Steven Bursztyn

Gain Weight Now!

A Weight Gain Website

Scheck Hillel Community School

2013-2014

Word Count: 1771

Table of Contents:
Criterion B: Define the Goal .....3-4 Criterion C: Select Sources .......................................5-6 Criterion D: Apply Information 7 Criterion E: Achieve the Goal ..8 Criterion F: Reflect on Learning ..9-10 Works Cited 11-12

Criterion B: Define the Goal

After a careful analysis of my passions and interests, I decided to create a website whose purpose will be to help people gain weight. I came up with this idea because for my entire life, I have had and still have troubles gaining weight, and I don't want to see people go through this same problem. Although there are few people in the world with this problem, there are people out there, like myself, who keep on researching ways to gain weight effectively but cannot find anything helpful to them. There are tons of resources out there to help people lose weight, but there are very few to help people gain weight. Therefore, I decided to create this website to help the people that have the same problem that I have. After deciding to make a website intended to help people gain weight, I knew I was going to effect peoples lives, especially health-wise. Therefore, the Area of Interaction that I will use for my project is Health and Social Education. One of the questions that this Area of Interaction focuses on is How can I look after myself and others? This question relates to my project because I am helping people, and myself gain weight. My website is intended to help people live a healthy life and develop a healthy lifestyle, making it justifiable to chose Health and Social Education as my Area of Interaction. I know I will succeed when I make a website that has an introduction to the project and a background on my story. In addition, this website should have a list of 10 foods that help people gain weight, and an explanation on each. Furthermore, there should be 8 to 10 tips on how to gain weight effectively (in paragraph form), a two-week (healthy) plan to gain weight, and 3 to 5 tasty recipes that are calorically dense, but still taste good. Moreover, I will make my site visually appealing, and at the end survey 15 to 20 people asking what they think about the visual aspect of my site from a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most visually appealing. The results of

these surveys should range from an 8 to a 10. Additionally, my goal is to have an increasing amount of viewers. I will also publish my website with a domain name, so it will be available for the people who need to gain weight.

Criterion C: Select Sources

After thinking about my idea, I realized that I needed a wide range of sources to accurately present my information. I needed to gather different types of sources to gain a better understanding and a wider view of the topic to present the information in an effective way. For this reason, I came up with a mix of primary and secondary sources. I had 3 primary sources and 13 secondary sources, totaling 16 sources. These sources came from a wide variety of categories. The seven categories are: interviews, photographs, medical journals, articles, blogs, books, and magazines. I found that the articles were the ones that would help me the most during my project, and therefore I had 10 of those. The sources I gathered mostly have to do with the Area of Interaction that I chose: Health and Social Education. Besides the photograph of the notes on how to design a website properly and effectively, all other sources have to do with my topic of health. Thus, my sources are varied and are relevant to achieving my goal. Some sources are biased, while others are not. Some are helpful, and some are not. This was a challenge during the project, because some of the information on some sites were not truthful and were not trustworthy at all. Clari Azout, the nutritionist I interviewed, is a very reliable source because she has a lot of knowledge on this topic, and also has experience in the field of nutrition. Although she is concerned mainly with patients trying to lose weight, she still knows about weight gain since she studied it recently. Moreover, the picture I took from Ophers Website Workshop was very helpful because it showed what Opher Yunger, a trustworthy designer, thinks is the most important things we need to know when building a successful website. I used this source in order to make my site easy to use and visually appealing. The Harvard Medical Journal I used is extremely reliable and helpful, not only because it is from Harvard University, but also because the experiment performed is based on what I really need to

use for the project. This still remains as a primary source, because it is an experiment they created and results they found. I checked out all of the authors of the books, magazines and articles that I used, and they were all trustworthy and knowledgeable about their topic.

Criterion D: Apply Information

A lot of the decisions that I made during the creation of my website came from my research. The sources that I read and the topics I researched about opened different doors, which brought me to different websites with even more helpful information. To begin, I started by creating the home page for the website, as well as the process journal page. Using the notes I received from Ophers meeting, I was able to effectively apply my research and create a visually appealing website. Second, I created a page that included 8 tips that people could follow if they want to gain weight. It took me a while to research how to create that page, as well as the information about the Basal Metabolic Rate and the Harris-Benedict Formula. Later, I applied my research further to create the list of 10 foods that are calorically dense and aid in the process of gaining weight. I also applied a lot of the information I got from Clari, the nutritionist I interviewed, for the 8 tips and the 2-week schedule I made. I documented all of this in my process journal, as I explained where I was going to find all the information from for a certain page. Therefore, I feel like I effectively applied the information that I gained through research to make decisions, create solutions, and develop an understanding of the goal of my project.

