Healthy eating is in vogue now – and that's great. The fashion for cigarettes, alcohol and promiscuity, fortunately, has been left behind. However, even such an extremely useful thing as health food can get out of control and stick a knife in the back of a person's health. This knife – orthorexia.
Orthorexia – what is it and what is it eaten with?
The term orthorexia was coined back in 1997 by Dr. Steven Bratman and is used to refer to a mental disorder characterized by an unhealthy restriction on eating insufficiently clean, healthy, or wholesome foods.
The road to healthy eating psychosis is, of course, paved with only good intentions – striving for a healthy lifestyle. Over time, this craving for healthy becomes somewhat sharper, while a person begins not only to pay more and more attention to the ingredients of products, their types, the amount of food consumed and the time of its intake, but actually makes this the goal of his life.
List of main symptoms and signs of orthorexia
- permanent menu planning for the next day;
- You think about healthy food for more than three hours a day;
- your quality of life has deteriorated as your diet has improved;
- You have become stricter to yourself;
- Your self-esteem is enhanced by the fact that you eat healthy food;
- You look down on the poor things who poison themselves with unhealthy foods;
- You do not eat foods and dishes that you like in order to eat only healthy food;
- You find it difficult to eat outside the home;
- You feel guilty and self-flagellate if you deviate from your diet;
- You feel like you're in control when you eat right.
People who agreed with 2-3 of the above statements can be categorized as non-orthorexic, with 4-5 – be careful you take healthy eating too seriously. If you recognize yourself in all the statements, most likely you may be at risk of a healthy eating psychosis.
Of course, many people indignantly refute orthorexia as a deviation. What's wrong with a healthy diet, control over yourself and your eating behavior? First, doctors call for a healthy lifestyle, and then they diagnose psychosis against this background! For many this causes cognitive dissonance.
However, it should be understood that orthorexia, according to psychologists, is associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it is a separate disorder. She is the embodiment of one of the fears of our society, against which there is a growing obsession with the idea that our bodies should look a certain way. This obsession takes the form of a healthy lifestyle.
Some psychologists draw a parallel between orthorexia and anorexia, since both of these disorders are built around the restriction of food intake. Orthorexics, unlike anorexics, eat, but they limit themselves to only certain foods, justifying their obsession with the desire to eat right.
Psychological Causes of Healthy Eating Psychosis
Many people go on diets at some point, eat right, without suffering from the psychosis of healthy eating. So why does orthorexia develop?
According to experts, orthorexia occurs as a result of predisposition and external influences. If a person tends to take everything to extremes and has low self-esteem, and a healthy diet in society – this is right and good, sooner or later he is faced with the problem under discussion.
Other risk factors, according to psychologists, are obsessiveness and compulsiveness, false dichotomy and harm avoidance.
For some reason, people often think that obesity – it is a problem associated with a lack of willpower. Therefore, people with obesity are often considered psychologically limited (which, of course, is wrong). Therefore, often people who limit themselves in one or another food (i.e. control their eating behavior) consider themselves to be more developed psychologically.
What is the danger of orthorexia?
What can be wrong with a healthy diet? There is nothing wrong with a healthy diet. However, it is necessary to understand that in the conditions of an overabundance of information and an exponentially growing number of "specialists" who are simply teeming with the Internet, it is very difficult to find a grain of truth that will become the basis of truly proper nutrition, and not self-deception.
It must be understood that the task of the marketing machine is to sell, mainly, consumer products. And not always these products are right for you.
We are so obsessed with getting the perfect body and the best possible health that we tend to gobble up anything labeled "healthy".
Therefore, if you really strive for proper nutrition, remember that all people are individual, each organism needs certain products to a greater or lesser extent. That is why nutritionists constantly warn that not all diets are equally good, effective and safe. An individual approach, selected by a qualified specialist – the only way to health – both physical and mental!
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