Argumentative Essay How to Write an Argumentative Essay

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Writing an argumentative essay is one of the most interesting tasks one can get as it requires you to be creative, use your logic and reasoning to prove your viewpoint and convince your reader Writing an argumentative essay is one of the most interesting tasks one can set to accomplish. This article will take an argumentative essay topic, run brief background research on that topic and come up with a brief argumentative essay in the end. This article can be used as a guide and a sample of an argumentative essay. This article will be different from other articles by showing the writing process from beginning to end. You will get to know how the process is organized, how valid arguments are made and how they can be built into a proper argumentative essay. Lets begin, shall we? An argumentative essay begins with topic selection. A good topic should be preferably controversial so that it evokes reaction in your opposition. As an example topic for our essay, lets select the following topic: Is dieting and exercising helping people to stay healthy? Once the topic is chosen, we then proceed to analysis. First off, lets try to voice our own view of the problem. Do you personally agree or disagree with this statement? What is your general knowledge about the problem? What does your personal experience (your friends experience) show? How can this experience be used as an example? Has there been any research conducted? What are the results of the research? Who are the most reputable sources of information in this field? By answering these questions you will be getting up to 50% of your background research done! Now, lets get back to the practical part. While physical activity is almost unanimously considered as strengthening ones health, the question of dieting and whether diets are useful, remains unanswered. The paradigm of thought seems to be shifting from the point where it was once considered useful to a totally opposite claim stating that conventional dieting increases the adverse effects of the weight loss process (e.g. slows down metabolism). If you have seen this approach in action, you are ready to voice this viewpoint and stand up for it. Therefore, our essay will support the claim that while physical activity is undoubtedly healthful, dieting should be exercised with caution. Lets see how we can support this claim. To make a claim valid, there is nothing better than results of a scholarly investigation. So the next logical step would be to look for reputable sources of information. If you are given a task to write an argumentative essay, most likely you will know who the most reputable sources of information are. They can include state

agencies, research facilities, individual scholars, periodicals etc. Normally the best way to find them is to use Google, Google Scholar or any alternative search engine.

For example, one of my search queries is dieting healthy has led me to a book by Gary Taubes called, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease. In it, the author argues that conventional dieting is nearly all wrong; he further ascertains that fats can be healthy! Our main enemy, he says, is not the number of calories, rather than the kind of calories we consume. In this regard he defines good calories as those that are not easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars; the bad calories are defined as those substances that can be rapidly digested here belong refined foods that lead to excessive insulin secretion and increase the risks of diabetes or chronic diseases. Now, why is this book a trustworthy source of information? Well, because it is based on seven years of research. Alright, so we have now found a supporting argument for our essay. If you find this book on Amazon.com, you will also see over a dozen books on similar topics and if you are required to use more references in your argumentative essay, you can also run through the similar books you see there.

Now, the book we found supports the idea of not just dieting, but proper dieting. Lets try to locate some more materials on the benefits of physical exercises. Again, a good old search engine will help. A brief search query is exercising healthy has directed me to a NY Times article titled Does Exercise Really Keep Us Healthy? by Gina Kolata. This article is an excellent piece of writing on how useful exercise can be. Once the background research has been completed, we are ready to start the actual writing. It is important to remember that an argumentative essay should take the regular essay structure and should contain a thesis, a few body paragraphs and a conclusion. So lets just go ahead and say that both exercise and dieting are important, but one has to know how to do it properly. With such a preliminary thesis in mind, lets recall the original topic: Is dieting and exercising helping people to stay healthy? It might appear that the chosen topic is not controversial at all or inadequately controversial; as a result it may look as if we are writing on a topic that can have no opposition. Well, it is only partly so. As we can see, there are certain nuances to dieting and exercising, and this is exactly what we are going to focus on in our argumentative essay sample.

Let us start with an opening statement:

Dieting and exercising have proven to have a beneficial effect on ones health, yet sticking to a diet and just getting physically more active will not give you the kind of results one might expect.

