Destructive Eating Behaviours: Destructive Pressures

An extensive study of more than 2,500 adolescents over five years has shown that ‘destructive eating behaviours’ such as binge eating, vomiting and laxative/diuretic abuse, are as common among overweight teens as underweight ones, and worsened by teasing. The study, to be published in the November issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is reported at PsycPORT.

44 percent of the girls and 20 percent of boys studied were either overweight, engaged in binge eating or had used extreme weight-control measures. Of the overweight adolescents, about one fourth of the girls reported using extreme measures. Only about 12 percent of overweight boys used extreme measures, but this is still a percentage well worthy of consideration.

The study overturns the stereotype that dangerous extreme measures are only used by people suffering from anorexia or bulimia. It also emphasises the lasting negative effects of teasing. The study found that girls who reported being teased about their weight were about twice as likely to be overweight five years later when compared with other girls in the study. They were also about 1.5 times more likely to binge eat and use extreme weight-control behaviors.

I think that it is of utmost importance that campaigns “against obesity” should not make an underclass of overweight children who it is OK to treat however we like, because the health police and media are on our side. Both teasing, and pushing overweight teenagers to diet are likely to increase the likelihood of them discovering, and getting stuck in, destructive eating patterns.

While educating children in school about a healthy lifestyle — a balance of exercise and eating to keep the body healthy — while seeing eating as both a social activity and a pleasure, and living this way at home, seem to be obviously positive measures, I would caution against making the idea of being overweight or underweight seem pivotal to life and to identity. This attitude seems to me to encourage constant anxiety and comparison, an anxiety which can be relieved by, for example, teasing others. Or it may provide a rationale for the kind of teasing which has always existed amongst young people, and push it into a terrain where people can seriously damage their own health.

At the end of the day I believe that the key is self acceptance, believing that you are alright as you are, and you have a right to feel all that you feel. This works to create a kind of psychological immunity which makes people far less prone to destructive eating behaviours, and, indeed, destructive behaviours of all kinds. Time to introduce this as an educational priority?