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Allison Veverka
Professor Johnson-Tayl
English 1201
2 August 2019
In the last decade, society has become more connected with each other than ever before
through the use of technology and social media. However, research has been showing that people
feel more isolated and disconnected as they prefer interaction with their phones rather than face-
to-face communication. While this is true and an issue in today’s society, another major problem
is that we are more disconnected with our own bodies than ever before. This is not always from
lack of trying but commonly due to the misunderstanding and lack of motivation that has
resulted from our social culture. When done correctly, it is very achievable to transform your life
and become healthy with the right understanding and motivation. Most people struggle to
achieve their health goals because of the misunderstanding of how properly do so, unawareness
towards the benefits of a holistic lifestyle, and the lack of a prioritizing mindset/motivational
influencers.
The most common New Year’s resolution throughout the last decade for people is to get
healthy and for most, that means they want to “lose weight”. This weight loss usually refers to
losing a certain number of pounds on the scale to achieve a specific body image in the mirror.
However, studies show that around 80% of people give up on this plan by the end February
(Mulvey). The reason for this failure rate is that many people are not aware of the science behind
weight loss, do not know how to create realistic goals and plans towards them, and often quit
before they begin to see their results. Once they learn and implement the proper steps towards
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their goals, it most often results in steadfast lifestyle changes and actually promotes a ripple-
Weight loss occurs when the body is in a negative energy balance, which means when
your energy intake is less than your energy expenditure. This is known as a caloric deficit, when
the calories that you eat are less than the calories that you burn, and it is the only way to lose
weight (Hatfield 499). A major misconception people have about weight loss is that it mostly
results from increasing the amount of exercise you do. While exercise will help speed up the rate
at which weight loss occurs by increasing the number of calories you burn (i.e. your energy
expenditure), people frequently neglect balancing the other half of the equation, energy
consumption, which comes from your diet. A study done by the Pennigton Biomedical Research
Center observed 171 overweight individuals on a supervised exercise program for six months in
which an unexpectedly low number of people actually achieved their weight loss goal. The
explanation for this is because the study only measured and controlled their exercise routines, not
their diets. Scientists found that the participants had been overcompensating for the extra calorie
burn with their food because they felt it was “O.K. to trade behaviors”. However, of the few
individuals who did not eat that extra food, they did lose weight and formed health habits of
While exercise is so important for your overall health and wellness, if your goal is to lose
weight, your focus needs to be towards your diet more than what you are doing at the gym. This
can be challenging because you need external tools to determine how many calories you burn in
order to figure out how many calories you need to eat. There are two important numbers to be
aware of when determining how much energy you expend (i.e. calories you burn). Your TDEE
(Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is the number of calories you burn doing the activities you do
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throughout your day. For instance, a construction worker will burn more calories than someone
who sits and works at a desk all day because they are doing more physical activity, and thus will
have a higher TDEE and need to eat more food than the office worker. The second important
number is your BMR (Basic Metabolic Rate) which accounts for around 60-70% of your TDEE.
This is the minimum level of energy (i.e. food to eat) needed to maintain the vital functions of
the body, such as digestion, pumping blood to your brain, keeping your organs functioning, etc.
If you are not eating enough calories (i.e. under your BMR), your body is unable to do its basic
functions and then it will go into starvation mode and actually store fat (Hatfield 536-541).
Your ideal intake, or “sweet spot”, in which you want to be eating is anywhere between
your BMR and your TDEE. If you eat 500 calories less than your TDEE, you will lose about 1
pound of body fat a week. If you eat 1,000 calories less than your TDEE, you will lose about 2
pounds of body fat a week, and so forth. This is where increasing your level of exercise can help
to speed up the process of weight loss because you are increasing the number of calories you
burn and increasing the amount of that caloric deficit. However, remember never to eat below
your BMR or else you will actually be depriving your body of the nutrients it needs to function
(Hatfield 536-541).
A form of exercise that is often misunderstood but can help with weight loss is lifting
weights. When you do strength training, you are breaking down your muscle tissues in order for
it to grow back stronger, which also means it will grow back heavier. When you build muscle,
you may gain weight on the scale, but you are also increasing your BMR, so your body will
naturally require more energy to function. This means that your TDEE will increase as well, thus
increasing your caloric deficit (if you eat at the same amount) and furthermore your fat loss. So
while on the scale you may not be losing the specific number of pounds you were planning on,
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you are reducing your body fat percentage and achieving that same body image goal with even
some addition muscular toneness. You will not, as many people believe, “build muscle over fat”
but be building muscle while losing fat. Lifting weights also burns more calories than cardio
(which does not increase your BMR) so it is a great way to make your workouts more efficient
and can help decrease the amount of time you spend at the gym (Hatfield 536-541).
