Orthorexia began to be called a separate disease Dr. Stephen Bratman 20 years ago1997 Orthorexia Essay. . In all respects, it is similar to eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia, only the attention of the patient is focused not on losing weight and not on overeating, but on ensuring that all food is as healthy as possible (according to the patient). And this desire to eat only useful products takes a distorted form and does not allow a person to live normally.
How Orthorexia Masks Under Healthy Eating
Everything begins with good intentions: you need to monitor yourself, eat right and generally take care of your health. It’s right and fashionable. Calculate the calorie, BJU. To this all are so accustomed to that it is not necessary to decipher what this abbreviation is.
At first everything is fun and pleasant, because it’s cool to be healthy. Different rituals are being pulled up, a blog is being set up. In the social network, solid healthy breakfasts and even more useful dinners with exactly the protein content, which is required after interval training.
Then it turns out that sometimes you have to eat something unhealthy. It is necessary to fight somehow with these frustrations, and it’s somehow ashamed. Like a diary of a food you conduct, and all researches about a diet are read, and suddenly such confusion – a pizza at restaurant with friends. She’s not from whole-grain flour!
I started taking care of my health. She read a ton of research and decided that carbohydrates are bad, sugar is poison. As a result, I stopped enjoying the taste of food and thought only about how not to gain weight. But when I got to snacks, I could not be stopped.
Quora user about his experience of orthorhysis
When you eat right from and to is a victory. For a month the nose has not smelled flavoring identical to natural. There is pride, because the body is nourished with exceptionally useful products, no preservative has slipped.
No one should know how to suffer because of the fact that yesterday’s cutlet was not a couple, but simply from a frying pan. It’s horrible. It was better not to eat it or go straight to the toilet and put two fingers in your mouth.
Approximately, and look like patients with orthorhysis:
- Afraid to eat something unhealthy, right up to the panic.
- They punish themselves for digression from the diet, they are ashamed of themselves for “wrong” food.
- They can not think of anything, except for the diet, which is getting stricter.
- Diet becomes more important than work, relationships, friendship.
Food begins to control life. The schedule is made in order to eat properly, to meet at a cafe bring their portion in a container, can not sleep because of disturbing thoughts and even fall into a heavy depression.
Why healthy food turns into a nightmare
Why go crazy because of an extra calorie, a violation of the balance of proteins and carbohydrates for a whole gram? About the same time, why do people voluntarily die from exhaustion from anorexia or kill the stomach, having fun with bulimia.
Eating disorders are not about eating and not about a healthy lifestyle. Food is only an object on which a person gets hung up when he can not cope with the real problem.
What kind of problem is this? Everyone has his own answer. These are complexes, and psychological trauma, and various disorders. A healthy diet turns into religious fanaticism for various reasons, which the psychotherapist must deal with.
It seems that these are some kind of indistinct suffering, all because of the fact that someone has nothing to do or problems of these are few. According to some reports, 4.5% of the population in the United States suffer from eating disordersEating disorder is not otherwise specified in the US population. . It’s a lot.
And the fact that we do not have the US here does not mean that there is no danger. Eating disorders reflect fashion. Twenty years ago, anorexia was included with vegetarianismOrthorexia: when healthy eating turns against you. , Today, more bother due to the environmental friendliness of products and harm to health. For example, they refuse from products with gluten, although celiac disease (gluten intolerance) does not suffer.
How to understand that you are already sick
Orthorexia is more dangerous than other eating disorders, because it has an excellent cover. It is clear that excessive leanness (as in anorexia) or a constant overeating is an unhealthy behavior. But how to suspect the problems of a person who does everything for the sake of health? I rather want to admire his will power and envy persistence.
Orthorexia does not have clear diagnostic criteriaOrthorexia: Can Healthy Eating Become Unhealthy? . Check yourself should be on the questionnaire of Stephen BratmanThe Authorized Bratman Orthorexia Self-Test. :
- I devote so much time to choosing and preparing a healthy meal, that it interferes with work, communicate with friends and family, learn.
- If I have to eat unhealthy food, I experience and feel shame and guilt. It’s hard to even watch how other people eat wrong foods.
- My mood, peace and happiness depend on how correctly I eat.
- Sometimes I want to weaken the diet, for example at a festive table, but I can not do it (this point does not apply to people with diseases, because of which one must always keep a strict diet).
- I constantly throw out foods that seem not healthy enough, tighten the diet and come up with complex nutrition rules.
- I eat what I think is right, but I lose weight too much and observe signs of a lack of nutrients: hair falls out, the skin becomes problematic, I feel weak, my menstrual cycle has lost.
If you agreed with at least one statement, it’s time to slow down. Your healthy diet has become an obsession. Think about what you are hiding behind the illusion of proper nutrition, and if you can not understand yourself, consult a therapist.
