Repeat a lie often enough and people take it as truth. This describes the plight of the hackneyed statistic that 95% of all diets fail. Writers still tout this number as Pauls Gospel even though this study happened over 50 years ago. Dr. Albert Stunkard, Emeritus Director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, crafted this investigation in the 1950s. After examining 100 dieters, Dr. Stunkard found that only two people out of 100 sustained their ideal dieting weight after two years. Much in the world of dieting has changed since then, and new research heralds more change. Even Dr. Stunkard is a part of these advances. In 1996, he participated in a study that concluded that yo-yo dieting, or weight cycling, does not adversely affect the bodys metabolism or body fat distribution. Other dieting insights published in the Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter discussed the finding of researchers at the University of Kentucky. The investigators collected data from 29 weight-loss studies involving thousands of dieters. These participants followed detailed meal-planning instructions that lasted from eight to thirty weeks. Five years after dieting, people kept off an average of about seven of the pounds they had originally lost. This is noteworthy, considering that many people naturally gain weight with age. The study further demonstrated that those who exercised the most frequently kept an average of 33 pounds off. Yet, the people on stringent calorie restricted diets tended to lose an average of more than 40 pounds and, five years later, kept off only 15 of the pounds they lost. To further expound upon the determinants of dieting success, psychologist Andrew J. Hill questioned the belief that dieting makes a person fat and published his finding in the British Journal of Nutrition. As Hill a lecturer at Leeds University School of Medicine at Leeds, Englandsees it, weve oversimplified the environmental, social and psychological factors that influence our self-image and weight. Also, would-be dieters too often assume that thin people never diet, when in fact, these svelte folks may be dieting experts. Similarly, Erin Putterman and Wolfgang Linden investigated whether dieting for health or vanity creates the negative situations associated with chronic dieting such as fasting and purging. Their findings, released in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, concluded that when health-consciousness inspires a woman to diet, she is less likely to engage in desperate dieting attempts. Skinny Fat Chicks aims to expose self-sabotaging dieting habits of women while offering methods for sustaining dieting motivation for life. In short, it proposes that women who failed at dieting have failed to resolve three critical issues their identity crisis, educational crisis and celebration crisis. Excepted from Skinny Fat Chicks: Why Were Still Not Getting This Dieting Thing by Naweko San-Joyz |
