I am not the kind of person who divulges or dwells too much on the past, but my sister posted this picture on my birthday. It drummed up a few memories about my eating habits at the time.
As you can tell by the picture, I clearly wasn’t eating well, but it was never addressed even though I looked terribly thin. I wouldn’t use the word anorexic as it was a phase that lasted just a couple of years, but when I think back, I had all the traits of an eating disorder.
I remember being obsessed with what I was eating while exercising a lot. I became infatuated with counting calories which I jotted down every day on scraps of paper, intending to consume no more than 800 calories a day. I knew the calories of many foods off by heart and could adjust them in my head for the serving size. Embarrassingly, I followed the diet plans found on the back pages of one of the Sunday paper magazines aimed at helping women to lose weight.
My meals consisted of banana sandwiches, cuppa soups, canned tuna, and tiny portions of pasta. I visited my local gym many times a week to do circuit training and aerobics (yes, can you imagine that one!). I also had weights in the shed that I used daily.
As I said earlier, no one really said a thing even though I looked the way I did and it was probably put down to being a skinny teen. I was 15, which would have been in the early ’90s and there was a lot of stuff going on for me at that age as my mum was very ill with cancer, but I was never told what was going on. I was also really struggling at school as I was gay, and it was clearly apparent, which resulted in a long period of bullying. Family life was also chaotic with lots of arguing and a brother who nowadays would have been diagnosed with ADHD.
Psychology is very twisted when you are in this state of mind. I didn’t want to be thin, but I thought I was being healthy. I also wanted to get ‘muscly’ as I was naturally thin but clearly had no idea what I was doing! I think the problem is that it is so easy to take things to the extreme especially when there is a lot of stuff going on around you and you don’t feel confident in your own skin.
I got a buzz from controlling my diet and exercising like a madman. Still, I needed to get grounded somehow and in control and given everything that was going on around me focusing on food and exercise was a way of doing this.
So, what is the point of this blog?
I have been doing lots of stuff around men’s health lately, and I think current society is tricky for young boys to navigate. In the same way women have always had to battle with how the ‘perfect’ body has been portrayed; I think young men are now becoming more exposed to the same type of thing in the media. This isn’t the reason for disordered eating but it can contribute to the issue.
As young girls grew up with barbie dolls and impossibly thin wasted female cartoon characters, boys grew up with muscley characters and action figures. The skinny characters are always seen as weaker and somewhat nerdy. Social media is also riddled with incredible-looking men with a body that is impossible to achieve for most boys. Alongside this, they all seem to lead an extraordinary life on Instagram and if you are feeling insecure about how you look you will attribute this all to how they look.
While many campaigns have helped women to accept, embrace and celebrate their size and shape I am not sure the same thing would be as affective for very slim men. There is quite a lot of stigma around very slim men which is bred from both men and women viewing them as less masculine, weak or less attractive than the macho man. I guess the same could also be said for larger men who I think may not be seen as sexy as the fuller figured woman – although this is just conjecture on my part so please don’t start laying in to me on that one.
One of the most common questions I get asked by men is “how can I bulk up” as they see this as more desirable, and let’s face it, other men and women find a sporty muscle bound body shape to be more attractive.
I got skinny, but many men fall into an unhealthy trap of bigorexia as they become obsessed with getting bulky, spending hours in the gym, and panicking when they can’t seek food or a protein shake every couple of hours.
I have seen and heard from young athletes (mostly endurance sports) who become obsessed with their weight, which can be to the detriment of their performance as they lack the energy and food required to help them train, recover and support a healthy immune system. This can also affect their mental health which is closely linked to performance. Interestingly, they too have become obsessed with food and training to become fitter and perform better rather than being thin but one thing leads to another and it starts to become an issue.
This period for me lasted a year or so and then I started to improve my eating habits and focusing less on food which may have been due to a change in environment and situation. I am still conscious about what I eat and thrive on being fit but it is no longer all consuming and certainly not an issue for me anymore as a 15 stone fitness junkie.
My training as a nutritionist and now sports nutritionist alongside all my experience in this field has given me the knowledge I wish I had when trying to be healthy as a youngster. I love delivering the right science-based advice to clients to help them improve their health in a sensible and sustainable way while also helping them to cut through the ‘noise’ that dominates the health media such as faddy diets and so on. I also hope that my experience of this puts me in a position to speak out and help guys struggling with disordered eating to seek help.
I’m not an expert in this field which relies on the expertise of psychologists and dietitians trained in the topic. I think disordered eating is still a topic considered to be a female issue and something many males may be embarrassed to seek help for as they feel it makes them look weak or less macho.
Unfortunately, I think there are many young boys and men who fall into the trap of disordered eating. There are obviously many reasons why this might happen but the one I am most familiar with in males is trying to improve the way they look or get fitter which alongside low self-esteem and other mental health issues gets taken to the extreme and becomes a problem.
Considering this, I think it’s an issue that should get a little more airtime. Hence, boys feel more comfortable speaking up when they think they are losing control. Even though the stereotype of disordered eating suggests it only occurs in women, one in three people struggling with an eating disorder is male. Subclinical disordered eating behaviours such as binging, purging, fasting for weight loss, and laxative abuse are almost as common in men as in women.
The roots of disordered eating usually lie in deeper embedded problems that can impact men’s mental health and wellbeing. The boys and men I have worked with over the years who are desperate to ‘bulk up’ are often really affected by how they view themselves physically, which affects their self-esteem and confidence.
I guess I just wanted to vent a little bit on the topic. I know it might seem weird as a nutritionist sharing this post but it is a topic I experienced and have often asked myself ‘why did no one recognise that it was a bit of a problem at the time?”. I think there are many issues for men that are still difficult to approach and ‘manning up’ is definitely not the answer.
If you need information or support on eating disorders then go to the Beat website.
