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Body checking and its avoidance in eating disorders.

Roz Shafran¹, Christopher G Fairburn, Paul Robinson

¹Department of Psychiatry, Oxford University, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, England. roz.shafran@psych.ox.ac.uk

The International Journal of Eating Disorders

|January 6, 2004

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Body checking and avoidance behaviors are key features of eating disorders, significantly associated with psychopathology. These actions reflect an overvaluation of shape and weight, potentially maintaining the disorder.

Area of Science:

Psychiatry
Clinical Psychology
Behavioral Science

Background:

Eating disorders are characterized by core psychopathology including shape/weight checking and avoidance.
These behaviors are central to the diagnostic criteria and clinical presentation of eating disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

To describe the phenomenology of body checking and avoidance behaviors.
To compare body checking and avoidance in women with and without clinical eating disorders.

Main Methods:

Study 1: Semistructured interviews with 64 female patients with eating disorders.
Study 2: Self-report questionnaire comparing 110 women with and without eating disorders.

Main Results:

92% of patients in Study 1 engaged in body checking, linked to eating disorder symptoms.

Related Experiment Videos

Women with eating disorders showed significantly more body checking and avoidance than controls.

Strong association found between eating disorder psychopathology and these behaviors.

Conclusions:

Body checking and avoidance appear to be direct manifestations of overvaluing shape and weight.
Further research is needed to ascertain if these behaviors perpetuate eating disorders.