Roberto Olivardia, PhD

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362 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 15 Jul

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Speaking of Psychology · Social media, looksmaxxing, and why men struggle with body image, with Roberto Olivardia, PhD · 15 Jul 2026 podcast

It's a pleasure.

Yes.

Contrary to what people believe is that 25% of people who have eating disorders are boys and men.

Now, many years ago, when I started entering into this research arena, we didn't see that epidemiological data.

And part of it was, A, there weren't a lot of studies looking at boys and men, or the assessment measures were not really valid or reliable for

Male populations, boys and men were not presenting clinically.

And so it was difficult in terms of getting research because a lot of research on boys and men were just being in the early 90s were being drawn from just clinical samples, which represented just a slice of the boys and men who are struggling.

So we know that it's much more common than people think it is.

And having done this work for over 30 years, I've seen just increased awareness.

And at the same time, there are issues like, as you mentioned, with social media that are absolutely escalating this issue with boys and men.

Yes.

So in research studies that I was doing at the time on eating disorders, I would get a lot of calls from men who said, well, I don't have an eating disorder, but I used to.

I used to have, and many of them would say, I used to have anorexia nervosa, and now they're

they would say, I sort of have this other thing where the pendulum kind of swung in the other direction.

I'm still obsessed with food and with calories, except I'm eating food, but I'm obsessed with working out.

So instead of wanting to be lean, I can't get big enough.

I'm worried about losing size.

And many of those men with anorexia said that they were never really seeking to be skinny or thin.

They were seeking to be lean.

which is a little bit different in male body image than typically what you would see with female populations.

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