they have intentions on changing their lifestyle habits to be healthier. Sometimes, diets help patients when they have certain diseases, as they are limited to eating specific foods.
Diet culture is a social issue where diets are out of hand, as people start to value their appearance over their overall health. This leads to eating disorders. Eating disorders are serious conditions where a person feels that they have to control their eating habits. Eating disorders can happen to anyone and not all eating disorders result in a person losing weight; they may gain weight or maintain their original weight. Eating disorders have a lot of negative physical and psychological effects and may sometimes be fatal.
While dieting is not the main cause of eating disorders, it is a factor. Some people get so caught up in the idea of dieting that they start controlling every factor of their eating habits. They may overeat, or starve themselves. This leads to an eating disorder. Diet culture praises eating disorders and restrictive diets since the main focus is to fix peoples’ insecurities, regardless of the risks.
Current methods to improve this are to emphasize that eating well, sleeping well, exercising well and lowering stress levels is the best diet. People are also trying to bring awareness to eating disorders, as a way to show that while dieting is safe, extreme dieting should not be the end goal. Lastly, but most importantly, there is treatment for those who experienced the negative effects of extreme dieting and eating disorders. The problem with these methods is that diet culture is too influential. Many people believe in the lies of the diet industry, and take on diets that have terrible impacts. More people are worried about their looks, and are restricting themselves from having a healthy lifestyle in order to look a certain way.
One way to improve on this is to emphasize that having a healthy lifestyle is important, regardless of size. For example, a person can eat their favorite foods that might be high in fat and carbohydrates once in a while, or add in more vegetables and fruit to create a more balanced meal. In the end, diets are supposed to help people improve their lives, it can contribute to eating disorders if taken too far.
Works Cited
A connection between dieting and eating disorders. Behavioral Nutrition. (2021, October 25). Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://behavioralnutrition.org/connection-between-dieting-and-eating-disorders/.
