New research suggests that even though women claim to be comfortable with the way their bodies look, their brains may disagree.
BYU researchers conducted a study to help people who have eating disorders, 95 percent of whom are women.
As each participant looked at the body images, the researchers were able to look at what is going on in their brains.
"These parts of the brain are involved in vision, seeing and this part is involved in some decision-making," Dr. Mark Allen said.
After gathering MRI images from those patients, they brought in other men and women who said they had no body image problems.
The findings were surprising.
"When we scanned the women, they actually showed that they were very concerned about being overweight or seeing overweight images where the men were not at all," Dr. Diane Spangler, an associate professor of psychology at BYU, said.
Even women who did not suffer from eating disorders still showed some activity in the region of their brain that controls self-reflection.
"It suggests that there's a disconnection between a conscious evaluation of your body image and really what's going on deep down inside psychologically and, now we can see, neurologically," Allen said.
The research published in "Personality and Individual Differences," a psychology journal, suggests that any woman can be at risk for an eating disorders.
"There is so much bombardment of this 'thin ideal' and what your weight should be that it's now showing up in the brains of women, even with women who don't feel like this is a concern for them," Spangler said.
Reseachers say the good news is that through therapy, brain structures can actually be changed, and people can heal.
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