Orthorexia & You

(Nathan Toben) #1

or·tho·rex·i·a

ˌôrTHəˈreksēə/

noun

  1. an obsession with eating foods that one considers healthy.
  • a medical condition in which the sufferer systematically avoids specific foods in the belief that they are harmful.

noun: orthorexia nervosa

DISCLAIMER: potentially triggering discussion of eating disorders follow.

How has a ketogenic lifestyle increased or decreased your orthorexia?

For me, it has gone both ways. I am more acutely aware of the foods I choose and their metabolic impact on my body. On the other hand, I have experienced a “loosening up” of my mind over food and a relinquishing of trying to micro-manage macros and weight.

Let’s get real, y’all.

(Raj Seth) #2

I guess I am fully Orthorexia Nervosa-cious
I have a Supreme, almost irrational fear of carbohydrate based foods, and am obsessed with eating healthy Bacon, hamburger, dark chicken with skins, etc…
:rofl::rofl::rofl:

#3

Cool question - I was actually going to post a similar reply on your intuitive eating thread but it fits pretty well here also.

I don’t believe I’d have qualified as orthorexic but as I was vegetarian & quite athletic I paid very close attention to my diet & did ‘all the right things’. Still developed pre-diabetes. Of course now I know the science better (both diet & exercise) I feel that if I get the basics right then I can just trust my body to do it’s thing. So far any blood panels I’ve had have proved this course to be correct. Having recently returned to eating meat I have my moments of “what if this isn’t good for me” but I’m getting past that.

(Heather ) #4

Truthfully, on all other diets I have been on, I had an irrational fear of eating something "unhealthy " because it would hinder my process and goal. I totally deprived myself. Since starting keto, something in me “clicked”, and I no longer have a fear that the milkshake I enjoyed with my nephew and niece will suddenly terminate my progress, and throw my entire life into a tailspin (prior, it really was that dramatic).

(Katie) #5

Still strong, just the fear of carbohydrates (and now anything non-carnivore, now that I am trying carnivore) instead of the fear of fats that I had when I was low-fat. Keto has not helped me in this respect.

(Bacon for the Win) #6

I feel this term was coined by the “everything in moderation” crowd who cannot admit it just does not work. Therefore it must be a condition that we can code for, charge for, and generally make people feel bad about themselves.

#7

While it may not fit the strict definition of an eating disorder & while it may well be (I believe it is) overdiagnosed/used as a form of mockery by some there are those who will take ‘healthy’ eating to the nth degree & cause themselves harm in the process.

(Bacon for the Win) #8

Then by definition it can’t be “healthy eating” if it is causing them harm.

(Nathan Toben) #9

that’s a good point @NelleG. I see this discussion has the potential to maybe veer away from being useful to people who want to share honestly and move towards a battle of semantics.

Generally speaking, i think there is a consensus that preoccupation with food, whether it is perceived as healthy or junk, can get in the way of one’s enjoyment of life.

So, insofar as orthorexia is a preoccupation with healthy eating to the extent that it diminishes our capacity to show up in our lives, let’s discuss.

To add a little more from my personal experience, I have found that it takes venom to produce anti-venom. It takes getting through adversity to cultivate grace. And often times what can at first seem like salvation can, when overdone, become a boon.

This is how a ketogenic lifestyle behaves for me in terms of orthorexia. It’s a relatively nuanced take on things but we are a pretty with-it crowd.

An example of this is satiety signals. Even as a little kid I inhaled food. Always ate too fast. So I wrote over my satiety signals for decades. Now, only 9 weeks in, I am watching myself not snack after dinner. Now it’s not always easy. and sometimes i do snack, but on the whole, I am rekindling a healthy connection with my body’s messaging and through this I am less preoccupied by what i eat. Ironically, by being deliberate on the front end with what goes in my mouth, I am more capable of forgetting about food after the fact and freeing up that mental bandwidth for other things.

