A Phenomenological Study of Attitudes towards Dieting and Weight Loss:

Why Diets Fail?

Diana Griffith-Small

Walden University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 01: INTRODUCTION1

Background of the Study1

Problem Statement1

Nature of the Study2

Research Questions2

Conceptual Framework2

Objectification Theory3

Operation Definitions3

Scope4

Delimitations4

Significance of the study4

Positive social change4

Summary5

REFERENCES6

CHAPTER 01: INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Current statistics indicate that Western women have the highest incidence of obesity and obesity-related diseases in the nation Deaths from heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers are also high among Western females. This leads to a situation where women tend to take refuge4 in the phenomenon called dieting.

Many diets claim promising, quick and easy results. Dieting is based on deficit thinking, focusing on imperfections, rejection, and shortcomings (Edwards, 2005). Diets typically follow two principles of weight loss such as eating no carbohydrates or eating every three hours. These principles are most common suggestions in a typical diet plan; they are not novel concepts (Lang, 2008).

Problem Statement

Dieting has a drawback it goes against a balanced, healthy lifestyle. Diets restrict metabolisms by limiting proper nutrition, causing the bodies to react naturally by storing any food as fat causing unhealthy weight gain (Edwards, 2005). Dieting has been found as a source of binge eating that illustrates failed diets, and it proves diets set up conditions that prey on the dieter's weaknesses instead of building on strength (Korn, 2009).

With the obsession of mostly women, especially in the young age bracket with weight loss, many of them end up sabotaging their weight. This dissertation would serve as a guide for people to improve their concepts about dieting and why women sabotage their diet for the sake of getting slim or losing weight. This research would focus over the western women residing in United States, looking at various aspects of dieting in their routine and they regain weight and then again diet for weight loss. As a result, dieting pattern make them even double the size of what they initially were. Further, this research would take into account the body image and diet habits of women prevailing in United States, in both psychological and sociological aspects.

Nature of the Study

Employing phenomenological research methods to the study of the attitudes of people towards dieting and weight loss will allow 'the efforts of both and insider who makes the unconscious assumptions and an outsider who helps to uncover the assumptions by asking the right kinds of questions?”. The philosophical framework used to structure the proposed qualitative research study ...