I have always had issues with my body and my weight. This unfortunately started at a very young age for me. In grade school I was the girl who towered over everyone, and was a little more build than the typical girl my age. All the other kids in my grade looked basically the same from my point of view. There was one other girl who was the same height as me and the kids nicknamed us the “twin towers”. I remember wanting to look like anyone but me at that time. Today I am considered average height and can only wish for a pair of long legs. My paper is about my struggles with eating and exercise, and the importance of exercise and nutrition in my life. Ever since I was young I have been the athletic girl in my grade. I played every sport that was available to me. I was involved in basketball, volleyball, softball, track, gymnastics, and figure skating. Although, I was kept busy exercising daily with all my activities, I still felt fat around other kids my age. My mom and dad constantly reminded me how beautiful I was but I could not find beauty within myself no matter how hard I tried. My middle school years came around and my self-esteem only got worse. I went through an awkward stage as many kids did but, I felt like mine was worse than anyone else. Kids were more concerned with how they looked and acted than anything else. I felt a constant pressure to keep up with everyone. My two best friends were tiny and gorgeous, and every time we were together it was a constant reminder to me that I was not. My weight was constantly on my mind and drove me crazy during school hours. The end of my middle school years is when my friends started constantly talking about the diets and what they could and could not eat. I was excited for high s... ... middle of paper ... ...After my exhausting effort to recover, my bad eating habits came back to haunt me. I could not believe I was once again going through hell to satisfy something that was impossible to satisfy. I came to a point where I cut eating out of my diet completely and exercised for 3 hours a day. Sometimes standing up for long periods of time was impossible for me. I was constantly light headed and miserable with what I was doing to myself. At the end of my senior year I lost a total of 15 pounds. I was weak and not acting like myself. I did not want this anymore, and knew that it was time for me to take control of my eating disorder. I had to start eating every meal in order to become healthy again. I finally gained weight and kept body fat. I have been eating right since then. I still watch what I eat and exercise daily, but have not taking either activity to the extreme.
6th grade came and my friends and I were split up, and some of my friends were in the same hall as me. I was put into what the students called “the dumb hallway”, some people weren’t as smart as the other kids in a different hallway but, let’s get back on track. Begin called a “dumb kid” started a little of my depression. I didn’t do my homework unless, it was important and I didn’t do my classwork at the best of my ability. I used my phone to read a lot instead of paying attention
A Review of Mary Pipher”s “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls”, Laura E. Berk's “Infants and Children: Prenatal Through Middle Childhood”, and Lina A. Ricciardelli's “Self-esteem and Negative Affect as Moderators of Sociocultural Influences on Body Dissatisfaction, Strategies to Decrease Weight, and Strategies to Increase Muscles Among Adolescent Boys and Girls”
Over the years the rise in body image dissatisfaction has grown as both male and female progress to adulthood. This factor can be contributed to societal standards that the media presents to the public daily. These standards continue to rise making the body image more difficult to attain. With these standards comes the push to seek the “perfect body”. This myth of true beauty commonly found in today’s society, is the price that adolescents buy into often sacrificing their health. The perfect body can often present a distorted view of one-self leading to unhealthy methods of weight reduction. The most common methods for weight reduction are the diseases Anorexia and Bulimia. The similarities and differences between Anorexia and Bulimia will be used to prove that the society’s pressure to fit a certain mold contribute to the onset of the disease.
O’Dea, J. (1995). Body image and nutritional status among adolescents and adults. Journal of Nutrition & Dietetics, 25, 56-67.
Laurie was a size fourteen at age eleven and weighed one-hundred fifty-five pounds. She went through elementary school being the kid that everyone called fat and never felt love from any of her peers. Even a counselor at her after-school YMCA program made an example of her to the other children. The teacher told all the children that she used to be as big as Laurie. Putting aside all the criticism from her fellow peers and teachers she found the courage and strength to lose weight. She began doing sit-ups and eating “healthier”. In all reality, she was eating less and less every day. She went from a size fourteen to a nine and then from a nine to a five. This all happened to her between summer and Christmas. By the following summer Laurie was a size double zero. During the following school year, she was called to the nurse’s office to be weighed and the scale read ninety-seven pounds. Laurie had become anorexic from the mentally abusing childhood she experienced from her peers.
One day 6 year-old Taylor came home from school and asked her mother, “Mommy, why is my tummy so fat?... A girl in the bathroom at school asked me why I was fat"(Canning and Wynn 1). The article “Appearance Culture in Nine- to 12-Years-Old Girls: Media and Peer Influences on Body Dissatisfaction” by Levina Clark and Marika Tiggermann tells us that is been said that adolescence is the point when it is most likely for body dissatisfaction to arise, but a growing amount of research suggest that it may develop earlier during childhood. Many studies have shown body dissatisfaction in girls as young as six years old (628).Stephanie Hanes article, “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect”, says The University of Central Florida did a poll and found the 50 percent of 3-6 year old girls worry that they are fat (482-483). The percentage of preadolescence girls who desire a thinner body size is between 28 to 55 percent. With this body dissatisfaction at a young age it can lead to dieting and related behaviors that are risk facts for chronic body image problems, weights cycling, obesity, and eating disorders. To contribute to this dissatisfaction of ones body there are many influences such as media and peers (Clark and Tiggermann 629). The way body image is portrayed in the media and influences from peers it is having a negative effect on young girls and they are are starting to have body dissatisfaction at younger ages.
