Can Eating Healthy lead to an Eating Disorder?

We’ve all heard that we should be eating healthy foods as part of our diet. This emphasis on eating healthy has been shown to be good for everything about our bodies including maintaining healthy weight and avoiding all types of medical ailments including certain types of cancers, heart disease, and strokes. While many people simply ignore this advice and continue to eat the unhealthy processed foods that they enjoy the most, some folks adopt a healthy lifestyle that includes eating organic fruits and vegetables and only high quality proteins such as grass fed beef and certain types of fish. These healthy individuals enjoy an overall healthier and disease free life than those with worse diets, but some take their healthy ways just a bit too far.

Because of all the interest in eating healthy and maintaining weight, it seems that a new type of eating disorder has emerged and it is called orthorexia nervosa. Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that is characterized by someone becoming obsessed with eating healthily to the point that they eventually can become unhealthy. These individuals become so obsessed with food that they will only eat certain types of only the highest quality and healthiest foods and if they can’t get them, they oftentimes simply won’t eat at all. In addition, they plan out their days meals and sometimes they do so even weeks in advance by labeling containers with specific measured portions of food to ensure that they never over eat even by 1 calorie.

This obsession causes the sufferer to become very judgmental of what other people eat and they often put down others food choices whether they are in the supermarket, a restaurant, or in their own homes. This leads them to become alienated by others who see their comments as ridiculous because of the obvious obsessive nature of their focus on this supposedly healthy lifestyle. As the condition progresses, it worsens to the point where those who suffer from orthorexia nervosa begin to eventually limit the different types of foods they will eat because of supposedly ill effects from them and they may see one food source, organic carrots for example, as the only kind of food that they will choose to eat at all. While this condition can leave them to be extremely thin and eventually malnourished, it is not to be mistaken for anorexia nervosa which has some similar traits but is certainly a different condition altogether.

While eating healthy and exercising is something that certainly all of us should look to incorporate into our lives, obsessing to the point that our bodies  suffer from emaciation and malnutrition is certainly something that no one should have to endure. It is important to seek treatment from a qualified physician at the first sign that someone is taking what could be a healthy lifestyle and instead turning it into a dangerous eating disorder and food obsession. Orthorexia nervosa is a new but extremely serious eating disorder and should be viewed as such by peers rather than looked down upon as simply the obsessive acts of a crazy and misinformed person.

Tags:eating healthy,orthorexia nervosa

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