Muscle Dysmorphia / Men's Health

I wrote about muscle dysmorphia - AKA “reverse anorexia” or “bigorexia” - for Men’s Health:

Muscle dysmorphia is a disorder of magnitude. Men with muscle dysmorphia are pathologically preoccupied with their muscularity to the extent that they can think about getting bigger or leaner for over five hours a day – what feels to some like every waking moment.

In order to train, men with muscle dysmorphia can miss work, job interviews, social events or, in one case, their first child’s birth, because it was leg day. They can abstain from sex so as not to waste energy that could be used for training, or kissing so as not to ingest excess calories via saliva that might be stored as fat and obscure their definition. They can take anabolic-androgenic steroids (“anabolic” as in muscle-building and fat-burning, “androgenic” as in masculinising). They can check a mirror more than 50 times a day or take over 1,000 selfies – not out of preening vanity but crippling anxiety. However good they may look to others, they can see themselves as so shamefully out of shape that they won’t leave the house unless it’s night – some not at all.

Read “Why Muscle Dysmorphia is Only Getting Bigger and More Defined” on Men’s Health.