Reverse Anorexia in Bodybuilders
Women compose the overwhelming majority of the reported cases of eating disorders. The, desire to be thin consumes many young women who idealize the false and unrealistic model form depicted in popular magazines. Recently, researchers have started to appreciate the role of exercise in the development of eating disorders. This shift has illuminated the striking influence of sports on body image satisfaction in men as well as women. The importance of a fit physique has grown increasingly salient to men in modem society as indicated by the rise of hypermasculine action heroes such as Arnold Schwartzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. One growing sport, bodybuilding, now has the sixth largest sports federation and has come to the attention of researchers. In the last few years, researchers have linked bodybuilding to an overwhelming drive for lean muscle mass coined "reverse anorexia" by Pope, Katz, and Hudson (1993) and "bigameraria" by Taylor(1985). The bodybuilders' obsessional behavior resembles anorexia nervosa with remarkable similarity except that the drive for enormous muscles replaces the drive for thinness. This alarming psychological syndrome may motivate bodybuilders and weightlifters, to a lesser extent, to relinquish friends, to give up responsibilities, to pursue unusual diets, to overtrain and to risk their health by abusing steroids.
Reverse Anorexia in Bodybuilders
Bodybuilders who exhibit reverse anorexia strive constantly to gain more lean body mass, but even when successful persist in believing their size is inadequate. Pope et al. (1993) found that 8% of their bodybuilder subjects insisted that they were ver small when they were really big and muscular. This belief aff...
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Recurrent episodes of binge eating is classified by eating large amounts of food in a discrete amount of time and a lack of control in over-consuming during an episode (Pomerantz, 2014). One then uses recurrent inappropriate purging behavior to prevent weight gain. DSM-5 has updated this occurrence to only once a week for three months. Those with the disorder cause self-evaluation to be strongly influenced by body shape and weight. These disturbances do not occur during episodes of anorexia nervosa, which is self starvation to limit calories and weight (American Psychiatric Association,
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...ment and realization that he has lost Jane to another man in the following dialogue between them, “’I know where your heart turns, and to what it clings. The interest you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to have crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You think of Mr. Rochester?’ It was true. I confessed it by silence. ‘Are you going t seek Mr. Rochester?’ ‘I must find out what is become of him.’ ‘It remains for me, then,’ he said, ‘to remember you in my prayers; and to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed become a castaway. I had thought I recognized in you one of the chose. But God sees not as man sees: His will be done.’” (Bronte 436) Though Jane Eyre’s stay at Moor House and Morton were crucial for her recovery to stability of her life, she yearned to be at Thornfield and wedded to Mr. Rochester.
Body image disturbance is a core feature of anorexia nervosa. Often people who suffer from anorexia refuse to eat more than is absolutely necessary to maintain a minimal weight for their height. Øverås, M., Kapstad, H., Brunborg, C., Landrø, N. I., and Lask, B. (2014) experiment analyzed body size estimation on perception and memory, in patients with anorexia nervosa by comparing results with a healthy control group. They had a particular interest on how anxiety may have influence on anorexia nervosa patient’s perception of their body image. Øverås et al. suggested patients, who suffer from anorexia nervosa, would overestimate their body size more than the healthy control group. They also proposed that patients would overestimate their body size more in the perception of their body than basing off their views from memory.
Body image has primarily been a problem for females. Recently, however, this view has opened up and has been seen in males. While women fixate on looking thin and slim, men’s obsessions are on the opposite spectrum, where guys want to be big, thick, and muscular. First known as "reverse anorexia", and now properly called muscle dysmorphia this obsessive compulsive disorder makes individuals believe that they are small and muscularly undeveloped and meanwhile they are moderately or highly muscular. This disorder is mostly seen in males and is rather unhealthy because it raises potential for self-esteem issues, steroid abuse, anti-social attitude, stress, over-meticulous diets and workout plans, and in worst case scenarios, suicide. In our society ideal body image for males has been put up to an impossible pedestal and the examples for the perfect physique are worsened by media causing this disorder to grow even further.
The media can impact people’s lives in many ways, whether it’s fashion, movies, literature, or hobbies. One of the impacts is how women view their bodies. Movie stars and models feel pressured to catch attention and to look good in order to have a good career in their respective field. People tend to judge how someone looks based on their body composition. The result of this “judgment” is that Hollywood is getting skinny. Since models and actresses serve as role models for people, people tend to want to look like them. The result of this seemingly harmless model of behavior is in an increase in eating disorders.
Athletes are among the quickest, strongest, most flexible people in the world, so one would expect them to adhere to the latest health and fitness information, right? Not always. The problem is that the athletes often believe that more fit equals less fat. The death of Olympic gymnast Christy Henrich from anorexia nervosa began to bring the topic of athletes and eating disorders to the forefront. Research into the topic of eating disorders and athletes shows a few interesting findings. Most of the studies focus on women and specific sports, namely gymnastics, figure skating, diving, and other weight-dependent sports. Some research, however, shows prevelance findings of eating disorders in female athletes congruent with the general population.
False memories have been the subject of many studies since Deese (1959) investigated their effects.
Similar studies were done to a different set of college students and they tended to have the same results. After giving as much detail about each memory, the students were interviewed about what they may have written done about what they had remembered. During the last part of the experiment, each of the students were debriefed and asked to guess which memory they believed was false.
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In the field of cognitive neuroscience a memory study usually involves a combination of behavioral tasks and a machine that permits t...
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Celebrity-athletes like Arnold Schwarzenegger unleashed the caged world of fitness from the elite few to the general public. Before the 1970s, physical fitness was closely related to bodybuilders and athletes, but certain athletes were able to break down the barriers that separated the sports industry from the media entertainment industry. Such an athlete was Austrian-born bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger started his bodybuilding career in the late 1960s, a time where it was considered that only the lower class admired extreme muscularity in men (Sailer). Here, Schwarzenegger redefined the level of competition in bodybuilding with his tall physique anchored with large aesthetic muscles, but then also surprised the world by crossing over to the movie industry. Even with his thick Austrian accent, Schwarzenegger had made himself the biggest movie star in Hollywood by the late 1980’s and reinvented masculinity in his own “bulging, bru...