Over the last 20 years, women have become heavier while the beauty ideal has become leaner. In the general mania for thinness, Americans have come to see themselves as unacceptable. Because of the constant pressure to be thin, many people try sporadically or constantly to lose weight by reducing the calories they consume. While on a low-calorie diet, the human body reacts as if it were being starved and tries to preserve as much energy as possible by decreasing its rate of metabolism. Any food taken in is held on to frantically by a body that isn't sure when it will be fed next.
Many fat adults have a lifelong history of dieting themselves into their current size.
Over time, it becomes harder and harder, and finally impossible for some to lose weight at all. Most people do not know that far more women have died from weight loss surgery than from Toxic Shock Syndrome. And yet, these body mutilations are looked upon with favor from a society that doesn't tolerate human size diversity. The World Health Organization and the US Department of Health agreed in 1992 that dieting and weight loss surgery can be dangerous to human health. To add insult to injury, the medical profession blames fat adults when their ill advised recommendations don't work.