We’ve all heard of anorexia nervosa — an eating disorder characterized by an intense fear of gaining weight — but did you know there’s an orthorexia nervosa. Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that involves fixation on healthy eating. While healthy eating can lead to major improvements in health and well-being, an obsessive focus on it can actually have severe consequences. Unlike other eating disorders, orthorexia mostly revolves around food quality, not quantity. People who have the disorder have an extreme fixation on the purity of their food. Common symptoms include:
- • Experiencing intense fear of unhealthy foods and avoiding them.
- • A unhealthy preoccupation with nutrition and eating.
- • Being unable to deviate from a specific dietary regimen without feeling extreme anxiety.
- • Obsessively checking ingredient lists and nutrition labels.
- • Cutting out large groups of food, such as gluten, sugar, carbs, fats and animal products.
- • Avoiding social events with foods prepared by other people.
For people with orthorexia, violating the healthy eating “rules” they set for themselves or giving in to cravings for foods they perceive as unhealthy leads to severe emotional distress and a decreased sense of self-worth. The most common sign of orthorexia is an obsession with healthy eating that negatively affects your life. The first step toward overcoming orthorexia is acknowledging that there’s a problem. Treatments include psychotherapy, exposure therapy, behavior modification and restructuring, and meditation and breathing exercises. Finally, education on evidence-based nutrition information may help people living with orthorexia to understand, limit, and eventually eliminate false food beliefs.
