Slim Chance: Weight of the World
If you read fitness magazines, chances are you've seen Owen McKibbin. He is one of the top male models in the country.
"He's what we see as a perfect kind of Mens' Health cover model," says Dave Zinczenko, the editor of Mens' Health, who has handpicked McKibbin for countless covers.
And to maintain his perfect body, McKibbin dedicates countless hours a week to grueling workouts. "I do stuff that normal humans don't like to do; I sprint up stairs 'til my legs are shaking,"he says.
By featuring physiques like McKibbin's, Men's Health has revolutionized the men's magazine business.
Zinczenko says he's responding to a cultural shift: "Whenever we put 'Lose Your Gut,' or 'Build Better Biceps' on the cover, it sells great."
What a lot of guys seem to want is what women have been obsessing over for years - a picture-perfect body.
Owen McKibbin insists he's always careful not to jeopardize his health. But an alarming number of men are taking dangerous shortcuts in their quest for physical perfection. The result: more men are developing eating disorders, like anorexia and bulimia.
Dr. Joseph Donnellan runs the eating disorders clinic at Somerset (N.J.) Medical Center. He says most men can handle the societal pressures to conform to a physical ideal, "but if you have some problems that make you more competitive...problems with self-confidence, you're going to develop an eating disorder."
And Donnellan says he has been treating more men for diseases such as bulimia and anorexia. "It's perceived as a female illness, but it is not," he says.
Rick DiSalvo, a husband and father of two, is one of Donnellan's male patients. He waited years before seeking help for his bulimia. "The urges were there to purge everything that I ate," says Rick.
Slim Chance: At Your Own Risk - In 1998, 31-year-old software specialist and single mother Margo Ellis weighed well over 200 pounds. "Once I started having children is when the weight happened, is when it came - my last child was the worst one. It just stuck to me like glue," she says.
Slim Chance: Beauties' Ugly Secret - With long blond hair, blue-eyes and voluptuous bodies, the Barbi Twins became an overnight sensation in the early 1990s. Sia and Shane were featured in racy swimsuit calendars and graced the cover of two issues of Playboy magazine.
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