Myth: Men and Boys Don’t Get Anorexia
By B, AKA The No Nonsense Guide guy
If you search a stock photos database for ‘anorexia’, you’ll find lots of images of people (a) looking into mirrors, (b) doing unusual things with measuring tape, and (c) looking distraught next to a set of scales. But you won’t find very many pictures of men.
This is somewhat understandable. Anorexia nervosa is seen as a problem for women and girls because they make up the vast majority of diagnosed cases. Studies vary, but often find that 90 per cent of people with anorexia are female. No serious researcher believes that males don’t get anorexia, but most studies of the condition don’t include male subjects—they’re hard to find!
Since male anorexia isn’t focal, it can go unnoticed. Many parents and teachers know to be on the lookout for restrictive eating and compulsive exercise in girls and young women but might miss them in boys and young men. And lots of guys never think to apply the ‘anorexia’ label to their own disordered behaviours.
(Below are my thoughts on being a guy with anorexia. For a book that examines other aspects of gender and eating disorders, see Jennifer Gaudiani’s Sick Enough.)
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I’m one of these unusual males with anorexia. When I was a little kid I started worrying about food and weight. The first example I can remember is from when I was around six: I’d come home from trick-or-treating with a bucket full of Halloween candy. I ate several pieces and then immediately wished I hadn’t. The only thing I could think to do was brush my teeth repeatedly.
In elementary school I developed an unhealthy preoccupation with the bathroom scales. I’d learned in school about units of measure, and I tried to work out how many ounces I weighed. I tracked this obsessively, and worried any time the scale showed a higher number. I was anxious about getting taller since that would mean weighing more.
I think the adults in my life saw these behaviours as eccentric but not particularly worrisome. Kids go through weird phases, right? Nobody said anything to me about not eating enough until I was a teenager. By that time I’d started running competitively and had to submit to a physical. My parents were concerned enough by my low weight to suggest that I eat extra portions at dinner, but I don’t think the phrase ‘anorexia nervosa’ crossed their minds.
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When male anorexia is acknowledged, it’s almost always connected to how society lionises fit men. Practically every superhero movie depicts a bunch of unusually buff guys; action figures have improbably large muscles; sports stars have nearly unattainable physiques, yada yada yada. How could young boys not develop an ‘Adonis Complex’ in this sort of media environment?
While I agree that trying to embody these cultural images is probably not healthy, I doubt this is the driving force behind male anorexia. For one, I didn’t really have body image issues—it wasn’t that I wanted to be fit, it was that I didn’t want to gain weight. For another, these images seem not to affect the vast majority of boys and men, since only a subset of them develop eating disorders. I’m convinced that this subset has a biological vulnerability and not a social one.
I think this focus on body image can lead people down the wrong path. I once followed this line of reasoning: everyone says males with anorexia have a negative body image, therefore I should start lifting weights to improve my body image. Instead of fixing my anorexia, I developed a new set of must-do strength training rituals. It made me worse off because I ‘had’ to perform these in addition to my usual excessive workouts.
That all said, fitness and athleticism are very much reinforced for guys. Virtually everybody who heard about my workout routine praised me for my discipline. When I got on the strength training kick, people admired the results. Nobody asked “Are you sure doing all that every day is healthy?”
Speaking of athleticism: for many females, amenorrhea (disrupted menstrual cycle) is a warning sign that restriction and exercise have been taken too far. It’s a part of the female athlete triad that many coaches know to look out for. Males don’t get this warning sign, and can find themselves with serious injuries due to weakened bones.
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When I first heard about anorexia nervosa (it must have been in a middle-school health class), I didn’t immediately join the dots. I was aware of my destructive preoccupation with food and weight, but it took a while for me to link this thing I’d learned about ballerinas thinking they were fat to me. I didn’t fit the profile, did I?
Once I figured it out, I was not eager to advertise my eating disorder. Indeed, I kept it secret. I’m not somebody who focuses a lot on masculine pride, but I didn’t think that girls would be attracted to a guy with something seen as a female mental illness. And I wasn’t wrong about that: one potential girlfriend reacted very negatively when I told her about my issues.
It took me a long time to find my way to recovery. One thing that helped was reading about the symptoms of starvation, which have been best studied in men but are apparently universal. Writing about my experience has connected me to dozens of guys all over the world who have dealt with issues just like mine. If you’re a guy with an eating disorder, it’s true that you might be unusual, but you’re definitely not alone.