Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Dan Szuba
Dr. Wielgos
Research Paper Topic
29 March 2014

Over the recent years, fitness and general health have become a main focus for many people in their lives. Individuals set out with high hopes to lose weight and create healthier bodies. The only problem being that many times these individuals get discouraged that they have not lost weight or reached a specific goal they had in mind. After contemplating on whether it is their fault or not, individuals try to find different methods to help them try and lose those undesired pounds. Walking into the nearest health and fitness store, the individual’s eyes automatically see the flashy/colorful labels with terminology on them like “hyper-shred” and “metabolic-matrix”. These flashy labels, unfortunately, are diet pills. Diet pills have been around since the early 20’s and since then have been altered and changed into hundreds of different forms with hundreds of different ingredients. The only problem here is that those pills have so many ingredients in them that individuals have never heard of or the fact that the individuals do not know the side effects. Some diet pills have even caused headaches, heart attacks, and even in some cases death.   

            I want to present the facts about diet pills and hopefully come to the conclusion that diet pills are not very safe. I do not want to make this a one sided rhetorical essay; instead I want to present the information and make it self evident that diet pills are not safe. My audience is going to be my classmates along with my English professor.  I want to look credible and knowledgeable in this essay. I want the audience to be able to come to their own conclusion and have an “AHA” moment after reading the essay. I am still contemplating on the sort of arrangement and medium I am going to use. Seeing that it has to be 10 full pages of text, I am most likely going to use a standard Microsoft word document. I will start with an introduction on the topic, then move onto any discrepancies that society has developed on the topic. Then I will go onto showing research that has been done on the topic and how much research has been done in total to show that my sources and claims are reliable. In the research I will provide different statistics with definitions and even stories related to the topic. I will make sure that all my sources are reliable and have credibility upon them so it is reflected upon my professionalism.                                                                                      

            By the end of this rhetorical paper I hope to inform people that diet pills are not what they are made to look like. Diet pills may claim to actually work and be safe but in most cases it takes a well balanced diet and workout plan for diet pills to work. Also I want individuals to understand that diet pills act very different according to each person. Everybody’s bodies work differently and not one single diet pill can have the same results on multiple individuals. The same pill that helps someone lose five pounds may also be the same pill that puts someone else in the hospital bed.

            I feel like others would have a hard time agreeing or disagreeing with me only because the amount of knowledgeable and reliable information out there on diet pills is not comparable to the amount of different kinds of diet pills. I am sure that most people will agree with me that diet pills are not necessary to loosing weight and if given the chance to take them, they would most likely say no. But this is the same story with most individuals when relating to any topic, not just diet pills. It’s the fact that the small majority of individuals who knows little about diet pills are the same ones who will disagree with me and then they will end up having migraines and diarrhea for days.

            As a fitness fanatic, I have heard a lot about diet pills from people in the gym. Many people have claimed that the diet pills have worked but at the same time those same people are eating healthy and working out. To be completely honest I feel like they are all just placebo effects. Also I have tried diet pills at one point and from my own experience I can say that for the time I was using them, I did not feel good at multiple times and found myself having ridiculous mood swings.

            To conduct my research I plan on looking at a variety of research studies of individuals on diet pills. I want hard evidence to prove whether they actually work. Then I also want hard evidence that tests the side effects of diet pills. I feel like there is a lot of research in the field of diet pills because people are actually interested in whether they are helpful or not. I will also look in books for the specifics of how diet pills work and how there are multiple forms of them.

            By the end of this research paper I want to know exactly how diet pills work on a scientific scale. (Pertaining mainly to what they affect in the body and how it supposedly causes fat burning) I also want to know how strong the evidence is to back up my argument. It would be interesting to learn more about what goes into the FDA’s process of legalizing different diet pills for individuals. Another thing I want to learn is what the FDA believes it takes to be an over the counter diet pill as opposed to a diet pill that requires a doctor’s prescription.


