Eating Disorders in South Asian Women: How They Present Differently than in Western Populations
Eating disorders affect people across cultures, genders, and ages. Yet for South Asian women, eating disorders often look different than what is commonly portrayed in Western research and media. Cultural expectations, family dynamics, religious practices, and migration stressors can shape how symptoms develop, how distress is expressed, and whether support is ever sought.
Understanding these differences is essential for accurate assessment, compassionate care, and effective treatment.
Eating Disorders Are Often Missed in South Asian Women
Eating disorders have historically been framed as a Western issue associated with thinness, dieting culture, and individual body dissatisfaction. This narrow lens has contributed to underdiagnosis and delayed treatment for South Asian women.
Research shows that eating disorders do exist at meaningful rates within South Asian communities, but they may present in ways that are less recognizable to clinicians trained primarily in Western models. Symptoms may be internalized, rationalized through cultural norms, or hidden due to stigma and shame.
How Cultural Pressures Shape Disordered Eating
Body Image Is About More Than Thinness
In Western populations, eating disorders are often linked to the pursuit of thinness. For many South Asian women, body image concerns are broader and more layered. They may include:
Weight and body shape
Skin colour and colourism
Facial features and grooming expectations
Perceived marriageability
Family reputation and honour
These overlapping pressures can create chronic body surveillance and self-criticism that fuels disordered eating behaviours, even when weight loss is not the primary goal.
Family and Community Commentary Plays a Major Role
Comments about weight, appearance, or eating habits are often normalized within South Asian families. While these remarks may be framed as concern or care, repeated scrutiny can significantly impact self-esteem and eating patterns.
Unlike Western contexts where eating is often individualized, food within South Asian cultures is deeply relational. This can make it harder to set boundaries around eating or recognize when behaviour becomes harmful.
Cultural Practices Can Mask Eating Disorders
Certain culturally normative practices may unintentionally obscure eating disorder symptoms.
Religious fasting may conceal restrictive behaviours.
Food refusal may be misinterpreted as discipline, modesty, or obedience.
Over-exercise may be praised as self-control rather than flagged as a concern.
As a result, distress may go unnoticed until symptoms become severe.
Mental Health Stigma Delays Help-Seeking
South Asian women face higher barriers to accessing care for eating disorders due to:
Stigma around mental health
Fear of community judgment
Concern about confidentiality
Beliefs that emotional distress should be endured privately
Limited culturally responsive services
Many South Asian women seek help only once physical symptoms become impossible to ignore, which can complicate recovery.
Living Between Cultures Can Increase Risk
For South Asian women living in Western countries, navigating two cultural value systems can intensify vulnerability. Balancing collectivist family expectations with Western ideals of autonomy and appearance can create internal conflict, identity strain, and pressure to control the body as a coping mechanism.
This cultural tension may not be fully captured by standard eating disorder assessments that do not account for migration, acculturation stress, or intergenerational dynamics.
Why Culturally Informed Therapy Matters
Eating disorder treatment that does not consider cultural context risks misunderstanding the client’s experience or missing key drivers of distress. Culturally responsive counselling acknowledges:
The role of family and community
Cultural meanings of food and body
Shame and silence around mental health
The impact of colourism, gender roles, and migration stress
When South Asian women feel understood within their cultural reality, therapy becomes safer, more effective, and more sustainable.
If you are a South Asian woman struggling with food, body image, or control around eating, you are not alone and you are not failing.
Eating disorders are not a personal weakness. They are a response to complex emotional, cultural, and relational pressures.
About Moha and Eating Disorder Counselling
Hi, I’m Moha. I am a trauma-informed therapist who specializes in working with eating disorders and body image. We live in a world that is saturated with messages about what our bodies are supposed to look like. We are told that if we look a certain way, we can finally be “enough”. As someone with lived experience of an eating disorder, I know all too well that it is never just about food; rather it is about wanting to feel loved and safe, wanting to control something in an otherwise chaotic world, or wanting to finally feel like you are enough.
Before I was a therapist, I volunteered at the Looking Glass Foundation for Eating Disorders. Here, I directly connected with individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and sexual orientations, and learned that while our journeys may look different, our core struggles remain the need. We all want to feel seen and secure. Whether you’re wanting to make peace with food, finally giving up on dieting, or learning to accept yourself as you are, I promise to take this path together with you. From someone who has been there, recovery is possible.
I also acknowledge that we live in a fatphobic world. Intersecting identities and systems of oppression can make it even more challenging to focus on recovery for folks of colour who are in larger bodies. Together, we will equip you with tools to take care of yourself, and continue to live your life to the fullest. I operate from a Health-At-Every-Size, fat-positive, and body-neutral lens.
I offer a free 15-minute consultation to answer any questions about my process and to see if we might be a good fit!
