That everyone must have a healthy and balanced diet is mandatory to stay healthy, what we have to avoid is falling into obsession. Nothing taken to the extreme is ever positive. Neither overeat, nor train too much, nor become obsessed with eating well.
Do you know what is orthorexia? It is possible that you suffer and you are not realizing it.
What is orthorexia?
We are facing an eating behavior disorder. It consists of obsessing over eating foods that we consider healthy and we reject all those that we think are not, even if they are. At first, orthorexia can be camouflaged in that we are taking proper behavior in our diet, we may focus on eating only healthy and natural products. The problem is that this can become a serious problem if we take it to the extreme.
No one is free from this disorder, although people who are very demanding of themselves, planned and too controlling about their life tend to suffer it. In general, young people and women are the most affected, since they care much more about their physique. Taking exclusively "healthy" food is because they want to have a good physique. Anorexia and bulimia are other disorders that seek to achieve ideal physical beauty.
Even athletes are another risk group, since they take special care of their diet and adapt it to their training. In the end, they end up consuming the foods they consider suitable to strengthen their muscles or improve their sports performance.
What effects does it have?
Any eating disorder has negative effects on the physical condition of the person who suffers from it, but it also influences their social life.
As the food allowed is reduced, the daily menu is a real odyssey to plan and prepare it in advance. Obviously, an obsession is created by eating alone at home and being afraid to eat at a restaurant or at someone's home.
Comes is considered an authentic social act, it is the moment of gathering of numerous celebrations (birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Christmas, etc …), so the orthorexia will begin to isolate us from social relationships due to the non-living of food …
In the case of sinning, the feeling of guilt weighs too heavily on you and creates great frustration. They are not only obsessed with food, but they also take care of the way it is prepared and the utensils used.
Orthorexics end up rejecting, without realizing it, nutrients that are fundamental for the body's functioning. Disorders such as anemia, lack of vitamins and minerals, weak immune system , malnutrition, osteoporosis can appear … We must eat everything, in its proper measure, but without obsessing about eliminating foods that may contain a high fat content. Since they will also provide us with other essential nutrients for living.
Orthorexia is a serious problem of anguish, but it is also that an orthorexic can go hungry . He prefers that before eating foods that he does not consider healthy.
Characteristic symptoms
Steven Bratman, an American physician, suffered from this disorder and called it orthorexia in the late 1990s. He himself designed a series of questions to quickly "diagnose" whether the patient might be suffering from orthorexia. If the patient answers four or five questions positively, it means that he is beginning to become more obsessed with diet. If you answer yes to all questions, you need to see a doctor.
These are the questions, which we hope will not lead you to an early diagnosis of a disorder.
- Do you spend more than three hours a day thinking about your diet?
- Do you plan your meals several days in advance?
- Do you consider that the nutritional value of a meal is more important than the pleasure it brings?
- Has your quality of life decreased as the quality of your diet increased?
- Have you become stricter with yourself in this time?
- Has your self-esteem improved by eating healthy?
- Have you given up eating foods you liked to eat "good" foods?
- Is your diet a problem when eating out, and does this distance you from your family and friends?
- Do you feel guilty when you skip your regimen?
- Do you feel at peace with yourself and believe that everything is under control when you eat healthy?
