Disordered Eating
One of the many
Dangers of Dieting!

What is disordered eating? What causes it? What does it look like? And why do I say it's one of the many

The Diet Danger
you may not have realized

• Diets disregard the inherent wisdom of your body. They rely on external control and fickle diet willpower.

• Diets dictate rather than educate, they disconnect us even further from listening to our bodies.

• They treat symptoms rather than the cause and they don’t prepare us for the stresses of being thin – they assume (erroneously) that being thin will be great for everyone (and it isn’t).

• They don’t teach the importance of self-love or enjoying body-movement, nor do they aim for health: thinness is their only goal.

• They mislead: in their adverts they emphasize their short-term successes and hide long term weight regains.

• Diet regimes demand that we treat our bodies in disrespectful ways, as if they were 'things' to be deprived, pummeled and punished into shape. They ignore the fact that our bodies, minds, hearts and spirits are inter-connected.

• Even 'healthy-eating' weight-loss programs unwittingly sabotage healthy self-regard: they convey the message that only weight loss (and a specified amount) justifies self-respect or self-love. What nonsense!

• Diets are unnatural because they clashes with both our biology and our psychology. Few people can, or even want to, live unnaturally for the rest of their lives and diets cause many other harmful effects.

But by far the greatest danger of dieting is that it is absolutely the best way to develop not only disordered eating patterns but severe eating disorders.

Bottomline though? Diets cause disordered thinking about food which ultimately has to lead to disordered eating!

Don't be fooled by 'Disordered Behaviour'

Not only do the dangers of dieting mean that dieters resort to so-called ‘disordered eating’, they also resort to what some might consider to be very disordered behavior between weigh-ins too.

Weigh-ins impact on people either positively or negatively. 'Negative' weigh-ins often lead to comfort eating and 'positive' weigh-ins often result in 'reward' eating or a sense of relief.

Maybe such apparently ‘disordered’ behavior is a natural response in a disordered society where scales have become barometers of our ’goodness’ or ‘badness’?

Disordered eating is caused by dieting

In a classic study done by Keys in 1960, 36 men volunteered for a 6-month period of food restriction as an alternative to military service. Their food was restricted so they lost approximately 25% of their body weight.

Personality testing showed changes after a rapid loss of only 4,5 kg. These men, who had originally been psychologically healthy:

• became progressively more preoccupied with thoughts of food.
• became psychologically disturbed, reporting

• Some had to be hospitalized.

• One became so disturbed he even chopped off three of his fingers.

And here's the kicker. After the period of restricted eating was over: the men continued to have disturbed eating patterns, be emotionally disturbed and food pre-occupation.

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© Copyright ditch-diets-live-light.com 2008: Photos of Cari by Di Loria
Disclaimer: Your unique health situation may not allow you to stop dieting.
ALWAYS CONSULT WITH YOUR INDIVIDUAL HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL.
Neither Cari Corbet-Owen nor ditch-diets-live-light.com dispense medical advice.

SBI!