Sculpted men with bulging muscles, sweating it out at the gym or walking around in their tank tops is not commonly an image one would associate with eating disorders.
However, with more than 1 million Australians suffering from an eating disorder, the reality is that 25 per cent of them are males, according to national eating disorders charity the Butterfly Foundation.
These are men who are so hyper-focused on the gym, their diet and an obsession with larger or leaner muscles, that they have muscle dysmorphia — sometimes known as bigorexia — which is a subtype of body dysmorphic disorder and one of the most common eating disorders for men.
The disorder is identified by a belief that one’s muscles are not large or lean enough.
“You take 100 young boys and ask them to describe the ideal body. They’re not going to say thin and skinny. They’re going to say jacked and muscular,” says Scott Griffiths, senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Dr Griffiths says the research on eating disorders and body issues for men is about 20 years behind what it is for women, largely because of the perception of what eating disorders are.
Research is scarce. According to the Butterfly Foundation, under-reporting from men means it’s difficult to have an exact picture of how common muscle dysmorphia is.
A 2016 study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found less than 1 per cent of all the body image and eating disorder research was conducted exclusively on men.
A 2012 study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders found some reasons include:
- Men are more likely to experience eating disorders later in age than women
- The stigma associated with the perception of eating disorders being “feminine”
- Symptoms going unrecognised or undiagnosed by doctors
It’s undoubtedly a problem, and the true scale of it is unclear.
The silent crisis
The Butterfly Foundation says research shows body image concerns are becoming more prevalent in young men, yet awareness is not, with some researchers referring to this as the “silent crisis” of men’s health.
Gym culture has also changed over time. Bodybuilding has become increasingly popular, with the peak body International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation now hosting more than 6,000 events around the globe annually.
While there are health benefits to building muscle, Dr Griffiths says, when asked anonymously, men will say they do it for appearance.
He says one sign of muscle dysmorphia is when a break from diet or a missed work-out becomes intensely distressing.
“Once having your diet or training disrupted moves from just being disappointment to something that brings you psychological distress, you’re moving more into a problem,” he says.
That’s exactly how Alex Rodriguez describes his experience.
“Rather than looking forward to seeing your friends and to socialising, it’s just automatic, rigid and anxious thoughts about the food that’s going to be there and how it’s going to negatively impact your exercise and negatively impact your body,” he says.
“You either go along and don’t fully participate … or I just chose to avoid it and missed out on part of my social health.”
Alex, 25, initially turned to exercise following years of bullying. Once he got into exercise he quickly learned he was good at sport.
The praise for being “disciplined” and for his appearance became his new obsession.
“I was already receiving these sorts of diet culture and fitness culture based praise from a young age, and I was essentially taught that in order to receive praise or feel like I belong somewhere, I needed to be the healthy one,” he says.