Most people rely on the scale to determine if they are achieving their weight goals,
however, frequent use of one can actually be harmful towards this. A scale only measures the
force between the object being weighed and the planet Earth. This number has nothing to do with
how much body fat you have or how in-shape you are. A 5’0” body builder can weigh the same
as a 5’10” track athlete or a 5’2” overweight person or 6’3” anorexic teenager. Using the mirror,
weekly photos for comparison, how you fit into your clothes, actual measurements of your body,
and most importantly, how you feel, are all more reliable measures of your health and progress,
not how much force you are pulling to the planet. Figure 1 below is a progressive photo of my
personal weight journey. I am the healthiest (in terms of ability and lowest body fat percentage)
in 2019 than I have ever been, but I currently weigh just as much as I did at my unhealthiest
point in 2017.
Another issue that is common is the misunderstanding that body fat can not be spot-
reduced, meaning that you cannot simply do an exercise in a specific region of the body in order
to reduce the fat there (e.g. arm fat). When you begin eating in your caloric deficit, you will be
losing fat in all areas of your body at once, however, some people do hold onto their body fat in
certain regions of their body for longer than others. This can be deterring as if your goal is to
have a visible six-pack and you do abs every day of the week with no results, you may just want
to give up. However, having visible abdominal muscles is a result of having a low body-fat
percentage as does many of the other goals people have. While building muscle underneath the
skin and temporary fat will increase the achieved look and definition of a toned body, it is
necessary to reduce your body fat in order to see that goal, which results only from eating within
your caloric deficit. A lot of media outlets use click-bait titles to lure in viewers, such as “6
Exercises to Reduce Leg Fat” or “15-Minute Home Workout to Get Abs”, but the information
and exercises provided frequently neglect to include the necessary information that you need to
Proper dieting is something that many people find extremely overwhelming and can
actually be unmotivating at times. If done improperly, this can harness a negative relationship
with food, which often deters people from beginning diets at all. However, technology is helping
to improve our lives and there are many apps that will track your food for you by simply
scanning the bar code on the nutrition label. Apple Watches and FitBit purchases have this
feature built into their app, but you can download many free apps to do this, such as
MyFitnessPal and LifeSum. It can also help you to understand your current balance of the three
macronutrients and begin to make adjustments to what types of foods you are eating (Bergland).
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This happens to be where many people struggle and lose motivation. It is relatively easy
to give an all-out effort in the gym for an hour or two a day, a few times a week. But if you want
to lose weight, you need to focus on how you are feeding your body the other fifteen or so hours
a day, and this can be extremely time-consuming. It is important when you begin this effort to
weigh and count out your serving sizes with the nutrition labels. For instance, cashews are a
delicious and healthy snack but are extremely high-calorie dense. Eating one cup of cashews has
the same number of calories as eating an entire burrito bowl at Chipotle. Maybe one is more
sustaining and filling to you than another, but it is easy to simply munch on a finger-food like
nuts without accurately understanding how many calories you are consuming. Meal-prepping is a
great way to take the time to accurately measure the amount of food you plan to eat throughout
the week and to make this effort more routine and habitual.
In the 2011 documentary “Forks Over Knives”, the famous Doctor Colin Campbell
explores how eating a whole-foods, plant-based diet can prevent and even reverse many of the
degenerative diseases that thousands of Americans face today (i.e. forks representing food and
or eliminating the consumption of animal protein and processed foods frequent in the “Western
diet” will allow the body to act in its natural, thriving state of proper health. The movie is
composed and presented in a way that makes this diet be the ultimate solution of the question
“what diet is the best diet?”, and makes you want to switch your nutritional lifestyle right away.
However, in one of the movie’s critique articles written by researcher Denise Minger, the science
that Campbell provides is picked apart and shows how this diet is mostly discussed one-sidedly
in the movie. Almost all of his claims were able to be contradicted with opposing evidence that,
if included, would have discredited his works in some degree. She notes that this is not to say a
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whole-foods, plant-based diet is not healthy or will prevent disease but that there is a lot of
research and evidence that was neglected out of the film (Minger).
This is an excellent example of how the media has misconstrued people and how it can be
difficult to learn and implement proper nutrition in your life. Unfortunately, there is no right
“one diet”. Each person’s body and metabolism is different, as well as their taste buds,
intolerances, and goals. What works for your body, lifestyle, and preference is completely
different to another person of the same gender or age. Many people want to just be told exactly
what to and not to eat, and many of the diet companies and programs available to market target
that.
