Losing weight is an ironic social obsession. Our media tells us to be unrealistically thin, but at the same time it encourages us to engorge ourselves on fast food and to avoid lifting as few fingers as possible. And not only are we obsessed with losing weight, we are obsessed with how to lose weight quick. It’s the perfect marriage of weight loss and caloric convenience.

We know that the key to weight loss is simply food restriction, and that the trick to maintaining a healthy weight is exercise. Yet we spend countless dollars on diet pills, fad diets and more recently and drastically, liposuction and gastric bypass surgery. Want to know how to lose weight quick? Take some Lipovox. Follow Atkins, or South Beach Diet, or the next trendy food regimen. Lie down on the operating table and have your fat reshaped or your stomach stapled. Or just stop eating altogether.

Or before taking your pick of the above, consider that a “diet” involves making better choices in food consumption. Choices aren’t tangible items that a pill can contain. Furthermore, the right choices in diet vary according to the individual. People have different biological compositions, and therefore different dietary needs. There isn’t a one diet fits all, and there never will be. Read up on liposuction and discover that it’s not a weight-loss method, but a cosmetic surgery option. Research gastric bypass and learn that it’s an operation only to be performed in the case of morbid obesity.

Starving yourself will help you lose weight for sure. It’ll also wear away at your muscle and bone mass, decay your teeth, damage your liver, brittle your nails and hair, stunt your growth, wane your complexion, give you constipation, weaken your immune system, and in short destroy your body from inside out, making you another of the recent rising number of individuals that suffer from anorexia nervosa each year and remain overweight in their own minds.

We shouldn’t be focusing on how to lose weight quick. We’ve overlooked the importance of losing weight healthy and preventing excessive weight gain in the first place. The consequences are diminished health, rampant commercialism, errant attitudes about weight loss and impaired psychological well-being. And this is an issue that needs to be addressed quickly. As it is now, the media will teach you how to lose weight quick, and remain silent when you ask why it’s not working.