Gender Difference in Eating Disorders

One question I have been asked several times is why most people with eating disorders are women. The answer has two parts, the first relates to the role our society plays in eating disorders and the second biology.

The obsession with thinness in our culture has been all consuming for decades. Despite increased interest in the sexualization of men’s bodies in recent years, all the focus has been and remains on girls and women.

The media has idealized thinness and has equated it with success for girls and women for decades. The endless array of photos of girls and women all focus on body size and shape and the privilege accorded to those women. Women’s clothes are often extremely revealing, and status is clearly awarded to those who meet the cultural expectation. The diet culture is aimed squarely at women, and a large majority of women struggle to see any other success as more important then body image and weight.

The result of the onslaught on girls’ and women’s self image and body consciousness is an enormous pressure to diet. As I have written extensively in this blog, the number one trigger for an eating disorder is dieting.

Food restriction kicks off a powerful starvation response first rooted in our biology: our bodies are programmed to adapt to a famine by minimizing energy expenditure and slowing metabolism to survive. Long-standing food restriction triggers a more powerful genetic adaptation to prolonged famine: obsession with food, preoccupation with finding and hoarding food, more permanent metabolic changes and sacrificing less necessary body functions.

Some people respond quickly by developing an eating disorder. Others discard the diet quickly and resume normal life. The decision isn’t conscious but based on how our bodies are designed.

The interesting caveat is that men would develop more eating disorders if the pressure for thinness and dieting was stronger for men because these biological adaptations are the same for men and women.

Instead, the societal pressure on women that have led to the rapid rise in the incidence of eating disorders appears to be a cultural means to force women to expend an enormous amount of energy on the meaningless task of weight loss at a time when their plate is already full: ambitious career goals while still managing other roles always burdened on women. 

It is difficult not to wonder if the increasing pressures that have led to eating disorders reflect a relatively new way to overload women in the current societal climate. The way to change this blight clearly is decreasing the pressure for thinness—a possible but difficult task for a goal so ingrained in our culture.