Eating
Disorders
Chasing a Hot Bod
Makes the Boys Sick
 (December 7, 2003) -- Growing pressure on
young men to have "the perfect body" is driving them into
eating disorders and
excessive exercise
regimens.
New research by a Sydney University academic has found increasing numbers of
young men spending long hours at the gym in a bid to emulate unrealistic images
of what their body should look like.
Dr Jenny O'Dea, senior lecturer at the School of Development and Learning in
Australia, interviewed 100 20-year-old males and found found 9 to 12 per cent
of males were unhappy about their
body shape and wanted to lose weight.
Nine per cent reported eating disorders such as vomiting as well as dieting and
smoking in an effort to control their weight.
And 8 per cent had been diagnosed with clinical exercise disorders, defined
as using up 600 calories in an exercise session - which for a non-athlete would
translate to heavy exercise lasting more than two hours a day.
"We have had to educate young girls that being too thin is not
healthy," Dr O'Dea said. "And we need to educate young men that
excessive exercise is also unhealthy."
She said some young men believed they should only have pure muscle, with no
fat at all.
"But you do need a certain layer of fat and it has important functions
in the body," she said.
 Marketing images, such as the billboard
picture of Australian model Travis Fimmel promoting Calvin Klein underwear with
his sculpted torso, have increased the pressure on today's young men.
"I think the quest of trying to get the perfect body has grown
tremendously in the past five years, mainly as a result of marketing
images," Dr O'Dea said.
"This has led to eating disorders, exercise disorders and steroid
abuse."
The young men who were going overboard at the gym often did not recognise
how unhealthy their obsession was becoming, Dr O'Dea said.
Source: Sydney (Australia) The Sun-Herald
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