What Are the Dangers of Obsessive Dieting?

People diet to improve their health or to look more attractive. While overweight people can gain health benefits from losing weight, many become so obsessed with dieting that it becomes unhealthy. When a diet becomes so much a part of your thoughts and life that it interferes with daily activities,it stops being a diet and becomes an eating disorder. While most people are familiar with the effects clinical eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia can have, many are unaware of the physical, emotional and mental dangers of obsessive dieting.

Physical Dangers

• Dieters who focus on limiting calorie intake without considering nutritional needs face the same health risks they are trying to eliminate. When you diet excessively, you lose weight in the beginning, but much of it is water and lean tissue. You may become dehydrated and malnourished, which causes your body to slow its metabolism so that you stop losing weight. Dehydration can lead to seizures, kidney failure and heat-related illnesses such as heatstroke. Loss of tissue such as muscle causes loss of strength and makes you more likely to be injured. Lack of important nutrients can cause anemia, dizziness, fatigue, numbness in the extremities, high cholesterol and a weakened immune system. Obsessive dieting may cause bone loss, tooth decay and hair loss.

Emotional Dangers

• Excessive dieters are likely to become depressed and suffer from mood swings. Eating with non-dieters may make you feel deprived, while eating alone makes you feel isolated. When diets interfere with production of hormones such as serotonin you can suffer from insomnia, become sad and lonely, and lose interest in intimacy. Weakness and lack of energy causes loss of interest in many activities. You may lose confidence and self esteem, become tense, irritable or angry, and suffer from high levels of stress.

Mental Dangers

• Obsessive dieting can cause the inability to be mentally alert. Slower reaction time makes you more likely to cause or be involved in accidents. When you diet to excess your memory suffers, you can't concentrate, and you are easily confused. You may have a hard time accomplishing normal activities such as reading, studying, working, driving and following a conversation.

Danger of Eating Disorders

• While dieting may not cause clinical eating disorders, which are mental illnesses, the dieting cycle can trigger eating disorders in individuals who have a history of depression. Anorexics who limit or eliminate all food intake, bulimics who binge and then purge the food they eat and binge eaters who periodically eat until they're uncomfortable all face the danger of heart disease, malnutrition, dehydration, poor body image and an obsession with dieting that interferes with living.