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Orthorexia
Idle_Moon
Posts: 151 Member
Wiki: Orthorexia nervosa
There's this Dutch video. A woman explains orthorexia and how she suffered from it. It's a - unclassified - eating dissorder where someone is obsessed with eating "healthy". Such as sugar free, gluten free, carb free, etc.
I don't know how to feel about this. Being obsessed about food can be dangerous, allowing yourself to be underfed because you believe it's healthy and becoming anorexic. On the other hand, are people going to use orthorexia as an excuse? People would say that weighting everything I eat and minding the calories and macro's is obsesive behavoir. While people on MyFitnessPal consider it normal.
I also get this feeling that we are trying to classify everything. Do we need to classify it as "orthorexia", or is "eating dissorder" and "obsession" good enough?
There's this Dutch video. A woman explains orthorexia and how she suffered from it. It's a - unclassified - eating dissorder where someone is obsessed with eating "healthy". Such as sugar free, gluten free, carb free, etc.
I don't know how to feel about this. Being obsessed about food can be dangerous, allowing yourself to be underfed because you believe it's healthy and becoming anorexic. On the other hand, are people going to use orthorexia as an excuse? People would say that weighting everything I eat and minding the calories and macro's is obsesive behavoir. While people on MyFitnessPal consider it normal.
I also get this feeling that we are trying to classify everything. Do we need to classify it as "orthorexia", or is "eating dissorder" and "obsession" good enough?
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I think its ok to use these words to express ideas. Its easier to say " I'm a bit orthorexic, I keep giving up food groups to lose weight instead of just logging calories." etc. than trying to explain an eating disorder.There are also different treatments for different eating disorders.3
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Its the mental dysfunction that is being given a name not necessarily the action itself. The medical and psychiatric fields have to name it something.4
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If it interferes with you daily life and social life it can be very damaging. If an obsession prevents you from living a happy life it sure is an issue. If you refuse to eat and actually put your health at risk it is.
Sometimes the brain can take a simple thing and push it off a cliff and take it to a deep obsession. Someone with a sick case of orthorexia may fear social gatherings because of the foods served and start to isolate themselves. Sure I have turned down some occasions because I stressed more about controlling myself than having fun. Is that a healthy state of mind? No, not really but I have a balance. Some people get so focused that they don't find a balance and miss the big picture of really enjoying life vs trying to have the holy grail of health by what they eat. You eat healthy to enjoy a longer healthy life only to not actual enjoy it.8 -
Orthorexia is more when someone becomes so obsessive that they no longer function in daily life. Literally being afraid to go out to eat ever because you can't be 100% sure of whats in it, cutting off friends and family because you don't want to be at a social function that involves food ect. Its more about the obsessiveness of the situation. This is not anorexia because these individuals do actually eat, they are just so obsessed with the ingredients that unless they know exactly they have extreme anxiety. They may be malnourished in the sense that many of them cut out certain things completely and do not replace those nutrients else where. You are correct OP that many of us on MFP log and weigh and track, but I would wager that the majority of us are also just find with the occasional meal out, going to social functions, and including the occasional indulgences in our diet as well. People with Orthorexia are completely incapable of that, and can actually break down from being faced with something like that.12
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Wiki: Orthorexia nervosa
There's this Dutch video. A woman explains orthorexia and how she suffered from it. It's a - unclassified - eating dissorder where someone is obsessed with eating "healthy". Such as sugar free, gluten free, carb free, etc.
I don't know how to feel about this. Being obsessed about food can be dangerous, allowing yourself to be underfed because you believe it's healthy and becoming anorexic. On the other hand, are people going to use orthorexia as an excuse? People would say that weighting everything I eat and minding the calories and macro's is obsesive behavoir. While people on MyFitnessPal consider it normal.
I also get this feeling that we are trying to classify everything. Do we need to classify it as "orthorexia", or is "eating dissorder" and "obsession" good enough?
Yes it is nessary, how do you think doctors can bill the insurance companies without a diagnosis?2 -
Thank you for your posts. You gave me an other view on this subject to understand the problem better. I didn't realise an obsession with food could hold you back in more things than eating.
