Orthorexia. Diet Psychology

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Orthorexia

Ortorexia nervosa (orthorexia) was formed into a separate disorder in the late 20th century. Orthorexia indicates an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy foods. The term comes from the Greek Orthos, which means right or right, and is often used in parallel with anorexia nervosa. This term defines an original, genuine eating disorder.

Recently, there has been a persistent tendency in society to elevate "healthy" nutrition and thinness to the pedestal. It has become fashionable. For people with orthorexia, eating healthy foods has become an obsessive, psychological limiting and sometimes physically dangerous disorder associated with, but very different from, anorexia. Often times, orthorexia has elements of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which is also present in anorexia. Some people with orthorexia may actually additionally have anorexia, overtly or covertly (using healthy foods as a socially acceptable way to lose weight). But orthorexia is usually not very similar to typical OCD or typical anorexia. Orthorexia has a desirable, idealistic, spiritual component that allows this disorder to become deeply rooted in a person's personality. Typically, people with orthorexia associate food intake and what they eat with spiritual teachings, spiritual practices, or something similar. It is most often a psychological problem in which nutritional problems become so dominant that other aspects of life suffer from neglect. On rare occasions, though, orthorexia can be a much more serious disorder than it seems, and can even be fatal through malnutrition.

Symptoms

Below are the signs and symptoms of orthorexia. Symptoms can be both physical and emotional and may include the following:

1. Obsession with healthy food, where health, in fact, can be compromised.

2. Eliminate whole food groups from your diet. Narrowing down the spectrum of “acceptable” foods. Obsessing over certain foods.

3. Severe anxiety about how the food is cooked and what quality it is.

4. The enormous amount of time spent on choosing products and preparing food.

5. Feelings of guilt and shame when you cannot adhere to dietary standards.

6. Obsession with avoidance unhealthy »Products.

Very often in communication with people who may fall under the description of orthorexia, we will hear the word diet. Your interviewee will have a strong belief that their diet is healthy. The arguments that will be given to you as arguments supporting this belief will be extremely difficult to dispute due to the strong faith and obsession of a person with this way of eating. Still, a diet cannot be consistent in a healthy form, and a healthy diet does not in any way exclude all variety of foods from your diet.

For clarity, it is worth bringing a small questionnaire that will help you navigate the diagnosis of this insidious disorder. Consider the following questions. The more questions you answered “yes”, the more likely you are dealing with orthorexia, but you should definitely entrust the diagnosis to a professional psychotherapist and not jump to conclusions.

1. Do you want that from time to time you could just eat and not worry about the quality of food?

2. Do you want to be able to spend less time eating (choosing foods and preparing meals) and spending more time on other activities that interest you?

3. Do you feel that you are unable to eat food prepared by someone else, and do you try to control the cooking when other people cook?

4. Are you constantly looking for ways to test whether foods are healthy or unhealthy for you?

5. Are you relieved that you are strictly following your ideal diet?

6. Do you have feelings of guilt or self-loathing when you deviate from your diet?

7. Do you feel in control when you are on the "right" diet?

8. Do you have a sense of superiority over others in terms of nutrition and wonder how others can eat the foods they eat?

Treatment

In the treatment of orthorexia (like anorexia), the method of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy (CBT) has become widespread. There are good results in combination of CBT with mindfulness techniques and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) techniques. CBT helps you focus on which triggers (triggering disorder) that contribute to orthorexia are causing you to suffer. Sometimes it can be memories of some situation in the past, and sometimes it can be some kind of thought process. The central axis of assistance in the CBT method will be the processing of thought processes and the stabilization of the physical condition, the identification of destructive rules of life and deep beliefs, which will conceal the cause of the disorder. An important branch of therapy will be educational therapy, in which it will be important to understand what a healthy diet and proper nutrition really are. It is possible to connect a nutritionist to this process. And in the end, it will be important to achieve a full understanding that our psychological state, our happiness and our well-being should not completely depend on what and how we eat.