Eating Disorders in Men

When most people think of someone with an eating disorder, the first image to come to mind is that of a young girl or woman, dangerously underweight, striving and starving to achieve an image of feminine beauty that has been imposed upon her by, her peers, her family, society, or by the media.

This picture is a common one, but it is extremely inaccurate in a surprisingly high number of eating disorder cases. One of the statistics about people suffering from eating disorders that many find most surprising is that, by most estimates, approximately 10% of eating disorder cases are men or boys.

I had a close friend in high school who was consumed by his caloric intake, and his behavior was confusing to me. I knew several of my female classmates at that time suffered from eating disorders, and Ryan's changes in behavior and appearance seemed to mirror the transformations they were experiencing. Unacquainted with the true nature of eating disorders, I considered them to be a purely female problem, and I believed his protestations that he had a gastrointestinal problem that would make him feel sick if he ever consumed more than a very small number of calories in a sitting. I remember feeling very concerned for his physical health as he wasted down to little more than a skeleton. However, I was never concerned about the state of his mental or emotional health, as I was about my female peers struggling with their own eating disorders.