"Manorexia" is on the rise:
NHS figures have shown a 66 per cent increase in hospital admissions in England for male eating disorders over the last decade.
A spokesman for the charity beat said the rise could be attributed to the struggle to attain a 'perfect' body shape.
She said: 'Sufferers can become obsessed.
posted by Helen at 7:23 PM
19 Comments:
The statistical information in this article is just about useless. On the one hand, they show a "66% increase in hospital admissions in England for male eating disorders in the last decade" but they provide no absolute numbers of admissions. Did the number of admissions go from 10 to 16 or from 100,000 to 160,000. Both are examples of a 66% increase, but the first is just a slight increase in real numbers while the second isn't.
Later in the article, there's this: "The charity estimates that 1.6 million people in the UK have an eating disorder. It is thought that one in five sufferers is male."
How reliable are those numbers? Charities specializing in a particular cause have often played loose with their numbers to inflate their cause. US charities that work with the homeless frequently overstate the number of homeless people, often by huge margins. Likewise, I remember one women's group claiming several years ago that the number of women who died in America from eating disorders was in the thousands each year when the actual number was less than 100.
Even if the numbers are large, it is hugely difficult to have any sympathy for people who voluntarily starve themselves, force themselves to vomit what they do eat, and take laxatives by the bucket-load. Women, well... I do consider them less... culpable... more reliant on both social acceptance and emotion as they are. As well, and even less able to be held accountable, many women begin this at a frightfully young age. But men or even boys? They have no excuse.
Yes, a double standard. But one based in history, on tradition, and well within all manner of reason.
Where does the obesity end? Americans keep getting fatter, and fatter. Many men think it is perfectly acceptable to sport an extra 50 pounds. The clothes keep getting bigger and bigger and the pants baggier.
Getting back to the male anorexia. Just like young women who grow up in obese families, I am sure that some young men become adults and decide they no longer want to look like a whale. One can safely lose weight when they are armed with a boatload of knowledge about food and nutrition. However, what happens if you don't have that knowledge? People know if they eat less they lose weight. Anorexics take an extreme view of this, if they avoid eating most food they'll lose a lot of weight fast.
I do worry about young people who find at 18 or 19 they no long want to eat a box of Twinkies a day like their parents and want to lose the extra 200 pounds. What dangerous path might they choose to lose the weight?
Where does the obesity end?
Maybe when we get off the high-carb, government approved diet?
yea our asses started getting bigger around the time the Goobermint started pimping the 'food pyramid' portioning, which touted high consumption of heavy carbohydrate foods, which was the result of "meat is bad" junk science food politics.
I still eat the '4 food groups' diet and stay plenty slim.
My natural reaction to obesity is "You brought that on yourself". I'm 5'11" and weigh in somewhere between 172-178 and range from "soft" to "trim" depending on if I've bothered to exercise regularly within the last 3 months. My view over the years has changed. My wife regularly struggles with weight. Our bodies react differently to food and exercise. We can eat the exact same diet and do the exact same workout and my weight will not change substantially (up or down) but I'll tighten up noticeably within a week or two. She'll lose 10 pounds or so and that's it.
I'll go off diet and eat donuts and ice cream every night and stop working out. No change in weight range (although I will eventually start to lose tone). If she does the same thing the lost weight pops right back on and will continue to increase if she doesn't correct her diet. I can't explain it other than genetic luck. I won the weight & body type lottery and she lost. So now I'm more sympathetic to those who are overweight.
I will note that my sympathy is pretty limited. My wife deals with the short end of the stick every day and works hard to try and keep her weight in check. I have very little sympathy for those who may have a similar burden and don't even try.
Cham's right. I'll start worrying about anorexia when it's at least a comparable problem to obesity. Right now, it can't hold a candle to even morbid obesity.
Oh, and: "Manorexia"? Good God.
"Did the number of admissions go from 10 to 16 or from 100,000 to 160,000?"
Absolutely. Without a baseline, it's a junk report. My guess is that the baseline is so small, the growth percentage was the only way they could spin a panic story (and get more funding to study the "problem").
Take out the men (like myself) who've had surgeries such as lap band because of pressing health problems, and the number of men concerned AT ALL with their weight would drop even more.
Men are less obsessed with obesity than with body shape. Without even knowing the numbers, I'll bet the number of men who pump iron is an order of magnitude greater than the number of male anorexics.
On the other hand, considering how feminized British men have become, it wouldn't surprise me that THEY are becoming obsessed with their weight too. Over here, not so much.
well, the feminised men are coming to this shore too.
it seems that britain gets the effects more quickly than north america.
population density, way more immigrants as a percentage of population, more socialist possibly...but the day will come when women will have the traditional male stress illnesses and men will get the female ones more frequently, directly related to eye liner and hair product usage i would imagine.
it wasn`t too long ago when men were the peacocks. 350-400 years ago possibly. powdered wigs and silk ruffles and silk socks and high-heeled shoes.
The young men have the same issues as the young women. Their parents stuff up good with the same bad food that they are eating. The kids hit puberty and naturally they want attention from the opposite sex. They realize fast it won't be happening until they create a body shape that is attractive. Panic mode sets in and they start eating less.
I know several teens who did this. I asked them how they dropped their weight so fast, the answer was the same, "I ate much less." They keep the weight off too, but you should see what they eat. It's not good.
As a society, we're quite obsessed with weight. It's not surprising that it happens among both genders. I hate to repeat what I just said in the last comment I posted here, but really... we're all people, whatever reproductive machinery we've got. No one wants to be unattractive, and our brains sometimes take us to ugly places in pursuit of that goal.
Paleo Diet
World famous British chefs are as rare as Polish War Heroes.
Expatriates I have met have always complained about lousy British food. I suppose I'd prefer a twinky as well.
growing up in england in the sixties, i noticed (in retrospect) a feminist stridency that has manifested it`s self as an agressively politically correct society (that north america is becoming) run by women and fags, which automatically feminises men if they want to fit in at all.
the movie run fatboy run is a good example of that.
with hollywood holding boys like leonardo decaprio out as a leading man, what chance do men have?
Obesity, in modern parlance, is a fiction. They changed what they consider obese a number of years back to 'swell' the numbers, in order I suppose to impose more government involvement, through medical "need". Britain probably hasn't followed suit (perhaps), because now that the government runs medical, it can't afford more "need". It was merely a political ploy to create a crisis to develop more government control. "Let no crisis go to waste (waist, ha)!"
Besides, fat parents don't create manorexia. Idiocy and queerdom, brought about more by a licentious, indulgent, culture and inattentive parenting (by allowing their boy children to be buggered).
My problem with being overweight in any manner, is, that if you need for some reason, every ounce of strength and stamina you can muster, well, you're in deep shit. With that said, I could probably stand to lose 15 pounds.
I love the explanation that guys are becoming anorexic because society is forcing them to be feminized. Because anorexia is clearly a normal and healthy impulse in the female population....
There's a little more to eating disorders than that, gents.
Wow, the lack of knowledge about anorexia strong here...
My best friend was a sufferer, and there was almost nothing she could do about it. No, she's not cured. She died 6 months ago.
Please, people, it's a MENTAL illness, not just a decision by the individual to not eat. It was described to me as being OCD about food, and it's pretty accurate.
So what causes it? Either it's relevant to obesity or it isn't. Can't have it both ways.
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