With only a few days left before spring break officially begins, many students have started the search for a quick fix to lose weight. Whether they want to trade in that keg for six-pack abs or lose those love handles, students flock to the Dedman Center to tackle the elliptical or pump some serious iron.
Coinciding with this rigorous pre-break workout routine is none other than the fad diet. Sometimes it’s no carbs, and sometimes it’s all carbs. Sometimes it’s a refusal of red meat, and sometimes it’s a denial of meat altogether. There’s even a diet in which a person drinks a glass of lemonade every time he or she is hungry. Stomach growling after a 30-minute pilates session? Have a glass of lemonade! Feeling like you need a little brain food before that midterm? Why not down another glass of lemonade!
What students don’t realize is that some of these diets are extremely harmful to one’s health. The search for an instant weight-loss routine may end up having adverse effects on the body.
The degree to which some will go to lose weight is downright insane. The newly coined “drunkorexia” is becoming a new problem among both men and women. There’s a common conception that when one drinks on an empty stomach, they will become drunker, quicker. Whether it’s true or not, drunkorexia stems from that very notion. A person abstains from eating in the daytime so he or she can drink more based on caloric content of the beer. So, just because you didn’t eat all day means you can drink twice as much when you’re out partying tonight? That’s just stupid. It seems like we shouldn’t have to tell students to put food in their stomachs during the day, but apparently, we do.
This yearning for instant gratification comes from our ability to obtain things we want, exactly when we want them. Unfortunately, you can’t buy healthy living off Amazon.com. Well, you can buy Suzanne Somer’s “Somersize,” but it won’t exactly guarantee results.
We agree it’s important to eat healthy and exercise regularly. Ten glasses of lemonade a day, abstaining from bread or meat, or using alcohol to determine nutritional intake do not exactly measure up to standards of being healthy. Just take your time, watch the junk food and get on a workout schedule. Understand that being healthy can’t be achieved with the click of a mouse.