Obesity is a growing epidemic, which affects the obese and society as a whole. I want to get to the root of this problem and have an understanding of it. I will be discussing what obesity is, how it is developed, and who is at risk. I would also like to explore the familial upbringing of those afflicted by obesity, how to reverse the process, and finally see how obesity is viewed by society.
All throughout my life I have never had to watch my weight or worry about my eating habits. I have always been able to eat all kinds of different foods unhealthy or healthy it never mattered because of my high metabolism. I never stopped to think of the effects or the problems I could obtain over time if I kept eating the same way. However, after being deeply affected by this semester by my own food journal, The Food Inc. movie, and The Eater Reader I now have a better sense of wisdom and better understanding of the types of foods I was putting into my body, and have stopped drinking carbonation but with the lack of time I will not be able to give up my eating habits up.
Starting around the ages of 12 and 13 years old, we have all succumbed to the embarrassing and life-scarring times of puberty (a time where we don’t exactly know who we are because of all the strange changes we are going through). Particular examples brought to mind when I think of my horrendous time with puberty is embarrassing mini volcanoes popping up all over my face accompanied by insanely awkward conversations with just about everyone around me. I would misinterpret things all the time in conversations that I would have with people and in just about every day-to-day activity I did. The beginning of your teenage years really are what lead up to figuring out who you are, who you want to be, and what you want to do with your life. Of
Although the treatment process was often frustrating and challenging, I actually came to enjoy my appointments with the nutritionist in her tiny, cozy office, cluttered with food models and recipes. She taught me the basics of nutrition and helped me form a healthier relationship with food. It took time and quite a few tearful sessions, but I slowly started to view food in terms of the nutrients and benefits it could offer me instead of thinking of food as the enemy. During my recovery, I experienced the powerful impact that proper nutrition could have on overall health. I gained back all the weight I had lost, and my hair stopped falling out. However, the biggest changes were the ones most people could not see just by looking at me; they were the emotional and mental changes that came from properly nourishing my body again. I could concentrate on schoolwork instead of planning out my next meal, and I ...
As a woman of color who has always been a big girl, I started struggling with my body image when I reached my adolescence years. Growing up, I did not realize that my body was abnormal and unacceptable. I saw myself just like other peers and age group. My experience of body dissatisfaction first started within my own family. I got teased about my size by family members. My parents, especially my mother, reminded me constantly about how obese I was. Reaching a certain age, she started controlling my food intake and she made sure I ate no more than three times a day. With all those disciplinary actions from my mother and the pressure I felt from family, I started noticing of external standards of beauty and body image. In this lens, one can see that body image is influenced by many factors and my mother became a structure that carried out directives. This example demonstrates that feminine body is socially constructed and taught to us. When this ideal body image or feminine body gets inculcated in us at a young age, it becomes internalized discipline that enables one to distinguish herself from other
O’Dea, J. (1995). Body image and nutritional status among adolescents and adults. Journal of Nutrition & Dietetics, 25, 56-67.
I remember after one dance class my teacher called me over to speak privately with me, to tell me that I needed to lose weight if I was ever to become a professional ballerina. I was 7 at the time, and yet I have carried those words close to me for 12 years now. This time last year I had lost 20% of my body weight and I had not had my period in over a year, but it wasn't good enough. I would set deadlines for myself, like "I just need to be thin until prom, or senior week, then I'll let myself eat normally again." But every time I would continue on, narrowing my food options so that certain foods were actually evil to me. Eating candy and fat wasn't even an option to me, but I remember people constantly asking, "why can't you just eat it?" One particular night, my parents gave me a dreaded Ensure to drink because I had not eaten all day. I sat in front of them at the dinner table holding the drink sobbing because I could not physically bring myself to drink it. The more they encouraged me to eat, the more I refused. I'm recovering now after hospitalization, but it is still a struggle everyday (Katie’s Story1).
First, of all one of the things I changed was my eating habits. Eating healthy made my body feel better. I have met my nutritional needs by knowing my limits on junk food and eating more vegetables, proteins, fruits, and better portions. I have not completely cut everything from my diet because that would be difficult. I make sure I do not over
Obesity in adults has recently become a big issue. With more and more adults becoming obese every day it’s pretty obvious why it’s become such a big deal. People everywhere are now exercising more to get fit, but most the time they forget to improve their nutrition. The obesity rate in adults isn’t the only thing to rise greatly. Teenagers and kids are now facing the same problems with obesity as adults are. The main problems that cause obesity are poor nutrition and a lack of exercise. Many people now are focus on exercising and forgetting how big of a role nutrition plays in weight. Obesity hasn’t been too much of a problem in generations before, but now it’s become a really big issue. I believe bad habits that start at a young age are harder to break when we’re older, which is why I want to focus on teenagers and their poor eating habits. I think the poor eating habits of teenagers transfer into adult hood where they become obese because they are no longer growing but still eating whatever they want. I want to know why the nutrition of teenagers now is so poor compared to the generations before us. Being a teenager myself, I can write about the bad eating habits I personally have, in an attempt to fix them by becoming better informed. I hope to completely break my bad habits by totally changing what I eat and my perspective on food.