Carolina Beautiful:

Celebrate Your Body Week

Carolina Beautiful 2011
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Every year in February is the National Eating Disorders Association’s (NEDA) annual National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. The campus of the University of South Carolina celebrates this week by hosting a number of events promoting a positive body image. The goal of Carolina Beautiful: Celebrate Your Body Week is to help students view their bodies in a positive way to prevent the development of body image issues and eating disorders.

Statistics

Currently, there are as many as 10 million females and 1 million males struggling with a life-threatening eating disorder, such as anorexia and bulimia, in the United States. Millions more are struggling with binge eating disorder. Furthermore, many others fight a daily struggle with body dissatisfaction and sub-clinical disordered eating behaviors. In fact, 80% of American women are dissatisfied with their appearance.

Eating disorders disordered eating and body dissatisfaction struggles are very prevalent among college students. A recent study suggests that over 18% of college students engage in compulsive exercise and over 7% engage in compulsive eating behaviors. A recent survey on a college campus showed that 91% of women surveyed had attempted to control their weight through dieting and 22% dieted “often” or “always”. Furthermore, 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% progress to partial or full-syndrome eating disorders.

On any given day, 25% of American men and 45% of American women are on a diet.

Association, N. E. (2005). Statistics: Eating Disorders and Their Precursors. Retrieved January 6, 2012, from National Eating Disorders Association:

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/uploads/file/Statistics%20%20Updated%20Feb%2010,%202008%20B.pdf

Guidi, J. P. (2009). Prevalence of compulsive eating an exercise among college students: An exploratory study. Psychiatry Research , 165, 154-162.