Aim: For overweight women it is not easy to stand in professional life. They are considered as less efficient. If you look at a “typical business woman”, you obviously expect her to be a slim and within limits also attractive person. But is that true? Are women executives more slim than other women? And if yes, how do they achieve this goal? Method: We wanted to find out the answers to these questions by a questionnaire carried out by us and sent by e-mail in 2006 to 300 women in leading positions (top management and middle management) in Germany. The questionnaire contained a mix of open and closed questions. The subject of eight of the 50 questions was nutrition and health. Results: We found an average body mass index in low normal range. The group of underweight women was nearly twice as large as it is in average German female population. Additional questions showed that many of these female executives achieve this goal through restrained eating. Conclusions: A slim and well-styled body shows: I am successful, I am perfect. I am managing my life as successful as my career. In order to keep such a slim body in our affluent society over a long time, eating behaviour permanently must be geared to loose weight or to avoid weight gain. In this context cognitive control of eating behaviour is of prime importance as well as ignoring physiological hunger signals and psychological appetence signals. But such kind of eating behaviour may lead to an impaired eating which is a risk factor for developing an eating disorder.
