The fear of being too small leads to a high degree of body dissatisfaction among bodybuilders. Fussell (1991), in a book based on his experience as a former bodybuilder, laments, "It didn't occur to me then that too big might not be big enough" (P. 86). Fussell's account, although entirely descriptive, provided valuable insight and an in-depth analysis into the bodybuilders' world as witnessed by a man who was consumed by it. Fussell (1991) stated, "By making myself larger than fife, I might make myself a little less frail, a little less assailable and when it came down to it, a little less human" (p.25). Blouin and Goldfield (1994) performed a noteworthy experiment comparing bodybuilders, martial
artists, and runners on standardized measures including body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, and drive for bulk. Bodybuilders were found to possess greater body dissatisfaction than either of the other groups. Bodybuilders also exhibited greater bulimic tendencies compared to martial artists and runners. The large difference in the mean ages of runners (m=37.9) compared to bodybuilders (m=26.6) and martial artists (m=27.6) represented one potential flaw in the study. Bodybuilders were also the least educated athletic group which may have influenced the results. Nonetheless, the authors have demonstrated a reasonable amount of evidence for a body image disturbance among their sample of bodybuilders. As evidenced in the literature, bodybuilders exhibit higher levels of body dissatisfaction than athletes in other solitary sports.
Bodybuilders who exhibit reverse anorexia strive constantly to gain more lean body mass, but even when successful persist in believing their size is inadequate. Pope et al. (1993) found that 8% of their bodybuilder subjects insisted that they were ver small when they were really big and muscular. This belief affected their daily lives in a myriad of ways. Some of these bodybuilders stated that they would wear heavy clothing, even in the summer, to hide their inadequate size. The percentage of the bodybuilders in the study with a history of anorexia nervosa was 2.8% which is considerably more than the 0.02% rate currently recorded among all American men. The authors suggested that media idealizes the large muscular body form for men just as it endorses the waif-like appearance for women Unfortunately, the study lacks a control group with which to compare their results. The majority of the primarily qualitative data obtained in the experiment, through the Structured Clinical Interview (SCID), may be subject to a slight interpretative bias. Whether individuals prone to reverse anorexia are disproportionately attracted to bodybuilding or the sport actually encourages such behavior (or both) remains unclear. The study, however, provided preliminary evidence for the existence of a reverse anorexia syndrome arnon ,g
bodybuilders.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/psychology/health_psychology/buffed.htm