One tenet of treating both disorders includes eating the right amount of healthy food. So how can the answer to two eating disorders be the cause of another?
The newest eating disorder, orthorexia, is an obsession with eating only healthy or “clean” food, and there are no restrictions on calories. Doesn’t exactly sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it is.
The Basics on Orthorexia
Orthorexia is not currently classified as an eating disorder by the American Psychiatric Association in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (commonly referred to as the DSM-5) which is the authority. However, orthorexia works under the same principles as other disordered eating.
Initially, someone focuses on eating healthy, be it by cutting down on fat, sugar, and salt or by shopping in the organic section of the supermarket. Many orthorexics are vegans or consume a raw diet (eating nothing heated to more than 104 degrees).
Neither veganism nor raw foodism is the cause of orthorexia; they are just the labels applied to certain dietary restrictions that tend also to occur in orthorexia. An orthorexic doesn’t have to be vegan or raw, he or she might eat meat.
With orthorexia, it’s not the habits – it’s the mindset. The difference being, an orthorexic’s interest in sourcing local meat or not eating meals with cooked food becomes such a focus of his or her life that other things suffer as a result. Being discerning about where your food comes from is not orthorexia. Missing important family events or skipping meals because she or he didn’t prepare them him/herself are examples of too much of a good thing.
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.
One person who has revealed her personal journey through orthorexia is Jordan Younger, a popular blogger called the Blonde Vegan. She initially started paring down her diet because she had stomach issues.
She found that veganism helped with these (not eating foods that originate from animals). After practicing veganism for some time and gathering a large online following, she moved across the country away from her family and started doing juice cleanses.
Eventually, she was on a cleanse for the majority of each week, and she found she couldn’t digest solid foods very well anymore, which started a cyclical pattern of off-and-on cleansing (mostly on). She found herself obsessing over what she would eat each day and stayed up nights, anxiety-filled, mostly about her diet.
She wasn’t sleeping, she was stressed out, she lost so much weight that she did not feel strong in any respect. Finally, she got some help and now lives a “label-free” life where she “listens to her body” to determine her eating patterns.
Younger is just one example of how orthorexia can spiral out of control. The insidiousness of this problem is that on the outside, it feels as though you are doing what is best for your body.
The Journal of Eating Disorders (JED) lists these signs that to consider if you think you or someone you know may be suffering from orthorexia.
- Spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about food or what to eat: the JED lists three hours as a benchmark
- Feeling a sense of superiority to others and their eating habits
- Feeling bad about yourself if you deviate from the self-imposed diet guidelines
- Making eating healthfully the focus of your life and allowing it to take precedence over other values, like family time or favorite hobbies
Healthy eating blogs, Instagram pages, Pinterest boards, and so on have exploded over the past few years. Now more than ever, it is easier to find recipes and tips on how to nourish your body with healthy food. A study conducted of American undergraduate students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2011 found that about 80 percent had orthorexic tendencies.
Due to the population’s overwhelming interest in food, orthorexia can pass by unnoticed. If you think that a loved one’s interest in healthy eating has devolved into an unhealthy obsession, let him or her know that you care. Because self-esteem is tied to orthorexia, you don’t want to come across as judgmental. Mention that you miss seeing the person and express concern over their health. Let him or her know that you care and if he or she seems receptive, suggest having a nutritionist review his or her diet.