weight loss in order to avoid weight related medical illnesses found in other family members. (Men with Eating Disorders, http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu.html ). Other reasons men with eating disorders diet: a desire to improve athletic performance, a history of being teased, criticized, or picked on for being overweight. Wanting to change a specific body part to remove flab is another reason. Guys who also have eating disorders have them because they want to be more attractive to a potential partner and to look less like one’s father and to look like models in magazines.ProfessionalsOne of the nation’s leading researchers on eating disorders is Arnold E. Anderson, M.D. a professor of psychiatry in the University of Iowa College of Medicine. He has edited a book of studies, Males with Eating Disorders (Brunner/Mazel 1990), and is writing another for families faced with the problem. His most recent project involves tracing and comparing the development of attitudes about body shape and weight among fifth and sixth grade males and females in the Unites States and India. “Males with eating disorders have been relatively ignored, neglected, dismissed because of statistical infrequency or legislated out of existence by theoretical dogma,” said Anderson. Anderson said that although the disorders look the same for men and women, the paths for getting there are quite different. “The twin spotlights of empirical scientific studies and broad clinical experience can be brought to focus on either the similarities or the dissimilarities between males and females with eating disorders,” said Anderson. “When individuals are very ill, suffering from emaciation or abnormal electrolytes and other medical complications, they appear very similar and require similar treatment.” Binge eating disorder may go unrecognized in males because an overeating male is less likely to provoke attention than an overeatin...
