About Men and Their Eating Disorders

When the subject of men and eating disorders comes up, and the men do consult their doctors for help, physicians will take a detailed medical history. They more often than not discover that the disorder began to appear as teen-agers. An adolescent peer group can be very psychologically harsh; "fat boys" are made fun of and isolated from others. The social pressure to be thin is overwhelming among today's teens.

Eating disorders tend to be considered as "women's disorders." In our society, men are not acceptable to show the weakness of having mental health disorders, much less suffer from eating disorders. Since men and eating disorders is a problem, they almost always keep this a painful secret. According to the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders, men consist of about one million Americans who suffer from eating disorders.

Men and eating disorders describe both anorexic and bulimic behavior as adolescents. In addition to starving themselves, they engage in recreation sports and exercise excessively just as teen-age girls and grown women do.

Do Men and Their Eating Disorders Have the Same Symptoms as Women?

Yes, but with one very imperative difference. People of either gender can develop an eating disorder, and they keep their eating behavior undisclosed. Men and eating disorders is a subject matter which sort of ties that knot of secrecy even tighter. As adults, they are nearly always morbidly obese. They don't mix with others, especially women. They hardly ever date or get married.

They identify that fat men are even less tolerated in our society than fat women. Men and eating disorders have a propensity to spend their time alone, either starving themselves (anorexia) or binge-eating and then purging by vomiting (bulimia). Just as women are, men are infatuated with calorie counting and unhealthy diets to lose weight. Through anorexic and bulimic behavior, men with eating disorders use food, or the lack of it, to cover up feelings of guilt and shame, loneliness, anger, and fear. But men aren't hypothetical to feel these things! Men must be belligerent, self-confident and desired by women.

Like to women, men and eating disorders may have suffered physical or even sexual abuse as children. They may have been negligently denied food due to either poverty or because they were overweight as children. Men with eating disorders gain knowledge of at an early age that one sure-fire way of preventing sexual abuse is to make them as unattractive and undesirable as they can. If they're skin and bones or obese, they thought, their abuser will move on to another victim.

Eating disorders in the midst of either gender isn't a matter of vanity; wanting to fit into a smaller pair of jeans. In actual fact, eating disorders don't really have anything to do with food! What drives men with eating disorders is a necessitate to be in control of something, anything. They don't do well expressing emotions, are perfectionists, and don't permit themselves to be less than perfect and have a deeply seated self-loathing. The only one thing that men can always control is the amount of food they allow themselves to eat. The bathroom scale then becomes their mortal enemy.

Parents, teachers, physicians and coaches must truly understand that men do develop eating disorders as women do. Men and eating disorders are so real, they're just better at hiding it until cardiac arrest brings them to the awareness of medical personnel, or they die from a disorder that could have been avoided.

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