There are hundreds of diets in the world, with some of today’s popular being the
following that were reviewed on health services platform Healthline: the Paleo diet, Vegan diet,
Low-Carb diets, Dukan diet, Ultra-Low Fat Diet, Atkins diet, HGC diet, Zone diet, and
Intermittent Fasting. All of these diets have their advantages and disadvantages in terms of which
staple “American diet” foods you can and cannot eat, but they all produce numerous health
benefits, including weight loss, and well as are proven to reduce risk factors for many chronic
However, the reason why people have had success with any of them is not necessarily
because of which diet they followed, which foods were allowed, or what macronutrient ratios
were implemented but because of the new attention to calories consumed their diets were
directing. They developed a new conscious mindset to the quantities and quality of the foods
they were eating which in turn led them to begin eating in their caloric deficit and lose body fat.
Diets are not necessarily meant to be implemented for every second of the rest of your life but to
form healthy habits that you participate in at your own will. In most cases, it takes a few weeks
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for your body to adjust and recognize the benefits of the diet, which are usually more energy,
better mood, improved memory, weight loss, and many more known and unknown ones
(Bjarnadottir). Moreover, no matter which diet you prefer, all scientists and nutritionists will
agree that it is always better to eat foods that are minimally processes and to make sure to have a
As previously discussed and explained in the “Forks Over Knives” documentary, altering
your diet and lifestyle in a health-conscious manner can help prevent or even reverse numerous
chronic illnesses and diseases. The American or Western Diet clearly consists of high amounts of
processed foods, refined sugars, saturated fats, chemicals and preservatives, and unbalanced
macronutrients. The people consuming these diets also consist of a high number of health
problems including heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and many more which often times are not
due to genetics but unhealthy lifestyle choices. The science behind the correlation of poor diet
and health is more than apparent. When compared to other countries from around the world who
have very different diets, Western diet consumers face disease and illness much more frequently
and severely. For instance, a person in America dies every sixty seconds from heart disease, one
in three Americans will develop diabetes within their lifetime, and fifteen hundred people a day
die from cancer (Minger). There is some explanation as to how this got so out of hand, but it is
The Pleasure Trap is made up of neurological sensors found in the stomach that signal to
your brain if you are satisfied or full by how much your stomach stretches as well as measuring
the caloric density of that foods (i.e. how rich in calories it is) (Minger). When eating low-calorie
foods, such as plant products or a spinach salad, you need to consume a lot of that food for your
stomach to stretch and signal the brain that you are full. However, with the easily accessible and
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processed foods, such as doughnuts, you can consume a multitude of them before your stomach
stretches and signals your brain you are full. So, you could have consumed around five hundred
calories of a spinach salad (which is an extremely large salad) to achieve the same satisfaction of
eight-hundred calories of doughnuts (which is about four). Now multiply this over-eating for all
snacks and meals throughout your days, weeks, months, and years and it is easy to get caught in
the vicious cycle of over-eating, which causes you to be consuming in a caloric surplus which
will cause you to gain weight. Eating in your “pleasure trap” rather than learning how to eat
properly is a main factor in why attention away from high-calorie, low-quality, Western diet is
necessary.
Consequently, the most detrimental and frequent problem with diets that causes people to
quit them is the lack of consistency to them. There is nothing wrong with occasionally
“cheating” from your diet or rewarding yourself, but many people use that one instance as an
excuse to just stop trying for the rest of the day, week, vacation, holiday, and even year for all
those New Years resolutions. Eating one slice of cake at a wedding or going out for ice cream
with your family will not cause you to gain one or five pounds. It is when you take that one
instance and decide to not be mindful of your diet for the rest of the day, causing you to eat out
of your caloric deficit, and then continually do that which causes you to gain back that
Consistency in dieting will eventually form natural habits and help you live a healthy life.
If you do happen to break your diet once, accept and appreciate the moment of food-pleasure but
do not let that be an excuse to yourself to continue to literally feed that bad habit you have been
working so hard to break. Also remember that something that works for one person will not
necessarily work for another. Finding a diet plan that is right for you requires a lot of trials and
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errors. You will always be learning and improving in terms of listening to what foods your body
is craving and how to satisfy it correctly until it no longer becomes an intentional effort.
Another underrecognized issue is that this call to healthy living does not only apply to
overweight individuals but people of all ages and health statuses. According to a study done on
distribution of weight status and perception in Australian school children, thin children are also
less likely to desire or engage in exercise (thin referring to low BMI, or Body Mass Index) as
well as are less likely to perceive their health (or lack of) as a concern. While the health
problems discussed previously are all frequent in overweight children and adults, thin children
and adults can face a variety of these issues and others such as lower body fat stores, lower
muscle and skeletal mass, increased risk of injury, delayed growth, etc. This was found to be
caused mostly by malnutrition, lack of proper parenting advice towards healthy choices, formed
eating disorders, and lack of recognition towards this issue (O’Dea and Amy).
