In today’s society where the majority of the population is obese and overweight, it has never been as important for people to not only become knowledgeable of how to maintain a healthy lifestyle but also to act out on that knowledge and become healthy. Many people today have different perceptions of how to stay healthy and lose weight. The danger in this is that although some people do have the right idea on how to lose weight, others do not which puts them at risk to cause further harm to themselves and their bodies.
This means that even though a person may begin a program or diet, they might actually be hurting themselves more than helping themselves, because they may be doing unhealthy things to their body thinking they are helping themselves lose weight. In this paper I will elaborate on some of the common mistakes people make in dieting according to an article form Muscle & Fitness, and discuss the implications it has on society as well as discuss the biology related to these mistakes.
One of the most common mistakes made by people who wish to be healthy or lose weight is drastically cutting calories. Although it seems logical for a person who wishes to lose weight to eat less, this might actually cause a somewhat negative affect for a person. The reason for this having a negative affect is because by drastically cutting your calories you are causing your metabolism which burns calories for you, to slow down significantly which means you burn less calories overall. Not only does drastically cutting calories or having fewer meals in a day slow down your metabolism but also gives your body less of a chance to produce ATP and energy. ATP is made in a process known as cellular respiration which is a process in which cells use sugars to make ATP. However since we as humans are heterotrophs, which means we can not absorb the suns energy and convert it into sugars which then leads to ATP and energy.
We must eat plants and other forms of food to breakdown the energy in those foods and then create our own energy. So, relating this back to eating fewer meals a day or drastically cutting calories, if a person actually did this they would have very little energy in their body and would feel sluggish and lethargic. Imagine trying to go days or weeks felling sluggish all the time, not only would it affect a persons body, but it would also affect how they perform at work, the time they spend with there family and anything else they may do. Not to mention the fact that an individual would be very unlikely to go out and exercise since they would feel extremely tired and lethargic.
Another common mistake made by people who are trying to diet or lose weight is by completely abandoning fats. Although some people may think that because fat has twice the amount of calories as an equal amount of protein or carbohydrate, it is good for them to eliminate it from their diet, they are wrong. Similar to drastically cutting your calories, by completely eliminating fat from your diet you are once again slowing down your metabolism. This happens because when a person has no fat in their diet it lowers testosterone levels, which leads to metabolism also being lowered. Speaking about fat biologically, we can describe that there are two types of fats which include saturated and unsaturated fats.
The difference between the two is that unsaturated fats have double bonds and are liquid at room temperature where as saturated fats do not have double bonds and are solids at room temperature. Also, one of the functions of fat is for protection and insulation. Although this might have a greater affect on people who live in cold climates, it still has an affect on everyone even if it is small. Take for example if a person was outside in the cold, one who had no fat or barely any would be much colder than another person who had some body fat. Although I am not saying that people should want to have a lot of body fat to protect and insulate their bodies, they should also not want any body fat. Ideally a person should want only want about 15 percent of body fat.
Having already spoken about how eliminating fats is bad for a person, one must also know how important protein is in a diet. This is one of the things that is usually overlooked, or not paid attention to when people diet. However it is crucial that people have protein in their diet. Proteins are amino acids that are linked together by the peptide bond. They are important because proteins are the building blocks for almost everything in the body.
Included in this are things like muscles, cells, hormones and enzymes. Also, some proteins are enzymes, which act as a catalyst that helps speed up reactions, with out actually being used it self in the reaction. So what does this all mean for someone who is trying to be healthy? It means that if you do not have enough protein in your diet you are not building sufficient amounts of muscle, cells, hormones and enzymes in your body.
Since protein helps a person build muscle, someone who loses weight without having any protein might still look somewhat fat, since they have no muscle in their bodies to make them look lean or toned. Protein intake however can vary from person to person. Everyday people usually just need about 1 gram of protein per body weight per day, while Athletes or people who exercise at a high level need about 2 grams of protein per body weight, to help rebuild muscles they have broken and build new ones.
Having discussed what is necessary to maintain a healthy diet, the article then speaks about lactic acid and what it can do to increase a person’s performance. Lactic acid fermentation occurs in muscle cells when they cannot get enough oxygen. This causes a decrease of oxygen to certain muscles in the body. Because of this decrease of oxygen it causes the muscles to feel sore and to tire out. Some people believe that once a person has begun to feel lactic acid building up in their muscles, that they should stop exercising because it is only a matter of time before their muscles build up enough lactic acid forcing them to stop.
Although it makes sense for people to stop exercising once they feel the lactic acid build up because their muscles will give out anyway. It is this struggle or perseverance to exercise when your muscles feel tired that makes the muscles stronger and able to withstand more. During this process muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen into lactic acid, which is then used as a fuel by the mitochondria. This means that when people work beyond the point of lactic acid fermentation, it increases the mass of their muscle mitochondria. In the end this allows people to burn more lactic acid and allows the muscles to work harder and longer.