GOALS INDD's ORIGIN TOP TEN REASONS TO GIVE UP DIETING TAKE THE PLEDGE! IDEAS FOR EVENTS & ACTIVITIES PUBLICIZE IT! SLOGANS INDD PROCLAMATION LINK TO INDD SIZE-POSITIVE BOOK LIST SIZE-POSITIVE GROUPS & ORGANIZATIONS SIZE-POSITIVE PRINT PUBLICATIONS SIZE-POSITIVE VIDEOS LINKS INDD HOMEPAGE LARGESSE HOMEPAGE

Facts & Figures About Dieting & Weight Loss The average American woman is 5'4", weighs 140 lbs, and wears a size 14 dress. The "ideal" woman--portrayed by models, Miss America, Barbie dolls, and screen actresses--is 5'7", weighs 100 lbs, and wears a size 8. One-third of all American women wear a size 16 or larger. 75% of American women are dissatisfied with their appearance. 50% of American women are on a diet at any one time. Between 90% and 99% of reducing diets fail to produce permanent weight loss. Two-thirds of dieters regain the weight within one year. Virtually all regain it within five years. The diet industry (diet foods, diet programs, diet drugs, etc.) takes in over $40 billion each year, and is still growing. Quick-weight-loss schemes are among the most common consumer frauds, and diet programs have the highest customer dissatisfaction of any service industry. A recent survey found only 30 percent of 250 randomly chosen women age 21 to 35 had normal bone mass--the researchers concluded women are so afraid eating dairy products will make them gain weight that they are starving themselves into osteoporosis. Young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents. 50% of 9-year-old girls and 80% of 10-year-old girls have dieted. 90% of high school junior and senior women diet regularly, even though only between 10% and 15% are over the weight recommended by the standard height-weight charts. 1% of teenage girls, and 5% of college-age women become anorexic or bulimic. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate (up to 20%) of any psychiatric diagnosis. Girls develop eating and self-image problems before drug or alcohol problems; there are drug and alcohol programs in almost every school, but no eating disorder programs. Click here to download this page as a printer-ready MS Word document file. This information is a public service of Largesse, the Network for Size Esteem [http://www.largesse.net/] and may be freely copied and distributed in its entirety for non-commercial use in promoting size diversity empowerment, provided this statement is included.