Bulimia nervosa is actually more common than anorexia nervosa. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the lifetime prevalence of bulimia in adults is 1.0%, compared to 0.6% for anorexia. This gap holds across most demographics, though the exact numbers vary depending on the study and diagnostic criteria used.
The reason many people assume the opposite likely comes down to visibility. Anorexia produces dramatic physical changes that are easier to recognize, and it receives outsized media attention relative to its prevalence. But the data consistently shows bulimia affects more people.
How the Numbers Compare
Large-scale studies paint a consistent picture. A systematic review of research from 2000 to 2018 estimated worldwide lifetime prevalence at 1.4% for anorexia and 1.9% for bulimia in women, and 0.2% for anorexia versus 0.6% for bulimia in men. The NIMH figures of 0.6% (anorexia) and 1.0% (bulimia) are more conservative but point in the same direction. No matter which dataset you look at, bulimia comes out ahead.
Both disorders are dwarfed by binge eating disorder, which affects roughly 2.8% of the population over a lifetime, making it the most common eating disorder overall.
One-year prevalence data (how many people have the condition in any given year, rather than at any point in their life) tells a similar story. Among females, 0.32% meet criteria for bulimia in a given year compared to 0.16% for anorexia. Among males, bulimia is less common on a yearly basis (0.05%) than anorexia (0.09%), one of the few demographic slices where anorexia edges ahead.
The Gender and Age Breakdown
Both disorders affect women far more than men, but the gender gap is slightly wider for anorexia. Over a lifetime, anorexia affects 0.8% to 6.3% of women versus just 0.1% to 0.3% of men. Bulimia affects 0.8% to 2.6% of women and 0.1% to 0.2% of men. These wide ranges reflect differences in study methods and populations, but the pattern is stable: women carry the overwhelming majority of diagnoses for both conditions.
Overall, somewhere between 5.5% and 17.9% of young women will experience an eating disorder of some kind by early adulthood, compared to 0.6% to 2.4% of young men.
Among adolescents, both disorders cluster in the 15-to-19 age range, but anorexia tends to start earlier than bulimia. An Australian study tracking teens found that anorexia affected 1.2% of 14-year-olds, rising to 2.9% by age 20. Bulimia started lower at 0.4% among 14-year-olds and climbed to 1.6% by age 20. This earlier onset is one reason anorexia may seem more prominent in clinical settings treating younger patients.
Why the Real Numbers Are Likely Higher
All of these figures are almost certainly undercounts. People with eating disorders tend to deny or conceal their illness and avoid seeking help. Many epidemiological studies rely on hospital records or psychiatric registries, which only capture people who’ve been formally diagnosed, missing the larger number who never see a specialist.
This underreporting problem hits bulimia especially hard. Unlike anorexia, which often produces visible weight loss that prompts concern from family or doctors, bulimia can occur at a normal body weight and stay hidden for years. The average time someone lives with bulimia before getting any treatment is about 53 months, or roughly four and a half years. For anorexia, that figure is closer to 30 months. The longer detection gap for bulimia suggests the true prevalence gap between the two disorders may be even wider than the statistics indicate.
There’s also the question of atypical anorexia, a condition where someone restricts food and loses significant weight but doesn’t meet the traditional low-weight threshold for a full anorexia diagnosis. It falls under a broader category of “other specified” eating disorders and is not counted in standard anorexia prevalence numbers. Even when these broader categories are included, though, bulimia remains more common. Among all people with diagnosed eating disorders, roughly 3% have anorexia, 12% have bulimia, and 47% have binge eating disorder.
These Diagnoses Often Overlap
One complication in counting anorexia and bulimia as separate conditions is that many people experience both over time. Research suggests 20% to 50% of people initially diagnosed with anorexia will eventually develop bulimia. In one study tracking women over seven years, more than half shifted between anorexia subtypes, and a third crossed over into bulimia (though many later relapsed back into anorexia).
This crossover is common enough that some researchers question whether the two disorders are truly distinct or better understood as different phases of a shared condition. A person counted in anorexia statistics at one point in their life may appear in bulimia statistics a few years later. This fluidity means the boundaries between the two are blurrier than the neat prevalence numbers suggest.
Anorexia Is Rarer but More Deadly
Though bulimia is more common, anorexia carries a substantially higher mortality risk. People with a lifetime history of anorexia die at roughly 4.4 times the expected rate for their age, compared to about 2.3 times for those with bulimia alone. In one long-term study, 7.5% of women with anorexia had died over the follow-up period, versus 3.3% of women with bulimia.
The risk is not evenly distributed over time. Premature death among women with anorexia peaked in the first 10 years after diagnosis, when the mortality rate reached 7.7 times the expected level. And the longer the illness persisted, the worse the outlook: women who had been ill for more than 15 years died at 6.6 times the expected rate, compared to 3.2 times for those ill for fewer than 15 years.
This higher mortality is one reason anorexia receives disproportionate clinical and media attention relative to how many people it affects. It is the deadliest psychiatric disorder. But in terms of how many lives it touches overall, bulimia affects more people, takes longer to detect, and remains the more common of the two conditions by a meaningful margin.