How we become anxious about our weight

We get a lot of information from a huge range of media - magazines, telly etc - where people are trying to sell us something.

There is masses of information coming to us about food - not just the tv programmes and adverts, but the variety of food in the supermarket and the range of eating places in the high street. These are "messages to eat".

And on the other hand, we get messages about what we should look like. There was a report published this week seeking to control the images of women portrayed in the media, with all that airbrushing, which puts pressure on girls to present themselves as sexy before they are old enough to know what is going on. And at the same time, these images encourage men to consider women as only interesting if they are sexy.

This sort of advertising puts a huge pressure on women to conform to unrealistic expectations. And is the major cause of eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder and body dissatisfaction and perhaps surprisingly, obesity.

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