Further, we can place our body paragraphs in the following order:

Paragraph 1: Results of scientific investigations are increasingly questioning efficiency of conventional dieting. The same appears to hold true for exercising too: its effects are maximized if nutrition and exercising are combined together; in contrast either of these activities do not show significant improvements in health levels. Paragraph 2: There appears to be a shift in the dieting paradigm.Previously it was considered that fat in any form is the key contributor to heart disease. A recent study by Taubes (2007) shows that dietary fat is not causing heart disease, its the refined carbohydrates that do. Being easily digestible, refined carbohydrates raise blood sugar, spiking insulin production. The latter has a far more important effect onto the overall health and well being. Pargraph 3: Physical activity also has to be exercised with caution. In a recent NY Times article Gina Kolata, a reporter specializing on science and medicine, has conducted a brief review of recent research done by scientists and doctors. She has discovered that physical activity has a dozen of nuances to it. For example, physical activity without weight loss efforts does not lower blood pressure; nor has exercise alone lead to sustained weight loss (Kolata, 2008).

Summary:
Summing up, there is no doubt that dieting in the sense of proper nutrition as well as physical activity are important. However, dieting and physical activity need to be exercised with proper knowledge. Either of them is not enough for a sustained result. In this demonstration of a sample argumentative essay piece, we have tried to show the entire essay writing process. With a little bit of practice and persistence you will master the art of argumentative essay writing very quickly. Should you need any help with your argumentative essays, feel free to contract any of our professional writers who are willing to help 24/7!
Sample of an argumentative essay

Argumentative Essay on Dieting and Exercise

Good exercise and diet are key aspects not only in appearance but in living long, healthy lives.

Diet and Exercise to Stay Healthy

Good exercise and diet habits are key aspects not only in appearance but in living long, healthy lives. One may look fabulous, both fit and healthy, while being just as unhealthy as an obese person. The exact opposite is true, also. A person may be a little overweight but have a healthy heart and diet. The only way to find out if one is eating healthy and getting the proper amounts and types of exercise is by looking at their diet and activity level. It is important to first start with a good eating plan. Age, health issues, and level of physical activity are just a few factors that should be taken into consideration when writing a meal plan for a person. For example, a young, healthy, and active person can eat more freely than an older person with high cholesterol who does not get much physical activity. On average, a person should try to eat 6-11 servings of grains, 3-5 servings of fruits, 3-5 servings of vegetables, 2-3 servings of dairy, 2-3 servings of meat, and consume fats and sugars sparingly each day. One should shoot for this range until he/she can have an eating plan written for them. Diet is not the only thing that should be factored into a healthy lifestyle. Exercise is just as important as a nutritious diet. There are many benefits of physical activity besides the obvious advantage of having a better physical appearance. Exercise can reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression and improve one's mood and feelings of well-being. Besides helping you look great it helps you feel great, too. There are different types of exercises which give different results. Strength training, such as lifting weights, produces dramatic differences in physical appearance and raises one's metabolic rate. It also improves athletic performance and builds stronger bones. Cardiovascular training builds a powerful heart and strong lungs. It helps prevent hypertension, obesity, heart disease, and Type Two diabetes. When one's cardiovascular system works efficiently he/she is able to do aerobic activities, such as running and swimming longer, which helps to burn maximum fat and calories. Flexibility and balance training is also important when striving for an over-all body workout. Flexibility and balance training increase agility, perfects one's posture, and boosts over-all strength. Specific exercises can reduce back pain, exercise-related soreness, and increase the range of motion in joints and muscles. It is important to incorporate exercises from each group into your exercise plan to reach optimal physical and mental health. Exercise and diet are key factors in staying physically and mentally healthy. It is a known fact that if you look great and feel great you will live a longer and happier life. It is important to take one's age, health, and current physical activity level into consideration when writing an exercise and diet plan. There are many people out there, such as nutritionists, personal trainers, and even personal doctors, who can help develop a diet and exercise plan that is right for him/her. There are so many facilities out there to help keep you alive and healthy.

