CHAPTER 6 A BODY IMAGE OBJECTIVES Define body

CHAPTER 6 A: BODY IMAGE

OBJECTIVES • Define body image, list the factors that influence it. • Identify the difference between being dissatisfied with your appearance and having a body image disorder. • Describe the signs and symptoms of disordered eating • Identify physical effects and treatment options for anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, orthorexia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. • List the criteria, symptoms, andtreatment options for exercise disorders • Muscle dysmorphia and female athlete triad.

What Is Body Image? • Body image - how you see yourself and how you feel about your body when you look in a mirror or picture yourself in your mind. • The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) includes in the definition that body image is also what you believe about your appearance and how you sense and control your body as you move.

Factors Influencing Body Image • Media and popular culture • Family, community, and cultural groups • Physiological and psychological factors

How Can I Build a More Positive Body Image? • Have you been accepting these four myths? 1) How you look is more important than who you are. 2) Anyone can be slender and attractive if he or she works at it. 3) Extreme dieting is an effective weight-loss strategy. 4) Appearance is more important than health.

Is the Media’s Obsession with Appearance a New Phenomenon?

Do People Who Keep Changing Their Looks Really Hate Their Bodies? • It’s not always easy to spot people who are highly dissatisfied with their bodies • Ex) people who cover their bodies with tattoos may have a strong sense of selfesteem. • Extreme tattooing can be an outward sign of a body image disturbance known as body dysmorphic disorder.

Body Image Disorders • Social physique anxiety • Body dysmorphic disorder • Disordered eating

What Is Disordered Eating? • Pattern of atypical eating behaviors used to achieve or maintain a lower body weight. • Behaviors can include: chronic dieting, abuse of diet pills and laxatives, self-induced vomiting

Eating Disorders • Defined as a psychiatric disorder characterized by severe disturbances in body image and eating behaviors. • In the United States, as many as 25 million people of all ages meet the established criteria for an eating disorder. • Common among ballet dancers, athletes • Aesthetic component (figure skating, gymnastics) • Lean sports (cross country) • Sports tied to weight class (martial arts, wrestling)

Factors That Contribute to Eating Disorders

Anorexia Nervosa • Persistent, chronic eating disorder characterized by deliberate food restriction and severe, life-threatening weight loss. • Patients fear gaining weight and have an extremely distorted body image. • Although they lose weight, anorexic people never seem to feel thin enough.

What Anorexia Nervosa Can Do to the Body

Bulimia Nervosa • Often binge on huge amounts of food and then purge it by vomiting, taking laxatives, or exercising excessively to burn off the calories. • Most bulimics have weight that falls within the normal ranges, or they may be overweight. • Up to 3 percent of adolescents and young women are bulimic; rates among men are about 10 percent of the rate among women.

What Bulimia Nervosa Can Do to the Body

Binge-Eating Disorder • Individuals gorge like their bulimic counterparts but do not take excessive measures to lose the weight they gain. • They are often clinically obese. • National surveys have suggested that binge-eating disorder is more prevalent than either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa.

Some Disorders Are Not Easily Classified • The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recognizes: • Some patterns of disordered eating qualify as legitimate psychiatric illnesses but don’t fit into the strict diagnostic criteria for either anorexia or bulimia. • These are Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders (OSFED). • Includes five specific subtypes: night eating syndrome, purging disorder, binge-eating disorder of low frequency/limited duration, bulimia nervosa of low frequency/duration, and atypical anorexia nervosa.

How Can You Help Someone with Disordered Eating? • • • Learn as much as you can about disordered eating. Know the differences between facts and myths. Be honest and talk openly about your concerns. Be caring but firm. Compliment your friend on his or her personality, successes, or accomplishments. • Be a good role model. • Tell someone else about your concerns.

Can Exercise Be Unhealthy? • Exercise can be a problem when carried to excess. • In addition to being a common compensatory behavior used by people with anorexia or bulimia, exercise can contribute to either of two more complex disorders: muscle dysmorphia and female athlete triad.

Exercise Disorders • Exercise compulsion - a compulsion to engage in excessive amounts of exercise as well as feelings of guilt and anxiety if the level of exercise is perceived as inadequate. • Muscle dysmorphia - a body image disorder among men who believe that their bodies are insufficiently lean or muscular. • Female athlete triad is a syndrome of three interrelated health problems seen in some female athletes: disordered eating, amenorrhea, and poor bone density.

The Female Athlete Triad