نارضایتی از بدن در گوشتخواران محدود زنان بستگی به محرومیت غذایی دارد

This study investigated the effects of food deprivation on the body image in female restrained and unrestrained eaters. Twenty female restrained eaters and 20 female unrestrained eaters were asked to identify their current and their ideal body shape by choosing them from a sample of nine female silhouettes. This test was conducted under three deprivational conditions: hungry, thirsty and non-deprived (neither hungry nor thirsty). The discrepancy between the current and the ideal body shape—termed as body dissatisfaction—did not differ significantly between restrained and unrestrained eaters when thirsty or satiated. Under hunger, however, the restrained eaters scored a significantly larger discrepancy between their current and ideal body shape than the unrestrained eaters. The data suggest that women with restrained eating behavior feel a body dissatisfaction when being hungry.

For about 40 years a disturbance of body image is described in female eating disordered patients (Bruch, 1962). Disturbance of body image refers to a construct which includes a ‘cognitive and attitudinal’ disturbance in addition to a ‘perceptual’ disturbance (Garner & Garfinkel, 1981). The ‘perceptual’ disturbance refers to the unability to assess the own body size accurately and is often referred to as body size distortion. The ‘cognitive or attitudinal’ disturbance refers to extreme reactions in form of disparagement of the own body while the assessment of the own body size is accurate. This latter disturbance is often referred to as body dissatisfaction (Cash and Brown, 1987 and Garner and Garfinkel, 1981). It seems to be useful to separate these two forms of body image disturbances, although they may often occur conjointly in eating disordered patients (Cash and Brown, 1987, Hsu and Sobkiewicz, 1991 and Lautenbacher et al., 1997). Moreover, in eating disordered patients, the attitudinal body dissatisfaction was shown to be more pronounced than the perceptual body size estimation inaccuracy (Cash & Deagle, 1997).