Omitting entire food groups can also impair your body’s ability to make the best use of the vitamins and nutrients you do consume. Take fat, for instance. Hydrogenated fats are known to harden arteries and lead to heart problems.

Monounsaturated fats, however, reduce cholesterol and are good for your body. When you cut out an entire food category like fats, as many orthorexics do, your body can suffer. To best absorb the fat soluble nutrients in a salad, your body needs the good fat from something like olive oil or avocado to break those nutrients down.

If the fear of chemicals or processed food is so severe that one spends more time planning and restricting food than living life, this is when orthorexia may be present.

It is about Control

When someone that previously socialized at parties and restaurants begins to skip out on events because they refuse to eat the prepared food, and it makes them uncomfortable: that is a warning sign.

People with orthorexia eventually will only consume food that they have prepared. They want to be sure that what they eat doesn’t have any “bad” ingredients or must have only been raised organically.

If you can’t eat a meal made with love, i.e., a meal prepared for you by family or friends, then this is a sign of an unhealthy relationship with food. Caring more about one meal’s components than a person’s expression of warmth can be considered an unhealthy relationship with food.

Those afflicted with orthorexia can feel isolated from others. Often, they also feel pride in their values, looking down on others who aren’t as disciplined as they are. People who tend toward extremes in other areas of their life are often the same people who gravitate toward extreme eating patterns.