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Stopping Eating Disorders by Going After the 'Thin Ideal'

Eric Stice and the Body Project changes the eating behaviors of young women by getting them writing and thinking about body image.
Eric Stice and the Body Project changes the eating behaviors of young women by getting them writing and thinking about body image.

To prevent eating disorders, attack the ubiquitous "thin ideal," visiting speaker Eric Stice said Thursday.

Stice, a senior research scientist at the Oregon Research Institute, is the lead author of The Body Project, an eating disorders prevention program that targets high school and college students and which has resulted in a 60 percent reduction in onset of eating disorders after just four hours of programming. In the program, young women critiqued the "thin ideal" in a variety of ways, including writing essays about the costs of pursuing waiflike thinness. By arguing against extreme thinness, the young women changed their own minds, in ways that showed up on brain scans.

"How much women buy into the 'thin ideal' is at the headwaters of a cascade of risk factors," Stice said. "If people participate in exercises where they bash the 'thin ideal,' they persuade themselves out of pursuing this unattainable goal."

Pursuing supermodel bodies is a fantasy that is costing many women their health, Stice said.

"If you look at the cover of Cosmo, nobody looks like that. It's all photo-shopped," he said.

Stice's talk was part of the TPRC Science to Service: Substance Abuse Prevention Seminar Series, sponsored by the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy. The talk coincided with Eating Disorders Awareness Week at Duke.