Between fad diets, the protein-ification of nearly everything and new wearable technology that tracks all kinds of biometrics, it’s easy to get swept up in the health-obsession craze.
Plus, with all of the information online and on social media, it can be hard to know what you need and don’t need when it comes to your health, especially nutrition. There are videos all over social media in which people refer to certain foods as “bad” or containing “fake ingredients,” which only fuel a societal infatuation with “eating healthy.”
While there is nothing wrong with eating a healthy diet — it’s a great way to bolster your well-being — there is a line that healthy eating can cross. Too much of a focus on it can turn into something known as orthorexia, a condition that’s becoming more common in society, and some research says that’s in large part because of pressure from social media.
You won’t find orthorexia in the DSM-5, which is the official handbook for mental health diagnoses, but two dietitians told HuffPost they expect it to become an official diagnosis eventually.
“It’s subclinical disordered eating, so it’s not something that has a clinical diagnosis code, but it’s widely recognized in the disordered eating community,” said Beth Auguste, a maternal wellness dietitian in Philadelphia.
″[Orthorexia] can be generally categorized as a preoccupation with healthy eating and a fixation on the purity of food,” added Auguste.
“It’s an obsession with what someone perceives as the proper way of eating, or the healthy way of eating,” added Beth Heise, a registered dietitian with OnPoint Nutrition.
Since lots of people enjoy eating healthy foods or do so to keep certain health markers like cholesterol and blood sugar in control, it can be hard to know what is just a healthy diet and what is dangerous.
“It’s so hard to spot that even professionals can have trouble spotting it — they kind of question, like, is this person just really healthy, or is [it] bordering on a disorder?” Auguste noted.
Below, Auguste and Heise share the signs that you may be crossing into orthorexia territory and what to do if you’re concerned about your eating habits.
You have extreme food restrictions (that aren’t related to an allergy or suggestion from a doctor).
″[Orthorexia] can show up some of the same ways that anorexia shows up, where it can be restricting — not eating certain food groups, having a lot of anxiety if you are not having full control over the food that you’re eating and the source that it comes from,” Auguste said.
You may find yourself creating rigid rules regarding your food intake, Heise added. Like, maybe you tell yourself you can only eat brown rice and can never make exceptions for white rice.
“It winds up becoming less about healthy eating, which is usually what it starts out as, and more about an unhealthy obsession with food purity or ‘clean eating,’ or ‘proper eating,’” Heise said.
It messes with your social life.
“When it crosses the line is when it starts to interfere with your activities of daily living,” Auguste said.
If your stress about food interferes with your social engagements, like you turn down plans because you aren’t sure of the food situation, it could be cause for concern.
“When it impacts your ability to live socially in the world, comfortably, then it’s a problem that you should address,” Auguste added.
“It winds up being less about the average person concerned about healthy food, and more just really obsessing about it where it’s almost your personality,” Heise said.
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Orthorexia, or a preoccupation with healthy eating, is becoming more common in society.
You spend lots of time analyzing ingredient lists.
It’s normal to check the ingredient lists and nutrition labels on food from time to time, especially if you have an allergy or a specific nutrition goal you’re trying to hit. But, for someone with orthorexia, they may find that they’re “compulsively, all the time, analyzing all the ingredients,” Heise said.
This may turn into hours and hours spent meal planning or researching the nutrition of every ingredient that’s going into your food, she noted.
When you break your food rules, you feel anxious or guilty.
“I think the line comes when you start to feel like you’re thinking about [healthy eating] all the time,” Heise said.
“If you feel like you have anxiety … you’re nervous about eating something … and you feel like that more often than not, then that could be a sign that maybe you’re thinking about it too much,” she said.
The same goes for if you feel guilty after breaking any of your food rules, Heise added.
Auguste added that if your thoughts about food are disrupting your mental health at all, you should consider talking to someone. Auguste also said if it interferes with your physical health, it’s absolutely a red flag.
Here’s what to do if this sounds like you.
With support from either a dietitian or mental health professional, you can determine whether your healthy eating is simply that — or something more.
“It’s really important to talk to somebody like a dietitian who specializes in disordered eating, a therapist who specializes in it, who can help you figure out [if this is a problem for you],” Auguste said.
Dietitians generally take insurance, noted Auguste, and they can help you make sure you’re on the right track with your eating, whether or not you have specific concerns.
“You can definitely recover from orthorexia if you have the right support,” said Heise, “so, as soon as you feel those feelings, address it as early as possible so that it doesn’t turn into something that rules your life.”
Healthy eating is a lifelong process and isn’t meant to be perfect.
When it comes to what you eat, your nutrition needs likely differ from your partner’s, your neighbor’s and your favorite social media influencer’s.
So, don’t put too much stock in social media nutrition trends or what diet a friend is raving about, Heise said.
Instead of obsessing over the latest food trend, focus on realistic goals — “so, not focusing on whether or not a food is clean, but focusing on whether or not you have variety in your meals,” Heise said. “Are you getting a variety of different foods? Are you getting a variety of different nutrients? Because that’s where true nutrition comes in.”
Auguste said it’s important to let go of all-or-nothing thinking when it comes to eating, which includes rules around following one specific diet or a rigid plan to lose weight. “I have so many patients that do that, and then it’s not sustainable to be 100% all of the time,” Auguste added.
Then, when they fall off of the diet, they feel like a failure and give up, she noted. “I feel like that is a downside for somebody with orthorexia, is that you are afraid of letting go of the 100%, and you’re afraid that if you let go, that you fall back into that nothing,” Auguste said.
It’s important to find the middle ground and remind yourself that you don’t have to be perfect, added Auguste. “You can say to yourself, ‘I usually eat healthy.’ You don’t have to say, ‘I always eat healthy,’” she said.
When you use “always” language, you “introduce that concept of failure and judging yourself,” Auguste noted. And it’s perfectly OK, and not a failure, to have that salty snack or sweet treat.
“The more practice you can get of letting yourself find the middle, where you’re not ‘always,’ you’re just ‘usually’ doing something, I think the better,” Auguste said.
As you work on all of this, have compassion for yourself. Society does not make it easy to be forgiving about food choices.
“Eating and healthy eating in general, is just a lifelong journey. It’s not really a set of rules and a one-and-done; it’s something that you engage in throughout your lifetime,” Heise said. Your diet needs may change as you age, as might your food preferences.
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“A few choices here and there that you feel like maybe weren’t as great are not going to make that big of an impact. It’s really more focusing on getting you what you need throughout your life,” Heise said.
If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for support.
