Dieting Facts

The following are a few notes I collected throughout the year when researching a better way to eat in order to maintain/lose weight while being careful to keep my heart healthy. I wish I had this information years ago when I was so obsessed with perfecting my body and was so strict with what I ate.

1. Dieting is linked to eating disorders. People who diet have a high risk of developing bulimia, anorexia, binging, overeating and sometimes all of these eating disorders.
2. Dieting may cause stress or make the dieter more vulnerable to its effects. This happens because most diets are very strict and unrealistc to maintain long term. Since people want to be successful with their weight loss plan they become stressed out trying to stick to it.
3. Dieting is correlated with social anxiety. People who diet end up not wanting to go out with family, friends or even date. One of the reasons is that they fear they will mess up their diet with the temptation of food that is displayed at parties, gatherings and restaurants. Or even places where the food is not the focus such as movie theatres, coffee places and fairs. Also, they fear family and sometimes friends will push food to them and they will not be able to say no. 
4. Dieting lowers self-esteem and causes people to feel like failures.Most diets promote how easy it is to lose weight if you'd just stick to their extremely strict eating plans. Diets do not work period. But most people are not aware of this and fall for the diet gimmicks. When the diet does not end up working, instead of realizing it was the diet that was faulty, they blame themselves for not being able to stick to the diet.
5. Dieting errodes confidence and self-trust. Instead of trusting what the body needs or eating when hungry, people listen to when the diet Guru says when and what you can eat. When you can't stick to a ridiculous diet plan, you lose trust and confidence in yourself.
6. Dieting may also cause depression. Imagine, you find a new promising diet and you believe this time you will have the willpower to stick to it not matter what. Then your boyfriend or friend invites you to go out to this really cool restaurant you have been wanting to go to for a long time. You either decline because you are afraid to fail again with your dieting plans and choose to stay home in isolation instead to ensure you do not mess up. Or you go, but can't eat any of the magnificent dishes displayed and end up eating boring rabbit food and a glass of water. Gosh. Just thinking about it is making me depressed.

The above are not just facts I got from health and nutrition books, but I have also seen other women experience these diet issues as well. I experienced most of them myself.

I know a woman who refused to eat a tiny piece of her birthday cake because it would mess up her diet. This woman already has eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. She can't have children because she messed up her body so badly with her eating disorders.

Sadly she taught her baby sister, who is just a teen, her dysfunctional eating behaviors and although she is a tall young lady and rail thin, she still sees herself as fat. She will not eat a thing that is not pre approved my her bulimic/anorexic older sister.

While I fortunately did not develop eating disorders, the times I did try to diet I experienced stress, social anxiety, low self-esteem, feelings of being a failure, lack of trust in myself and depression.