Exercise is not all about physical looks, it also has to do a lot with your actual health and well being. For example, many overweight people tend to be more susceptible to higher cholesterol and blood pressure. Well, by working out and adding an exercise routine into your normal every day life, you can help to decrease risk factors drastically. It is said that over 60% of American grown-ups are on the heavier side, or over weight. Only about 15% actually engage in the slightest amount of exercise. Obesity alone makes a person very vulnerable for heart disease, but also susceptible to an additional 65% chance of having at least one added risk for heart disease, diabetes and or stroke and a 50% possibility of having two or more of these as possible risk factors. Some other possible risks are high blood pressure, high blood sugar, cholesterol and blood fats that are not all curable with insulin and are considered the Metabolic Syndrome (Lissner, 88692). This becomes an even bigger risk when areas of fat accumulate around a persons middle area and the organs in which the fat surrounds. Basically people become obese by consuming more calories then should be consumed for a whole day and not using up that energy that has been consumed in calories by exerting it in physical manner such as exercise. Some people have a fast metabolism which would be the people you see eating what ever they want and still looking fit, or have the average metabolism where you are what you eat, which makes it a lot harder to stay fit and lean. Exercise has also had a tremendous effect on the aging process of the body. Apparently the increase in exercise has an enormous effect on nerve cell health and with how long those cells are alive. By maintaining these healthy cells it helps to promote the production of antioxidants which help to protect cells from damage, this is the leading cause in aging. No matter what your age is you can still benefit from exercise not only mentally but also help to prolong your ability to function later on in life. But most importantly you will be reducing the chance of having a stroke and clotting which can result in deep vein thrombosis and death, which is more critical as we age (Tremblay, 814-18). Keeping up a regular cardio routine is a great way to get in shape and also help benefit you in various prolonging ways. It is still a good idea to have weight lifting as a part of your routine too. There are six difference muscle groups that you can work on with weights. You have arms, back, chest, shoulders, legs, and then abs. You want to try and keep them all worked out pretty evenly. Keeping it switched up and by not concentrating on lets just say bench press, you keep your body guessing and keep it from getting immune to the exercise. Instead of just doing bench press all the time you can switch it up to one week doing dumbbells, maybe cables the next, or maybe even just doing flat out push ups. Then you have the machine style work out which you can substitute in one week. Also you can switch the focus point up, maybe you want to concentrate on your upper chest this week and lower or mid chest the following week. With this type of confusion your muscles will grow much stronger and you will notice much more of an improvement. Diet is just as big of a part of your health as exercising, thats why it is so crucial to eat well balanced healthy meals. This requires knowing what you are eating; you can obtain this by the dietary label present on the back of the food when you buy it in the grocery store. Water is

an essential to being healthy; you should drink eight 8 ounce glasses per day. Most people do not eat a well balanced diet like they should, but instead have a diet high in fat and are not consuming enough fiber (Gebhardt, 72). The best way to start towards a healthy diet is to start consuming more natural whole foods, such as fruit, vegetables, bread, cereals, potatoes, and pastas. You have six different food groups one of which would be a good idea to eliminate completely from your diet, the sweets. The other five groups which you need to focus on are the dairy group, meat group, vegetable group, fruit group, and the bread group. It is a good idea to try and eat a little from each of these groups with each meal. Also keep in mind that you need to be paying attention to the amount of protein, fiber, salt, vitamins, and minerals in which you consume too. These are a little bit harder to keep track of and have always caused more confusion. Works Cited Gebhardt, S.E., Matthews, R.H. (2006). Nutrition Value of Foods, United States Department of Agriculture, Human Nutrition Information Service, Home and Garden Bulletin Number 72. Lissner L., Levitsky D.A., Strupp B.J., Kalkwarf H.J., Roe D.A. (2005). Dietary fat and the regulation of energy intake in human subjects. Am J Clin Nutr, 46, 886-892. Tremblay, A., Simoneau, J., Bouchard, C. (2004). Impact of Exercise Intensity on Body Fatness and Skeletal Muscle Metabolism. Metabolism. 43(7): 814-818. This argumentative essay on dieting and exercise has been created by writing professionals working at PrivateWriting.com. Whatever assignment you have we are ready to help you with it. Simply go to the order page, fill in the required information and we will guide the process for you. PrivateWriting is the service you can trust!