Diets can lead to Eating Disorders

Review of some statistcis from Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention:

Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives (Neumark-Sztainer,2005).

Girls who diet frequently are 12 times as likely to binge as girls who don’t diet (Neumark-Sztainer, 2005).

42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner (Collins, 1991).

81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat (Mellin et al., 1991).

 The average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds. The average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds.

Most fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women (Smolak, 1996).

46% of 9-11 year-olds are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets, and 82% of their families are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets (Gustafson-Larson & Terry, 1992).

91% of women recently surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting,

22% dieted “often” or “always” (Kurth et al., 1995).

95% of all dieters will regain their lost weight in 1-5 years (Grodstein, et al., 1996).

35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% progress to partial or full syndrome eating disorders (Shisslak & Crago, 1995).

25% of American men and 45% of American women are on a diet on any given day (Smolak, 1996).

Americans spend over $40 billion on dieting and diet-related products each year (Smolak, 1996).

Invest in yourself not a DIET!