Is it true that orthorexia is a modern problem, because people are caring more about health, diet and fitness nowadays? Or is that an illusion, because of social media?
@Roxiedawn: A diagnosis is identifying the nature and cause of a problem. This nature and cause don't need to have a certain name. Although it could help gain awarness and do communicate about it if the same problem has a name. But it won't prevent a doctor from doing is work.
However, you could be right about the insurance companies. Maybe they are willing to cover "orthorexia" better than "eating dissorder".0 -
This is an interesting point. Like you said, outside of MFP I think the way many people on here meticulously log could certainly be considered over the top in real life.I don't know how to feel about this. Being obsessed about food can be dangerous, allowing yourself to be underfed because you believe it's healthy and becoming anorexic. On the other hand, are people going to use orthorexia as an excuse? People would say that weighting everything I eat and minding the calories and macro's is obsesive behavoir. While people on MyFitnessPal consider it normal.
And likewise with the example you gave of people going to great lengths to eat healthy, I do agree that's a gray area as well.
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The thing about psychological disorders is that they must cause dysfunction in the persons life. If weighing food and tracking what you eat is not interfering with your life or causing physical harm to your health then it is not an eating disorder; just like if you feel anxious but it does not stop you from doing the things you want to do you do not have an anxiety disorder, or you can have strong emotional changes but not have borderline personality disorder because you are able to control those changes before they impact your functioning. I feel like people tend to not understand this distinction and think that if they have all the symptoms in the DSM that means they have a disorder...but there must be a dysfunction or there is not disorder10
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Yes I agree, from all I've read about mental health, that is generally the threshold. You can be as weird as you like, but are you functional? Able to get on with day to day life and cope with ordinary circumstances? Yes? Then you don't have a disorder.
I do wonder about this need for everything to be specifically diagnosed, and I agree it probably has more to do with insurance company paperwork than medical benefit. There certainly doesn't seem to be the same drive to diagnose here, where funding is not subject to insurance approval. I would say I suffer from anxiety, for example, and I am on medication for it, but I have not been diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder or anything like that - the doctor just noted my symptoms and said I could try this medication to see if it would help.
As for orthorexia, I believe it is a type of OCD (as is anorexia) and since it lacks the immediate danger of death associated with anorexia, and its effects are more similar to regular OCD, I can understand why it doesn't have its own category. If someone needs treated for it, can't they just be diagnosed with OCD?1 -
Identifying and labeling disorders allows doctors and researchers to diagnose with better precision, set up studies, and recommend effective treatments. To suggest that doctors do this for financial gain devalues the treatment that qualified professionals can offer their patients. My BF is a psychiatrist. He certainly isn't getting rich working to identify what is wrong with his patients and trying to find the best treatment.10
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Meh, I think it's much less a concern than the millions of people killing themselves with piles of crap.9
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I think its ok to use these words to express ideas. Its easier to say " I'm a bit orthorexic, I keep giving up food groups to lose weight instead of just logging calories." etc. than trying to explain an eating disorder.There are also different treatments for different eating disorders.
No. Nobody should be using a psychological disorder to describe themselves if it doesn't apply. Nobody is "a bit anorexic", "a bit bulimic", "a bit OCD" or even "a bit bipolar". It's using serious medical conditions in every day language like this that diminishes those things and the impact actually having them has on every day life.
And yes, it is useful to have such diagnoses and conditions being given a name. Aside from countries where insurance applies, it also means treatment can be tailored and appropriate and hopefully more effective.20 -
Orthorexia was the stepping stone to full blown anorexia for my sister. I think it is an important classification. Everyone who excludes foods from their diet is not orthorexic. But the diagnosis can be made when someone's diet becomes obsessive to the point of seriously affecting quality of life. I agree that we live in a diagnosis-heavy society and that not everything needs labels. Nevertheless some people with mental illness find accepting a diagnosis to be an important step in the process of healing.4
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Just to clarify, I wasn't suggesting doctors were wedded to diagnosis for "financial gain", like it's somehow making them rich, but because otherwise the treatment will not be funded and the patient will not be helped. That's a big difference.