(Michelle) #10

Yep! :avocado: Avocados - if we don’t have at least two on the counter I start to panic. That’s my non-protein fat that I eat every day for lunch. The fiber keeps me regular and the fat keeps me satiated!

#11

Hence my use of quotation marks. People think they’re eating in a healthy fashion but they’re not.

#12

@Nathan_Toben - Mike Mutzel (https://www.youtube.com/user/highintensityhealth/videos ) did an interview with Dr Tamsin Lewis on treating anorexia with a keto diet that you may find interesting. Obviously anorexia is at one end of a very long spectrum but a lot of what she had to say could easily apply to other types of disordered eating. It’s up there in my all-time top ten list of podcasts - I just found it fascinating.

(Jessika Nilsson) #13

In Sweden have another definition of orthorexia, here it’s the combination of excess training and obsession with eating healthy leading to a damaging state. Ie training too much, eating to little (or just being too obsessive with what you eat) and not letting your body recover enough and/or feeding it what it needs. (Or even just being obsessed with what you deem to be a ‘healthy’ lifestyle)

Ie they want to distinguish between healthy levels of training & diet vs when it becomes detrimental to your health and your obsessive about it.

#14

I didn’t have an orthorexia obsession, just more an orthodoxy related to ethical/spiritual food culture and being vegetarian for 25+ years in a western world that was mostly not.

And, when faced with the sober fact that my functional medicine labs said I had some moderate nutrient deficiencies from all my “healthy veg eating” that didn’t bode well for long term cellular health and required either meat or supplementation from numerous lab produced bottles, I embarked on a journey. It eventually made me a grateful eater of humanely raised meat - and then LCHF/keto: livin’ the BUNLESS LIFE :blush:

It’s very interesting how proper brain nourishment which initiates after the early weeks of keto enhances adaptability and cognition. Especially when also eating liver or supplementing with it (B vitamins). It gives us more ease with variabilities and thus better appreciation for the natural laws of randomness in our schedules and eating.

Anyway, we are so very privileged to be able to discuss food choices in a world that’s having a global food crisis… and where most of humanity is malnourished one way or the others, and having terrible hunger pangs and mental distress around sustinence.

Ketosis and dancing on the keto-cusp has enhanced my nuanced understandings of most everything really. :dancer:t3:

The life-death-life cycle is messy and full of uncertainty - but intermittent fasting and deep nourishment are super stabilizing for daily life. This deeper functionality and embodiment is a grand adventure that is nourishing…my soul! Effortless fasting and savoring my breath has opened up a whole new understanding of ‘clean eating’, that’s for sure.

#15

I have been eating lchf for more than 18 months now with great success with reversing my diabetes and weight loss and I am regularly inspired and informed by you posts slow burn Mary. Thank you.

(Doug) #16

:slightly_smiling_face: Totally agree.

(bulkbiker) #17

Or how about
Orthorexia - “a made up condition because people who eat well and properly to maintain their health have to have something wrong with them because then we can classify another problem that will need “treatment” and maybe medication?”

(Edith) #18

I believe we all have characteristics that would fit various psychoses. Everyone is a little narcissistic, everyone can have attention trouble at times, everyone has their ups and downs, everyone can feel blue. It’s when the characteristic becomes debilitating that it becomes a label. It is possible that one’s desire for healthy eating and/or exercise becomes so extreme that it interferes with one’s health or even becomes dangerous. If that’s the case, it should have a label.

I would say those of us on this forum are not to the extreme of psychosis, but definitely we all have a preoccupation with our food choices. For good reason.

Also, many people on this forum are new to keto. It is very easy to obsess when something is new and getting great results. I have a feeling that many of us start to relax with our keto preoccupation as time goes by.

(Doug) #19

Indeed, Edith, and then some of us don’t get preoccupied enough. :blush: If anybody has a bit of orthorexia they don’t want, I could use a little.

#20

I think it’s inevitable that a forum such as this would attract people already on the eating disorder spectrum - I don’t think keto or proper, healthy eating are an eating disorder. I think keto can be healing for both under & overeaters.