Classification Essay- Dieters

Dieters A sad fact in America is that thousands of people search for the dream of being thin. On any given day one finds neighbors, friends, and relatives on some kind of diet. Dieters assume various disguises, but the worthy ones are the bandwagons, who try the latest system or fad, also there’s the person who says I promise to lose it, and then there’s the person who murders themselves in the process of losing weight. Everyone wants to lose weight quickly and effortlessly therefore any fad diet promising overnight results becomes the new call of the bandwagoner. She tries the grapefruit diet or the watermelon diet, but she decides her stomach cannot deal with all of that fruit. The next day there’s a television ad of a new wonder pill that allows the user to lose up to ten pounds in one week, and the bandwagoner answers the call. Although the magic pill does not produce the desired weight loss, she never gives up hope for a new wagon to hitch onto. Once again, this dieter is lured by ads of instant spot reduction, or liposuction. She crosses over into a danger zone of unknown procedures, performed by unqualified physicians. Some dieters lose their lives in the search for a beautiful body. The stomach staple is another dieting tool that dieters try. The staple yields a large weight loss, but the dieter endangers her health because of excess loss of body fluids. The bandwagoner is always listening for the newest cure on the market. A family wedding or a special dance is a good reason for a woman to decide it is time to take off her unwanted pounds. however, quick decisions are hard to keep, and the promiser soon fails. She is the dieter with only fifteen pounds to lose, and as each year flies by she decides dieting is harder than eating what she wants to, and much less fun. She promises to lose the extra weight for her class reunion, but her weight-loss pledge is not kept. Some women become promisers during their pregnancies, and they broadcast to all within hearing distance that they will lose the extra pounds as soon as the baby is born. One is not fooled by the promiser but saddened that her attempts at weight loss are unsuccessful. The most tragic dieters in American society are the losers who take it too far, young women following a self-destructive path. Characteristically, this dieter is a young woman with low self-esteem from a middle income family . While in her teens, the young lady decides to shed some unwanted pounds, and much to her surprise, she loses the extra weight quickly. She attends a party with friends, overeats on junk food and decides to rid her body of the excess food by purging in the bathroom; therefore the deceiver is born. From that moment on, she thinks she is in control of her new found diet, but the ultimate deceiver is her diet. She sneaks large amounts of food for midnight snacks, and she does not care what she eats, only that she satisfies the hunger deep inside her soul. She faces the beginning of the downward turn of her diet, which is the binge and purge cycle. Ultimately she loses touch with reality and is treated by a physician in a hospital. The deceiver has a companion who is another deadly player in the dieting game. This dieter analyzes the calorie content of every morsel of food on her dinner plate and decides whether or not to eat it; usually she does not, but quietly excuses herself from the table to return to her room. She has lost all sense of the value of food for her body, and she cannot see what she has become. Innocently enough, the deceiver starts her diets with good intentions; however, along the way some mechanism is triggered, and they are awakened; their lives are never the same. All dieters share a common goal, losing weight, but they approach the goal from many different sides. The importance of dieting is not the goal, but how a person decides to get there. The dieter can choose life or death in her quest for a thin body.

Shawn A. Wood
Eng.101,Nelson,10:00
10/30/10