Yes, diagnosis is important up to a point, but I'm not convinced that a lot of the ever-more-specific subdivisions of mental health problems are actually beneficial to the patient, nor backed up by our knowledge of the mechanisms behind these problems.
Psychological issues are complex and very varied from patient to patient, and I don't think people always appreciate that diagnostic categories are more a way of categorising symptoms by similarity, rather than defining disorders by the underlying mechanism, as physiological diagnoses usually are.1 -
VintageFeline wrote: »I think its ok to use these words to express ideas. Its easier to say " I'm a bit orthorexic, I keep giving up food groups to lose weight instead of just logging calories." etc. than trying to explain an eating disorder.There are also different treatments for different eating disorders.
No. Nobody should be using a psychological disorder to describe themselves if it doesn't apply. Nobody is "a bit anorexic", "a bit bulimic", "a bit OCD" or even "a bit bipolar". It's using serious medical conditions in every day language like this that diminishes those things and the impact actually having them has on every day life.
And yes, it is useful to have such diagnoses and conditions being given a name. Aside from countries where insurance applies, it also means treatment can be tailored and appropriate and hopefully more effective.
I don't see a problem with phrases like "a bit OCD" etc. I understand when someone says this that they have tendencies they are not happy with but aren't extreme enough to be considered a disorder. I view most mental health issues as being on a spectrum. I have looked up the medical definition of binge eating disorder, for instance, and I don't binge frequently enough to be classified as having BED, but I still consider binging behaviour to be something I have to be mindful of.
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It would be consider EDNOS - eating disorder not otherwise specified if the person meets the criteria for having an eating disorder but isn't bulemic or anorexic. You can't just be "alittle" of an eating disorder.2
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NorthCascades wrote: »
I didn't know it wasn't an actual disorder. I have been on other sites that often speak of this as if it is a real eating disorder and are seeking therapy for it! Thanks for letting us know.
So with that I guess it should just be used to describe tendencies in conversation as was mentioned above, maybe. idk for sure. Thats how I use it and since its not actually an eating disorder then, why not?
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What's wrong with saying you can get a little obsessive about things? Since when did we need to use real or as yet not added to the DSM of real conditions (probably just a matter of time) to describe our behaviours? And this only happens with mental illnesses. And yes I'm more sensitive to it than most but that's because I have a diagnosis and when people use that diagnosis in casual language to describe behaviours on the spectrum of normal it's frankly insulting.9
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@VintageFeline Thank you for saying this. I completely agree.
I remember a neuroscience lecturer explaining how to distinguish a disorder from just problematic behaviour, though she was talking about alcoholism at the time: It's when you go from drinking interfering with your life to life interfering with your drinking.
I think this is too extreme, but the main gist is about right. It's not about a behaviour influencing our choices in small ways which may be a bit obsessive, such as choosing to drink water instead of beer to limit calories, or taking 10 minutes to look up caloric content in a restaurant. Just as major depression is not just about 'being blue' and 'putting a smile on your face' and 'happy pills'.
@Idle_Moon as others have said, specific diagnoses can help in finding/accessing tailored treatments. It can be a negative as well, certainly. As an example, a friend of mine had anorexia, but couldn't be diagnosed because she wasn't underweight (yet, she was losing weight rapidly, but had started out obese) and being underweight is one of the key diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa. That meant she couldn't access the treatments which would have been most likely to help her and because medical professionals saw an EDNOS diagnosis and an obese woman, a few times she actually ended up in treatment which was harmful to her.
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Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »Meh, I think it's much less a concern than the millions of people killing themselves with piles of crap.
Unless you happen to have it.12 -
Suppose someone has all of the behavioral aspects of orthorexia but is actually not doing any physical harm, and only minimal aspects of mental health overall being affected. Is it really orthoexia/an ED?0
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ForecasterJason wrote: »Suppose someone has all of the behavioral aspects of orthorexia but is actually not doing any physical harm, and only minimal aspects of mental health overall being affected. Is it really orthoexia/an ED?
