Superprep A: Section 1, Question 1 (Dieting and weight gain)

Ashley2018-1

So putting aside the fact that I feel like an idiot for missing question 1....why is B incorrect? When I read it the first time, I thought it was correct because if someone were trying to maintain their reduced weight, wouldn't a diet be a poor option for them because once it's over, wouldn't they go back to eating their pre-diet level of food and gain weight?

Someone on the Manhattan forum mentioned that this choice uses the word "should" and therefore it is wrong, but I didn't think that was good enough of a reason. I do see that the stimulus doesn't talk about recommendations or what people should and shouldn't do but if answer choice C had said the word should, the content of this choice would still make it correct, wouldn't it?

lsatpatterns

To me, B is a little bit of a contradiction. They lost weight by dieting. To maintain their reduced weight, they actually do still have to diet by eating less food than they did pre-weight loss.

So, this can’t be the main conclusion of the argument. They can’t stop dieting completely, so “should not diet” is not supported.

The “should” is a strong indicator word, and it can be used to rule out answer choices in context. “Must” is more strong than “should,” so I agree that if “should” was used in answer choice C, it would still be correct.

You might check out the Powerscore forums too. A Powerscore rep seems to respond to every response given by a student.

Hope that helps!