Summary Of Why You Can T Lose Weight On A Diet By Sandra Aamodt

In the article Why You Can’t Lose Weight on a Diet, author Sandra Aamodt explains why it is difficult to stay on a diet. She tells us a big contributor to not keeping the weight off deals with a term called the metabolic suppression. This is triggered when your body’s set point becomes off balance. In return, your brain will release various hormones just to keep your body at its set point. Aamodt then gives various studies to relatively prove that diets do not particularly work. Yet, towards the end of the article she also provides other reasons of why diets do not work, such as, them being stressful, weight anxiety, and binge eating. (Aamodt, 2016)
The source of the information comes from Sandra Aamodt who is a neuroscientist. The article
was written to give an opinion and provide some study finds on why it is to be believed that being on a diet does not lead to long-term weight loss. This article was found through the New York Times online with the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/why-you-cant-lose-weight-on-a-diet.html?_r=0 . The strength for this article to be reliable is that the author provides a couple different study finds. Also, the author points out the obvious reasons of why dieting doesn’t always work. Although, the author is just a neuroscientist, what does she know about nutrition? This article lacked specific evidence relating the kinds of food we eat to the various styles of diets that are available. There are not any clear diets mentioned just diets in general are being talked about.
This article caught my attention right away. I have known that diets don’t always work for people so I was curious as to why many diets fail when people are trying to lose weight. Personally, it scares me to know that I could become obese if I don’t take care of myself right now by eating right. In a study following twins to determine if weight gain was genetic Aamodt published, “The difference in weight gain was even larger between fraternal twins” (Aamodt, 2016, p. 3). During this study it found that dieters were more likely to gain weight rather than their non-dieting twin. This study had hit me because I am a fraternal twin. I do not wish on my sister or myself to gain excess weight and in return develop heart problems, diabetes, or chronic pain. It gets even scarier when this study stated that, “Women who had gone on two or more diets during the study were five times as likely to become overweight” (Aamodt, 2016, p. 3). With this study done it makes me question what I can do to avoid this turnout. Overall, if genetics was the cause to being overweight it is not the only thing. Other factors of stress, weight anxiety, and binge eating contribute largely to diets being unsuccessful. After reading through this article I have come to a conclusion that eating right in general and not to just lose weight is more beneficial in the long term. Eating right combined with daily exercise will help improve one’s overall health. I believe this is the goal many people should followed. Following this goal, the weight should fall off itself without us becoming stress over not losing weight.