I believe that if it isn't doing physical harm and is not obsessive to the point it adversely affects your day to day life, then it is not "orthorexia". EDs cause serious physical and emotional harm. So if you are passionately interested in eating healthy, and maybe sometimes your friends think you're a pain in the butt about it, but you don't avoid social situations just to avoid temptation or you don't suffer health issues due to a limited diet, then you are just a healthy eater. To be orthorexia it needs to be an "obsession".5 -
I like that explanation.ForecasterJason wrote: »Suppose someone has all of the behavioral aspects of orthorexia but is actually not doing any physical harm, and only minimal aspects of mental health overall being affected. Is it really orthoexia/an ED?
I believe that if it isn't doing physical harm and is not obsessive to the point it adversely affects your day to day life, then it is not "orthorexia". EDs cause serious physical and emotional harm. So if you are passionately interested in eating healthy, and maybe sometimes your friends think you're a pain in the butt about it, but you don't avoid social situations just to avoid temptation or you don't suffer health issues due to a limited diet, then you are just a healthy eater. To be orthorexia it needs to be an "obsession".
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VintageFeline wrote: »What's wrong with saying you can get a little obsessive about things? Since when did we need to use real or as yet not added to the DSM of real conditions (probably just a matter of time) to describe our behaviours? And this only happens with mental illnesses. And yes I'm more sensitive to it than most but that's because I have a diagnosis and when people use that diagnosis in casual language to describe behaviours on the spectrum of normal it's frankly insulting.
Because the DSM doesn't rule language or it's use. Historically is has been politically manipulated and still contains errors and omissions that are constantly challenged.
A diagnosis is not a fixed thing - disorders come in a variety of intensities, flavours and manifestations. If you get upset, and you want to "own" your disorder and render it exclusive from the casual use of language, it is possibly something you need to deal with internally - because the idea that one is going to be able to censure societies use of clinical terms to describe either nascent or observable "normal" behaviour is is probably not the best coping mechanism.
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NorthCascades wrote: »
"Things not in the DSM" hasn't prevented doctors from diagnosis. We have EDNOS classification.
Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.
It is, clinically speaking, one of the most used classifications (over 50% of ED diagnosis in the US) because many ED observed in patients do not fall into the neat classification categories or hit one or more exclusion categories. Or overlap.
NB: "We" is used as society here, not to suggest I am a doctor.2 -
I think it's an excuse to order a Big Mac and large fries and to sit on the couch watching TV for hours. If there really is an obsession, it should be considered OCD. There's no reason to vilify a healthy lifestyle unless you're trying to avoid putting in the work. Yeah, there's an extreme, but what's next? Are we going to label ex-smokers who can't stand to be around cigarette smoke? Former alcoholics who refuse to be in situations that involve alcohol?0
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I think it's an excuse to order a Big Mac and large fries and to sit on the couch watching TV for hours. If there really is an obsession, it should be considered OCD. There's no reason to vilify a healthy lifestyle unless you're trying to avoid putting in the work. Yeah, there's an extreme, but what's next? Are we going to label ex-smokers who can't stand to be around cigarette smoke? Former alcoholics who refuse to be in situations that involve alcohol?
Except OCD is different... By that logic Anorexia Nervosa would be OCD.1 -
I think it's an excuse to order a Big Mac and large fries and to sit on the couch watching TV for hours. If there really is an obsession, it should be considered OCD. There's no reason to vilify a healthy lifestyle unless you're trying to avoid putting in the work. Yeah, there's an extreme, but what's next? Are we going to label ex-smokers who can't stand to be around cigarette smoke? Former alcoholics who refuse to be in situations that involve alcohol?
What's an excuse? There's literally nothing in the diagnosis that would vilify a healthy lifestyle. Obsession is an unhealthy lifestyle. Mental health is just as important.4 -
I would say someone like Freelee is a great example.4
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