ome diets tend to be more harmful than
the obesity itself, or do they just want to portray that thin image. "Most
people want to lose weight to change the way they look." (9) Dr. Stillman
recommends a "lettuce, lean meat and hard boiled egg diet totaling 354 calories
a day, or for the fainter hearted, the nibbler diet allows you 1200 to 1800
calories a day" (Dieting Makes You Fat, pg.28). Stillman is one of the doctors'
left that talks about the importance of calories and your intake rather than the
content of what your eating and the nutritional value, like most are now saying.
A whopping 354 calories seems like the diet of a bird considering the United
States Department of Agriculture Food Guide Pyramid says "the average
sendatary woman needs 1600 calories a day, and active women need up to
2200 calories and should increase portion sizes" (http://sbweb2.med.iacnet.com/infotrac/session/188/330/8895472/17?xrn_17).
Everyone seems to have his or her own opinion regarding what you
should be doing to lose weight. Bob Schwartz says you should not diet at all.
He did a study on thin people that belonged to one of his health clubs who
wanted to gain weight. He told them he had a special weight-gaining diet they
could all try. Instead, he put them on a "very popular well-balanced, weight
loss diet that we have all been on" (Diets Still Don't Work, pg. 10). What
he found was interesting. They were all cranky and did not feel well at all.
After three days, they were all infuriated to find they had each gained around
three to seven pounds. Then Schwartz convinced them that was what was
supposed to happen, and they were to return to their regular eating habits. It was
just as he had suspected. They not only quickly went back to their original
weights but put on a few extra pounds also. As time continued, he kept put...