You know that one: the woman who prefers to be hungry rather than eating something she deems unhealthy.
Is this your colleague? Your friend? You? The will and conviction may seem admirable, but some experts are now saying that there is an extreme side to such a restrictive diet, which deserves to be considered an eating disorder.
Although anorexia avoids weight loss foods, orthorexia is obsessive discrimination against foods that the patient considers unhealthy to achieve what he believes to be a pure and healthy state. Time a recently brought to light the story of a patient who refused to eat anything that was not certified organic.
Although it is not inherently wrong to choose to follow a certain type of diet or lifestyle, vegan or not, it is putting this choice before one’s own health, paradoxically, the Coalition for Disorders of food recommends adding orthorexia to its diagnostics and statistics. Manual of mental disorders.
Dr. Steven Bratman is said to have coined the term orthorexia in 1997, and he came up with the list of questions below, focusing on the first two, to help determine if a person suffers from this increasingly common disorder:
• Do you care more about the virtue of what you eat than the pleasure you get from it?
• Does your diet isolate you socially?
• Do you spend more than 3 hours a day thinking about healthy food?
• When you eat as you are supposed to, do you feel in total control?
• Are you planning tomorrow’s menu today?
• Has your quality of life decreased as the quality of your diet increased?
• Have you become more strict with yourself?
• Is your self-esteem boosted by healthy eating?
• Do you despise others who don’t eat like you?
• Do you ignore the foods you have already eaten to eat the “right” foods?
• Does your diet prevent you from eating outside of your home, which keeps you away from family and friends?
• Do you feel guilty or disgusted with yourself when you deviate from your diet?
Many doctors are reluctant to consider orthorexia as their own eating disorder because they believe it is a version of anorexia or ultimately leads to anorexia.
but an increasing number of establishments are creating programs specifically tailored to this type of situation, and those who benefit and benefit hope that the DSM will soon include orthorexia as an independent entry.