In a country that has such high rates of obesity and poor health, as well as put such an
emphasis on “loving your body as it is”, it is so common for people who may not have the
appearance of being unhealthy to ignore/forget exercise and nutrition in their lives. Thin or
normal weight people often neglect focusing on it because they do not feel they need to lose
weight and so it is “unnecessary”. However, it is necessary for all people, not just for people at
extreme ends of spectrum. Holistic lifestyle choices are proven to benefit not only your physical
In Doctor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla’s journal article about the Influences of Diet and Exercise
on Mental Health Through Hormesis, he discusses how diet, exercise, and other lifestyle
adaptations can improve one’s cognitive ability or brain function. BDNF stands for Brain-
Derived Neurotrophic Factor and it is a protein in the brain that plays a vital role in growing all
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cells throughout your body and maintains circuits of information flow throughout the body to the
brain. When you control and increases your BDNF levels, it is proven that you can increase your
decrease stress, insomnia, and memory loss. He also notes another interesting link between how
a diet deficient in Omega-3 contents is associated with mental disorders frequently common
today including depression, dementia, dyslexia, ADHD, bipolar depression, and many more. The
only way to get more BDNF in your body is through proper nutrition and exercise, which makes
exercise a literal free medicine (Gomez-Pinilla). The discoveries of between improved diet and
exercise on improved overall health and wellness are literally never-ending, however, sometimes
it can be very challenging to get motivated to start your diet or workout plan.
A study was done in 2016 identified the most influential and successful motivator towards
exercise was competition. “PennShape” enrolled 790 college students in an eleven-week exercise
program and divided them into four groups to observe how different social networks and
motivators impacted their behaviors towards exercise. The variable factors for the groups were
sources of individual competition, team competition, and team support with one control group.
The study showed that the competition created an aspirational mindset and increased attendance
for the students in the individual and team competitive groups but not for the support or control
groups. The researches emphasized that healthy social competition helped encourage others and
motivated individuals intrinsically. Bergland discussed how this could apply to more than just
fitness but any social behaviors, such as raising awareness for environmental sustainability. This
motivation and competitive aspect can be grown and implemented through the people you have
in your own social environment, like a personal trainer/coach, or through some of the previously
Learning how to motivate yourself is the most important step towards achieving any goal.
Then, investigate what resources you have available to you to help you achieve. Compete with
yourself to get that weekly goal of not binge-eating, skipping a workout, or taking a mental
health break. Once you do these things long enough, they will begin to become a habit and you
will eventually begin to see your results. Ask people who have already achieved these goals
about the steps they took and the resources they used to help you. For instance, if you see
someone at the gym who is in shape, ask them what steps they took or if they have any advice.
Follow influencers on social media or listen to motivational speeches before you workout. Have
other people help hold yourself accountable for these things until you can learn to do it yourself.
Find sources of motivation that work for you. Do what you think works best for you, and if it
does not end up working, research and try other ways (but make sure to evaluate your resources
and do not fall for click-bait). If you are struggling, ask for help.
It is true that most people fail at achieving their health goals. No one was born knowing the
science behind human physiology, everyone has to actively learn it even though there is so much
misinformation in the media about the reality of it. It is not emphasized as much as it should be
about just how good proper exercise and nutrition is for you, and the lack of prioritization from
the Western or American perspective on it can be harmful to achieving those goals. However,
technology and social media has provided so many opportunities for you to learn and achieve
them. While your plan may have not worked in the past, that is not an excuse for preventing you
Works Cited
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201610/study-identifies-no-1-source-
Bjarnadottir, Adda. “9 Popular Weight Loss Diets Reviewed.” Healthline, Healthline Media, 3
2019.
Gomez-Pinilla, Fernando. “The Influences of Diet and Exercise on Mental Health through
Hormesis.” Ageing Research Reviews, vol. 7, no. 1, 5 May 2008, pp. 49–62. Science Direct,
Hatfield, Frederick C. Fitness: the Complete Guide. 9th ed., International Sports Sciences
Association, 2008.
Minger, Denise. “‘Forks Over Knives’: Is the Science Legit? (A Review and Critique).” Denise
Minger, Recruiting Good Health from Bad Science, Denise Minger, 22 Aug. 2012,
deniseminger.com/2011/09/22/forks-over-knives-is-the-science-legit-a-review-and-critique/.
Mulvey, Kelsey. “80% Of New Year's Resolutions Fail by February - Here's How to Keep
Odea, Jennifer A, and Nancy K Amy. “Perceived and Desired Weight, Weight Related Eating and
Exercising Behaviours, and Advice Received from Parents among Thin, Overweight, Obese or
Nutrition and Physical Activity, vol. 8, no. 1, 2011, p. 68. OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center,
journals-ohiolink-
edu.sinclair.ohionet.org/pg_200?303165064199971::NO:200:P200_ARTICLEID,P200_LAST_P
Reynolds, Gretchen. “Why So Many of Us Don’t Lose Weight When We Exercise.” The New York