How do I evaluate myself? The importance of examining overevaluation of muscularity in risk for eating disorder symptoms.

Abstract

Background: The extent to which individuals view, think and feel about their shape and weight in relation to their self-esteem is understood as a risk factor for eating disorders. However, muscularity has yet to be examined as an appearance category that individuals may base their self-esteem on. Thus, this study examined whether evaluating oneself based on muscularity (overevaluation of muscularity) may be relevant to men and women's self-esteem and whether this form of self-evaluation may relate to eating disorder symptoms most prominently in men, who frequently present with muscularity concerns.

Method: Young adults (N = 290; 50.3% cisgender women) were recruited from a Canadian university and completed a modified version of the Shape and Weight Based Self-Esteem Questionnaire and a measure of eating disorder symptoms.

Results: Men endorsed greater overevaluation of muscularity than women, although women endorsed greater overevaluation of shape and weight than men. Despite differences in the forms of appearance on which men and women based their self-esteem, multi-group structural equation models demonstrated that there were no differences in the associations between overevaluation of shape-, weight-, and muscularity and eating disorder symptoms across men and women. However, overevaluation of shape-, weight-, and muscularity were associated with distinct eating disorder symptoms.

Conclusions: Altogether, results provide nuanced information regarding the importance of assessing self-evaluation based on muscularity, alongside shape- and weight, as increased self-evaluation based on these appearance domains may confer risk for eating disorder symptoms.