Eating Disorders

Body Image Survey DIRECTIONS1. First look at the drawings for your gender, choose the number below

the figure that best illustrates (A) how you think you currently look (that is, the figure that best represents your actual size).

2. Then choose the figure that illustrates (B) how you would like to look (your ideal figure).

3. Choose what you think is attractive for the opposite sex.

4. Choose what you think the opposite sex would choose as attractive for your gender.

• The numerical difference between your views of how you think you look and how you would like to look (A - B) represents your self-ideal discrepancy.

• Finally, rate how ashamed you are of any body image discrepancy from 0 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). If you have a shame score of 3 or more, you should consider talking to a close friend or counselor about these feelings.

Body Image Survey

Women Body Images

Many U.S. women students tend to idealize—and misperceive men as idealizing—a body shape considerably thinner than their actual shape

Men’s & Women’s Body Images

According to surveys on body image, people in our society are much more dissatisfied with their bodies now than they were a generation ago. Women are still more dissatisfied than men, but today’s men are more dissatisfied with their bodies than the men of a generation past.

Eating Disorders

• Anorexia nervosa—characterized by excessive weight loss, irrational fear of gaining weight and distorted body image

• Bulimia nervosa—characterized by binges of extreme overeating followed by self-induced purging such as vomiting, laxatives

• Binge-eating—disorder characterized by recurring episodes of binge eating without purging.

Anorexia NervosaKey Features

1. Refusal to maintain a normal body weight

2. Intensely afraid of being overweight.

3. Suffer from delusions of being overweight.

4. Denies there is a problem.• Usually in adolescent females• May put themselves on self-

starvation regimens• May become dangerously

underweight

Bulimia Nervosa• An eating disorder characterized by

episodes of overeating (usually high calorie foods)

• Overeating is followed by vomiting, using laxatives, fasting, or excessive exercise

• Usually stay within their normal weight.

• Usually recognize they have an eating disorder.

PicaStrange but True!

• Hippocrates the first to describe the disorder

• People display a compulsive craving for inedible substances such as clay, dirt, laundry starch, chalk, buttons, paper, dried paint, burnt matches, ashes, sand, oyster shells or broken crockery.

• Seen most often in pregnant women or nursing women but also with people with severe mental disorders.

• Could be a behavioral response to stress.