Reducing your risk for developing coronary heart disease

In order to increase your chances of success in reducing your risk for developing coronary heart disease, follow these tips:

1. Consult your physician.

2. Monitor your eating and activity behaviors.

3. Familiarize yourself with foods that contain small or large amounts of cholesterol, fats and sodium.

4. Follow the suggested food-group units for a diet of 1600 or 2000 calories, or calculate your own individual energy needs. The less active you are, the fewer calories you can afford to eat without gaining weight.

5. Study the sample menus that follow to assist you in designing your own diet. What is important is that you generally eat as suggested, paying more attention to the types of food you eat and the way the foods are prepared than to exact amounts. Of course, this does not mean you should eat more than suggested if you are trying to lose weight or if you find you are gaining undesired weight. Use your common sense in these matters.

Weight Loss in Athletics, Making Weight, Semistarvation

Making Weight

Making weight" by wrestlers, boxers, weight lifters and jockeys is accomplished by profuse sweating and by abstaining from food and liquids for a few hours before weighing in. Weight loss up to 10 pounds (representing 5 per cent of the body weight) was accomplished without any measurable deleterious effects in six wrestlers. 2 Weight loss was induced by a procedure considered orthodox by wrestling coaches. Food and water were withheld. The wrestlers, wearing heavy sweat suits, worked on the mats and alternated this with sitting in a heated cabinet. This abnormal loss of weight is regained in part after weighing in by eating and drinking. More than 5 pounds may be regained in a few hours.

Weight Loss in Athletics

Losses of weight exceeding 10 pounds in one and one-half hours have been reported during football games at the beginning of training. During especially exciting games a substitute who has been "sweating out" the entire game on the bench has been observed to lose 5 pounds. This weight is entirely and rapidly regained after eating and drinking.

Semistarvation

A diet which is inadequate to support the needs of the body will soon result in a deterioration in fitness for exercise. When the daily caloric intake is reduced, the day to day output of voluntary work is reduced proportionately. A substandard diet causes a reduction in the performance of the physiological systems, especially the oxygen delivery and metabolic waste removal mechanisms.

Eating Disorders

Dieting is almost a precondition for female gender in American society. It goes along with the sense of femininity as being rather than acting. Physical attractiveness determines social standing to a much larger extent for women than men; it shapes how women and men interact and even how women relate to themselves. The message is clear: A woman's body is not acceptable unless it fits a certain ideal; it must be deodorized, shaved, cantilevered, and, above all, slim. A recent survey of female students at a high school revealed that half judged themselves to be somewhat or very overweight, although they acknowledged that their parents and peers would see them as average or below normal weight. Further, 69% of these females had engaged in dieting behavior; over half had undertaken their first diet before age 15, and 14% identified themselves as chronic dieters. It is more than the fact that our cultural ideal is for women to be slim. There is an unexamined assumption that it is perfectly normal and appropriate to dictate the body size, shape, and proportions of women in a way that would never be applied to men. The presumed right to impose basically frivolous and trivial expectations on women is indicative of the low status of women in general. The fact that some females get into serious health problems in the process of adhering to these demands is a manifestation of the larger issue.

Cultural explanations of anorexia and bulimia have both strengths and weaknesses. The major weakness is that many members of the culture are exposed to the same messages, rewards, and pressures without developing an eating disorder. However, a socially idealized body image, economic gains through the propagation of slimness, and the social context of gender-appropriate behaviors all suggest cultural influences. Family influences, early life trauma, and peer influences all operate within a sociocultural context.

Clothing fashion probably plays a significant role in establishing idealized body image for women. Styles are often hyped for their purported ability to make women appear closer to the cultural ideal. For example, padded shoulders ostensibly lend height and, by contrast, make the waist appear small. In fact, one could argue that American society has yet to give up the body image captured by the corset. Idealized standards for body shape indicate that waists should be at least 10 inches smaller than hip measurements. Dimensions of mass produced clothes reflect the expectation that waists will be diminuitive. Underweight fashion models emphasize this cultural ideal. The marketing of clothes for large women is limited to "plus size" departments or specialty stores for "stout" women, which emphasize their deviance from the ideal.

Each year, several thousand individuals receive treatment for eating disorders. The associated behavior patterns have serious personal, social, and medical health consequences. Those who follow starvation eating patterns indicative of anorexia nervosa commonly lose 20% of their ideal weight and are often hospitalized due to the physical effects and risks of starvation. Those who follow a binge/purge cycle typically maintain a normal weight but engage in secret consumption of vast calories in short periods of time, hence the term bulimia, which literally means ox hunger. Anorexia and bulimia are somewhat overlapped, with some anorexics occasionally resorting to purging as a means of maintaining an emaciated body weight. Definitions now include beliefs, behaviors, and physical signs. Distorted attitudes about food and body image characterize belief systems of anorexics. Many anorexics perceive themselves as being pudgy or fat even though they appear emaciated to others.