Proposal

Research Proposal

            The title for my project is called “The effects of both short term and long term extreme weight fluctuation on the mood, body, and mentality”. My issue is the stress and damage that constant weight changes can have on the body, for example an athlete losing a large amount of weight for a weigh in, then quickly putting it back on, only to repeat in a week or two, or in more extreme cases, extreme dieting like on biggest loser where people will lose eighty to over a hundred pounds, only to put the weight back on within a year. Some women will even do this process multiple times throughout their lifetime, dieting to lose around sixty to eighty pounds only to put it back on in a short time, and then repeating over and over. My purpose for working on this project is I was once a wrestler and I cut some weight during season, weekly adding five and dropping five, and I know the effects were unpleasant, now that on a much larger scale like collegiate wrestlers or MMA fighters or sometimes boxers, where they bulk up and then will cut thirty pounds in a month to make a weigh in, then bulk and repeat, the effects I believe are more than unpleasant, I believe they could be detrimental to the body.

            My question is this, what effects do large weight fluctuations, both short and long term, on the body, and how detrimental are they? Some key findings I have found have shown that cutting weight can affect the body both physically and mentally. There have been cases where wrestlers have cut too much or too often, and have died from dehydration or heart or liver failure. Also mental disorders can arise from cutting, like eating disorders, hormonal unbalances, and mood swings. I plan to locate additional information mostly through interviews and what case studies there are linked to this. Seeing as most people would neither volunteer to intentionally cause harm to their body nor would the physiological disorders arise as often because mentally their motives for cutting weight is different however, I plan to gather most my information from studies or interviews on real people who chose on their own to cut their weight. I plan to start research and collecting data from either the UCF club wrestling team, or the Lake Howell High School wrestling team, to see beginning weights, how far they will drop before season starts, how much they plan to lose weekly, and mostly like a biweekly journal on how their cutting is going or went.

Bibliography

http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2010/2/15/1311633/the-negative-health-effects-of

http://www.ussportshypnotist.com/cutting_weight.htm