Eating disorders in boys are hard to spot – would you know if your son had one?

He took it as a wake-up call, undertaking therapy and meditation to take back control of his eating. Today, he maintains a healthy weight and enjoys a successful career as a film producer in London. “I’ve got to the stage where I can go out with my girlfriend and eat pizza without thinking twice,” he says.

Others are not so lucky. Henry’s story has parallels with that of Ed Bilbey, the amateur boxer from Derbyshire who died in 2017, moments after winning a fight for which he had trained with a similar intensity. His mother, Michelle, told The Telegraph how he had over-exercised while starving himself to the extent that his shorts would fall off while he was running. 

For a growing number of young men in the UK, this is what modern eating disorders look like. They are often cloaked behind the seemingly healthy pursuit of sporting success and physical excellence. But the cult of perfectionism is driving thousands of young men towards a dangerous obsession with nutrition, exercise and control that, in fact, damages their health and can endanger their lives. 

Thanks to the charity Beat Eating Disorders UK , this week has been designated as Eating Disorder Awareness Week (February 26-March 4). Beat says 1.25 million people are suffering from an eating disorder in the UK. Of those, 25 per cent are thought to be men. Since 2016, hospital admissions of boys and young men with eating disorders have rocketed 128 per cent. They are traditionally thought of as a spectrum of illnesses that afflict young women, but the data shows a much more diverse range of people suffering from eating disorders. 

“We think that there is a huge issue with under-reporting among men who have eating disorders,” says Tom Quinn, director of external affairs at Beat Eating Disorders UK. “We believe this is because it is still perceived as a female condition. There is a stigma that puts men off coming forward for help.”

Jenny Langley’s son Joe was 11 when she first noticed him losing a significant amount of weight. “He went through a growth spurt as many boys do at that age, which left him with an energy deficit – he wasn’t eating enough calories to keep up with the growth of his body,” she says. Soon the extent of Joe’s weight loss became impossible to ignore. “We took him to the GP for various tests and they told us nothing was wrong and made me feel as if I was just a fussing mum.” Jenny says that he seemed to be eating the same amount as he ever did and no less than his siblings or friends. Eventually, he became too weak to attend school or even climb the stairs. Jenny took him to accident and emergency where he was put on a drip and, eventually, diagnosed as anorexic. 

“Joe was a committed sportsman and a talented footballer,” says Jenny. “So he was striving for excellence to be the best football player, the best cross country runner, the best swimmer. And it just tipped over into burnout, basically. 

“He was secretly exercising in his room to an extreme extent. And then he got the obsessive compulsive thoughts that come with starvation. It was terrifying for the whole family. We thought he might die.”

Eventually, Joe recovered after being admitted to residential rehab and undertaking cognitive behavioural therapy. Today, he is in his 30s and has a successful career. Jenny gave up her job as a stockbroker to help him through his rehabilitation and has since become a professional carer and writer on the subject of eating disorders among boys. “As a parent, it’s easy to feel guilty about the role you might have played in your child’s problems,” she says. “But to a large extent, these disorders are down to genetic preconditioning. Joe’s illness had a huge impact on our entire family and my own mental health suffered badly. I now advise parents in similar positions to look after themselves and take time out to rest.”

Jenny says it was difficult to spot the signs of Joe’s disorder in the early stages because he seemed so healthy. “I now realise that he was being increasingly secretive and withdrawn,” she says. “These are the signs that I would advise any parents to look out for. Being picky about food, perhaps exercising every single day and being unable to consider a break. These things can be signals of a deeper problem.” 

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders, men and boys represent 20 per cent of patients presenting with anorexia, 40 per cent of those presenting with bulimia and 50 per cent of those presenting with binge eating disorder. 

“There are no clear distinctions between how men and women experience eating disorders, though there is some evidence to suggest that some men might be more like ly to struggle with over-exercising as part of their eating disorder, for instance, becoming distressed when they can’t go to the gym,” says Quinn. “Others might experience binge eating or purging [making yourself sick].”

Sam Thomas first started to experience “disordered eating patterns” (problematic eating habits that are not severe enough to receive a clinical diagnosis but are often warning signs of potentially bigger problems) when he was at school in the late 1990s. “I experienced severe homophobic bullying throughout my school years and would hide away in the toilets to comfort eat from my lunchbox,” he says.