Sorry I'm Not Sorry - I gotta rant!

http://www.healthylivingheavylifting.com/the-perils-of-clean-eating/

Thanks for this, great article.

Thanks from me too. The best line from the article:

“Those who have an “unhealthy obsession” with otherwise healthy eating may be suffering from “orthorexia nervosa,” a term which literally means “fixation on righteous eating.”

It's a term invented by a blogger and has nothing medical about it.
It's got humor value but this isn't really something one 'suffers' from.

(well, no more than a lodged rear entrance umbrella)

I may have used the term in past.

I thought the term was credited to a general physician. Not that it matters though.

http://www.wannabebig.com/diet-and-nutrition/the-dirt-on-clean-eating/

All-or-Nothing Dieting & Eating Disorder Risk
In 1997, a general physician named Steven Bratman coined the term orthorexia nervosa [21], which he defines as, “an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy food.” It reminds me of the counterproductive dietary perfectionism I’ve seen among many athletes, trainers, and coaches. One of the fundamental pitfalls of dichotomizing foods as good or bad, or clean or dirty, is that it can form a destructive relationship with food. This isn’t just an empty claim; it’s been seen in research. Smith and colleagues found that flexible dieting was associated with the absence of overeating, lower bodyweight, and the absence of depression and anxiety [22]. They also found that a strict all-or-nothing approach to dieting was associated with overeating and increased bodyweight. Similarly, Stewart and colleagues found that rigid dieting was associated with symptoms of an eating disorder, mood disturbances, and anxiety [23]. Flexible dieting was not highly correlated with these qualities. Although these are observational study designs with self-reported data, anyone who spends enough time among fitness buffs knows that these findings are not off the mark.

[ 21 ] http://www.orthorexia.com/?page=katef

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT!

Gee... I'm now a baked potato. :grumble:

+5000 LMAO

I just wanna be on Team Raccoon. How do I do that?

I must to have this!

+5000 LMAO

I just wanna be on Team Raccoon. How do I do that?

I must to have this!

Not the grammar police, but this one hurt my head!

I'm going to throw my 2 cents in here because, HEY, why not. It will give me something to read when I get back from the gym later.

I'm freaked out by all the chemicals and hormones in our food nowadays. Not in a tin-hatty kind of way, but in a very broad, very general, we eat all this chemical nonsense and we also have all these new diseases, kids these days have loads of allergies, no one knows where the high rates of autism are coming from, etc. I don't KNOW s*hit about what causes anything, and I don't claim to. But our environment is contaminated and I think a lot of our food is too. We use a lot of things in food now that haven't been around long enough to determine if they have adverse health affects. It doesn't make me wildly comfortable.

For that and other reasons I am trying to eat "cleaner." To me that means more fresh fruits and veg, and meat that isn't fed a lot of crap. Luckily, I can afford to that. Also, I tend to feel better and have more energy, have an easier time meeting macros and micros, and have an easier time losing weight.

But I'm also human. I would go insane eating like that all the time. I'm going to get take out maybe once a week. Usually greek or indian yummmmmm. I will buy myself a cupcake once a month. Every few months I cave and have a diet coke. I will eat a burger now and then. Most people are like me, and would go crazy if they had to focus on eating perfectly clean all the time, regardless of what clean meant to them. Restricting yourself to any diet entirely is really really hard and can lead to "unclean" binges.

The way you feed yourself and your family is personal, maybe as personal as religion or lifestyle. For me personally, if I get sick one day, I don't want to look back and wonder if healthier habits could have helped me. Instead, I want to work on my mental and physical health now while I'm young, which to me includes a moderated effort to eat as unprocessed and "clean" as I can, while acknowledging that exceptions are necessary to my mental well being.

OP, you can't force anyone to do anything, especially if you act like your way is the only way.

Do you use air freshener in your house?

Or carpet or wood or plastic?
drive a car?
use a microwave?
cell phone?
contrails?

Not that it matters, but no carpet (the chemicals of newly installed carpet give me a headache, actually a pretty common thing). I don't have a problem with 200 year old hardwood floors. No, I don't drive, I live in the city. I avoid microwaving my food but of course use it sometimes. The cell phone thing freaks me out too, but is necessary for work. I have no idea what the last word even means.

No where in my post did I say that eating how I choose to eat will save the world or totally eliminate toxic things from my life. No where. I very reasonably said it is one step towards a healthy lifestyle, something that is not refuted merely because other unhealthy things exist. Guess what? I can't control them all, but I can control what I put in my body. So why not put in the things that make me feel good and keep me healthy? You'll probably respond "because pop tarts are delicious" or something. Pop tarts are not my thing, I think they're gross. But when I was at work at the jail for ten hours and it was the most filling thing in the vending machine? Sure, I ate a pop tart. This is my point, of course there will be exceptions or I will eat things that are tasty but unhealthy once in a while. But I will still eat healthy to try and be healthier, and there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that.

I'm not a fan of pop tarts.
You fear toxic things in your life that aren't toxic.
There is probably less risk with microwaving your food than with molds from hardwood floors.

What do you think is toxic in a poptart?

I'm sorry, did I say it was "toxic"?? No I absolutely did not. It is processed sugar, some sort of gelatin, etc. In addition to not liking the taste I avoid processed crap, as previously explained. But sometimes, I have processed or unhealthy things because I need to or because I like them.

Microwaving absolutely can cause problems. Why do you think certain materials are not microwave safe? Microwaving various containers releases chemicals, that is well established and is one of the reasons those "BPA free" labels were on everything for a while. DId i say OH GOD NO NO ONE EVER MICROWAVE YOU'LL DIE? No, I said I of course microwave sometimes but I avoid it when reasonable. Guess what? That is completely reasonable.

I don't "fear' things the way you are claiming I do. You are trying to take my very reasonable position and make it unreasonable.

Also unless your floors are pretty terrible they do not have mold when sealed properly. Mine are fantastic, thank you very much.

In addition to your general rabble rousing, you've completely ignored the entire point and spirit of my post. People make PERSONAL health choices about the things in their life that they control. Just as much as I sure as hell would never let you try and shame me about what medications to take, or birth control to use, or how many children to have, or what sort of exercise I enjoy, or how to handle a personal conflict, I WILL NOT, in any way, let you pass judgment on my personal choice to try and eat unprocessed food. I didn't say YOU are WRONG for not doing it. I said that it is a PERSONAL CHOICE and cautioned OP that she can't adopt such an attitude and expect anyone to listen to her. I in NO way implied that there are not other sources of chemicals in the world. Your responses did that. YOU DID. I did not.

If you want to pick this fight, pick one of the people who actually said anything controversial. I explained my personal choice to OP and the reasoning behind it. As I said before, I can control what I put in my body, so I put things in it that make me feel good. And I feel good when I make a reasonable effort to be fairly "clean" as I define it.

My diet is not so great, I do stay in my calories and I am losing weight. BUT, I do see an improvement over my food choices for the most part over the last month. So maybe like me, it is a learning process for them, slow but learning.....

For expample: I cut out the daily egg mcmuffin and am having oatmeal instead. I know this is a better choice for me. I am eating more greens.

What if I need the protein in the egg?

wait.. so if being 'healthy' is different for every person, aren't we all right?

wait.. so if being 'healthy' is different for every person, aren't we all right?

I'm curious if the OP ever came back after the first page...

Glazed?? LIke donuts? Those are healthy right? I mean.....no one can dispute that, right???