            I do not want to just inform somebody about this topic or even get someone to side with my final argument, instead I want to take someone who believes diet pills are safe and make them see they are not what they are made to look like.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014



Dan Szuba
Design Plan
Professor Weilgos
13 March 2014
Photo Essay Design plan
The context of my presentation is as follows, is cardiovascular endurance as important as muscular endurance and development when it comes to weight loss. The intended audience would in turn be an individual who is looking to start going to the gym to lose but cannot decide on which route to choose; cardio or strength training. The actual audience will most likely consist of my teacher and fellow peers in class.  Ideally, I want to show that there is a clear distinction between muscular training and cardiovascular training. I want my audience to see and understand that muscular training helps to make a body stronger and lift more weight with less fatigue. I also want my audience to see that cardiovascular training actually stimulates the body to burn fat. In both instances I will show examples of the types of training that are involved. The only concern I have that goes with this topic is if I can really make a strong distinction between how cardio helps with fat burning and how strength helps in becoming stronger. I want the photo essay to leave a sort of motivational feeling that might cause viewers to even go out and try some of the cardiovascular exercises in the photo essay with the intention of trying to become a little healthier and fitter.
I am most likely going to use a PowerPoint presentation with pictures that were taken by me. The opening photos will represent the struggle most people feel when looking to lose weight. The images then will reflect what the differences are between cardiovascular exercise and muscular exercise. The captions under the images will help to shed a little more light and information on the specific fitness exercise.  I am going to use still shot images of different exercises that pertain to cardiovascular and muscular endurance. The images are framed with a thin white line so that they “pop” against the black canvas behind them. I am going to use “imprint MT shadow” font because it has a sense of professionalism with it and one of my main goals is so that people feel informed. My friends will help me with images of exercises in the gym that pertain to cardio and muscle development.
Ethos: I want to come across as an informative person who is not too authoritative. I also want to sound like someone who knows their information.  The images are still-shot images of either me or a friend performing exercises that would be found in the gym. The way the images are taken and cropped, will add a sense of professionalism to my overall credibility throughout the essay. I also decided to use a text type that did not look bland and unappealing but also did have that sense of professionalism along with it.
Pathos: The way I decided to make my photo essay will allow me to keep the photo essay professional and informative. The photo-essay will be based on a black and white theme so that it reflects the same qualities found in a newspaper or informative article.
Logos: The photo essay will have images and captions that will both explain why certain exercises are more beneficial to fat burning. The images will show the exercise and the captions will have a little more information on the specific topic. Ideally I want the audience to realize that there is clearly a difference between muscular exercises and cardiovascular exercises.
Testing: There will be a peer review day on March20th in which my peers will look at what I have done and then analyze it.

Photo Essay












Thursday, March 20, 2014

My experience with a Photo Essay

To be completely honest, I did not like this project that much. The idea of the project seemed fairly easy and fun. Choosing the topic was not that great of a difficulty and neither was getting images that pertained to the certain topic. The biggest problem with the essay was finding a way to develop an argument with the images I had taken.I kept telling myself that certain scenarios with the images would not work. I ended up not even using most of the images I took over spring break. Its as if i had to develop my essay and then go out and get the pictures in the same chronological order. Besides that, I did find some joy in putting the presentation together. I know how to design a photo essay so that it looks appealing and professional. To put my dislike into better perspective, I ended up changing my topic twice and revising my design plan three times.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

12 more weeks?

Before even knowing me or getting to know me, a lot of people are going to be wondering what is happening in 12 weeks. 12 weeks is what I have left to prepare both physically and mentally for my first all natural men's physique competition in April.

What are our responsibilities to each other when we blog? Do we have responsibilities to mothers when we communicate?

My idea of a blog is a place where I can talk about what is going on in my life and give others the opportunity to follow along or see how I accomplish goals and break through barriers. Pretty much I say this because my blog is going to be designed as a 12 week long journey. For me it will be a place where I can look back and think about things that I have said. As for others they might be able to learn one or two new things and even develop an inspiration from my own journey.