Dieting Behavior and Body Image in Societal Change

Dissatisfaction with one’s physical appearance, and above all feeling too fat, is a widespread phenomenon often associated with disordered eating behavior. Attempts to achieve the ideal norm—often an unrealistic weight defined primarily by sociocultural influences—lead to dieting attempts. The combination of a disturbed body image and dieting behavior often results in a manifest eating disorder with anorexic and/or bulimic symptoms, particularly in adolescents and young adult women, but also—albeit much less frequently—in males. Explanatory models for the unequal gender distribution range from sociocultural to biological factors, although a sufficient explanation for these cross-cultural gender differences is still lacking. However, the gender-specific difference is much less pronounced in partial eating disorders. Weight-related problems such as overweight, disordered eating behavior, unhealthy weight control measures, and “binge eating” (repeated episodes of binge eating with loss of control) represent a significant problem in healthcare due to their high prevalence and negative consequences for physical and mental health. Accordingly, WHO data (GBD 2018) indicate an increase in age-standardized disease burden as a measure of morbidity(years lived with disability, YLDs) of 6% for anorexia nervosa and 10% for bulimia nervosa between 2007 and 2017.