Criterion E: Achieve the Goal

Looking back at my goals and specifications, I realized that I completed every one of them. I had goals and expectations for myself and for my website, and I feel like most if not all of those goals were met. My website came out as I had planned for it to come out. Although I wanted to modify the goal to reduce the amount of tips needed for the website from 8-10 to 5-10 because I thought that the tips would become useless and just there to fill up space. I ended up keeping it as it was at first. In order to make it better, I researched a little bit more. Since I started the project, the goal I had for myself was to make a website I would like, and therefore since I set high expectations for myself, I didnt want to let myself down and therefore tried my hardest to achieve my goal with high quality. In the end, I did, and I am very pleased with my results. Consequently, after I met with my supervisor, Mr. Carpentieri, I earned a score of a 4, the maximum possible on this Criterion.

Criterion F: Reflect on Learning

By creating this website, I was able to learn about the topic of weight gain, as well as how to make an effective website. While researching and making my website, I gained a deeper knowledge of the topic and learned from my mistakes. I learned a lot of new information from the topic. Before starting the project, I didnt really know what the BMI Scale was used for. Additionally, I didnt know what the Harris-Benedict Formula was. Moreover, I learned about different foods and tips that help people gain weight, some of which were surprising. Also, I learned research skills, which I will keep for the rest of my life. Lastly, I learned how to apply information that I gathered during the research to create the best possible website. This website defines the Area of Interaction of Health and Social Education. My project related to this Area of Interaction because it was about how to be healthy, and how to keep others and myself healthy. I expanded my knowledge and explored this Area of Interaction while I was researching information about this topic. Many of the sources that I stumbled upon enlightened me on the topic. Therefore, by making this website, I feel like I got a better understanding of the Area of Interaction of Health and Social Education. While creating my website, I learned more about myself in terms of how I learn and work. I learned that I cannot procrastinate as much as I used to think I could and leave work for the last minute, because then I get anxious and stressed out. Also, I realized that when I strive to be organized, and actually try, I can be. Furthermore, I realized that I could learn a lot by researching and applying the information I learned. While working on the project, I made a few mistakes and errors, which caused a change in strategy. The strategy that I had was to work on everything as a single unit, working one page at a time. But eventually, I made the mistake of procrastination, and I realized that if I started working on many pages at the same time, it would

seem as if I accomplished a lot. This helped me relax and work on the project more productively. By making this mistake, I learned that if I work on many things at the same time, starting things, and later finishing them, I am more productive and I get stressed less. Moreover, I made a couple of mistakes in ways to present my information, as they were ineffective and made the website look unclear and messy. For instance, I struggled with the design of the tips page and the 10 foods page, as I felt that they didnt portray the information as neatly as I wanted to. Eventually, I asked many people what their thoughts were, and combined them with my own and came up with the best format possible, which can be seen on my website. Thus, as one can see, I learned a lot by doing this project.

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Works Cited:
"20 Ways to Gain Weight Fast." The Times of India 21 Oct. 2013: 1-2. TOI. Web. 23 Nov. 2013. "A Weight Gain Food List for Bulking Up."Fitday 1 (2013): n. pag. FitDay. Web. 23 Dec. 2013. Mehdi. "How to Gain Weight for Skinny Guys (with Weight Gain Diet)." Strong Lifts (2008): n. pag. Strong Lifts. Web. 23 Dec. 2013. Arti, Patel. "Gain Weight: 10 Healthy Ways To Bulk Up." The Huffington Post Canada. Huffington Post, 10 18 2013. Web. 4 Jan. 2014. Ayles, Angela. "11 Foods That Will Make You Gain Weight." ActiveBeat 1 (2013): n. pag. ActiveBeat. Web. 23 Dec. 2013. Azout, Clari. Personal interview. 1 Jan. 2014. Boston Children's Hospital, . "Healthy Weight Gain for Teens a Guide for Parents." n.d. 1-2. Web. 1 Jan. 2014. Bursztyn, Steven. Ophers Website Workshop Notes 2013. JPG Hoffman, Ronald . "Underweight and Malabsorption." Dr. Ronald Hoffman 1 (2013): n. pag. Dr. Ronald Hoffman: Underweight and Malabsorption. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. "How To Gain Weight For The Naturally Thin." Fitday 1 (2013): n. pag. FitDay. Web. 23 Nov. 2013. Leonard, Celine A.. Causes of Weight Gain. North Carolina: Gilkie publishing, 2013. E-Book. Mozaffarian, Dariush, Tao Hao, Eric B. Rimm, Walter C. Willett, and Frank B. Hu. "Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long-Term Weight Gain in Women and Men. The New England Journal of Medicine 1 (2011): n. pag. NEJM. Web. 23 Nov. 2013. "Top 10 Foods Highest in Calories." Top 101 (2011): n. pag. HealthAliciousNess. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.

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Turcotte, Michele. "10 Nutritious Calorie-Dense Foods." Livestrong 1 (2013): n. pag. Livestrong. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. Zelman, Kathleen M. . "Healthy Ways to Gain Weight." WebMD 1 (2011): 1-3.WebMD. Web. 23 Nov. 2013. Zamora, Dulce. "How to Gain Weight the Healthy Way: Healthy Ways to Gain Weight." Medicinenet 1 (2005): n. pag.How to Gain Weight the Healthy Way. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.

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