Self Magazine survey: Shocking Figures
Self Magazine recently released the results of an online survey of women’s eating habits and how they felt about their bodies. It reported that 65% of women in America have disordered eating, and another 10% have full-blown eating disorders. In other words, only 1 in 4 women surveyed have some semblance of a normal, healthy relationship with food. Given our culture’s obsession with diet, exercise and body weight, these findings may not be all that surprising, but the more troubling story isn’t in this survey, but what has followed it.
The survey was conducted in partnership with eating disorder professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In a press release, they said that many of the eating habits that women think are normal — such as calorie counting, banishing carbohydrates and ‘unhealthy’ foods, and skipping meals trying to lose weight — can actually be symptoms of disordered eating.
A total of 4,023 women, ages 25-45, responded to the online survey and two-thirds were trying to lose weight, although more than half of the dieters were “at a healthy weight,” said the researchers. Among the other findings they reported, 37% of the women said they regularly skipped meals to lose weight, more than a quarter would be extremely upset if they gained just five pounds and an equal number cut out entire food groups to control their weight. One in six women had dieted by eating 1,000 calories a day or fewer and 13% smoke to control their weight. The researchers reported that 39% of women said concerns about what they eat or weigh interfere with their happiness. The women in their survey also felt extremely guilty if they “indulged” in something “bad” for them.
The degree of unhealthy purging activities among the women, said the professors, was most surprising. More than 31% of the women reported having induced vomiting or taken laxatives, diuretics or diet pills at some point in their lives. “Among these women, more than 50 percent engaged in purging activities at least a few times a week and many did so every day.” Most unsettling, they found just as much disordered eating among the women in their 30s and 40s as in the younger women.