In 2024, information about maintaining physical fitness and healthy diets is more accessible than ever.
People are more aware of the nutrition content of food in general, and most would agree that a societal shift toward health and wellness is a step in the right direction.
However, in the attempt to live in the culture of wellness–to look good, feel good, and live a long, healthy life– a disorder can develop called orthorexia.
Let’s examine this rarely talked about eating disorder, see how it manifests, and talk about what you can do if you suffer from it.
Orthorexia Signs and Symptoms
Orthorexia can be defined as an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.
In orthorexia, every bit of food one consumes must reach a certain level of “purity.” This could mean that the food is known to be “good for you,” be a “superfood,” or have “myriad health benefits.”
Any food that does not meet these qualifications an orthorexic might consider a contaminant to their body and would not consume under any circumstances.
According to National Eating Disorders.org:
“ …people with orthorexia become so fixated on so-called ‘healthy eating’ that they actually damage their own well-being and experience health consequences such as malnutrition and/or impairment of psychosocial functioning.”
Here are the major symptoms:
- Excessive preoccupation with specific ingredients in food.
- Strict adherence to specific diets such as vegan or gluten-free.
- Spending excessive amounts of time weighing or ruminating over meals.
- Avoidance of social situations where it is impossible for them to prepare their own food.
- Deriving no joy or meaning from eating.
- Avoiding communal meals with friends or family members.
- Harsh judgment of other’s meal choices and a feeling of having superior dietary health.
- Being preoccupied with what food will be available at any event.
- Excessive self-punishment and self-condemnation for dietary lapses.
Another major indicator is, in fact, having serious health problems, such as…
- Nutritional deficiencies.
- Osteoporosis.
- Anemia.
- Low body weight relative to height and age.
- Low heart rate (This is also a feature of athleticism and may just be a correlation with orthorexia).
- Amenorrhea and infertility (in women)
Orthorexia is an eating disorder, unlike anorexia or bulimia. The driving factors of those conditions are weight control and the quantity of food being consumed. Orthorexics are primarily concerned with food quality and how it will affect them healthwise.
Orthorexia has also been linked to perfectionism, which makes sense given that the nature of the condition is to maintain a pure, unsullied diet.
Also, studies show that there is no significant difference in orthorexia prevalence between men and women. This is dissimilar to anorexia and bulimia, which have always been heavily skewed toward women. But, orthorexia still requires more peer-reviewed research to make broader conclusions about gender prevalence.
How Is Orthorexia Treated?
The difficulty with treating orthorexia comes from its presentation.
A strong commitment to healthy eating might be met with praise from those who don’t see how extreme it gets, and the orthorexic might consider their symptoms to be “the price you pay” for a healthy lifestyle.
This means that the first step in recovery must be awareness.
Ask yourself the following: Are you at a healthy weight? How much are your dietary needs affecting your life? How healthy do you really feel? How often do you isolate yourself just for the sake of food?
Once an individual admits that they are struggling with orthorexia, there are several interventions available.
- Addressing the Health Issues First: Someone going into treatment for orthorexia may be consulted by a medical doctor or a dietician to alleviate the accrued bodily harm from overly restrictive eating.
- Beliefs: Therapists help sufferers change their beliefs about certain foods and help them realize that a diet does not need to be perfect to reap the benefits of healthy eating.
- OCD Link: Because Orthorexia is linked to anxiety, it can share some similarities with obsessive-compulsive disorder. This means that those in treatment may…
**Undergo Exposure Therapy with foods they have restricted themselves from eating.
**Learn skills like meditation and breathing techniques to cope with food anxiety.
**Work to create a more diverse and nourishing diet by implementing foods they are not comfortable eating.
- Learning and Staying Grounded in Facts: Sufferers may be guided through a process of reinterpreting nutritional facts and identifying misinformation about fad health diets.
Healing from orthorexia means developing a new relationship not just with food but with one’s body and one’s mental well-being. It is about fundamentally changing your idea of what it means to be healthy.
The Mental Component of Orthorexia
The body and mind are not entirely distinct. One is always contributing to the other. So, to heal from Orthorexia, a condition of the mind concerning the body, one should start taking what the body says seriously instead of telling it how it should feel.
This means that instead of relying on fads or flawed ideas about perfect health to inform a diet, those who struggle with orthorexia should learn to listen to the wisdom of their own bodies.
According to Psychology Today:
“One component of a healthy relationship with food is internal regulation — paying attention to biological signals of hunger and satiety and the balance of foods that allow one to feel healthy and full.”
A healthy lifestyle is a good thing, and discipline is required to maintain it. But in trying to reach the impossible standard of perfect health, you are damaging the body you are attempting to perfect. Your diet should work in service of a healthy and optimized life, not be the focal point. Becoming a slave to one’s body can destroy one’s body.
Also, recognize that enjoyment (taste, satisfaction, the ritual of eating with others) should play a role in your eating. Enjoyment will make a diet more sustainable, and beyond that, food is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and that should be taken into consideration!
If you feel like you’re suffering from orthorexia, then reach out and get help. It is available, and with it you can change your relationship with food and get back to the authentic healthy living that includes both body and mind.
