ABSTRACT
Chapter 17 specifically considers male patients with eating disorders. As ever, eating disorders have complex causes, with biological, inherited, and environmental contributions. Males are ever more targeted by consumer culture, which presents them with virile images of hyper-muscular, low body fat role models as early as childhood. Male patients more often report a desire to be lean and muscular rather than having the drive for thinness that more female patients possess. Malnutrition wastes muscle mass. Males present to treatment just as ill as their female counterparts. The Hamwi “ideal body weight” equation is better to use for males than the BMI because it allows for a higher denominator that better reflects the fact that most males are heavier for height than females. Use of only the BMI can misrepresent how ill an underweight male patient is, and what medical complications he might have developed. Parents and loved ones are given a number of red flags to watch for as far as the development of an eating disorder.
