Orthorexia: Obsessed With Eating Healthy? #TalkTuesday

Hey guys! For this week's #TalkTuesday video, I wanted to talk about something I have dealt with... and that is Orthorexia Nervosa, the obsession with healthful eating.

Orthorexia used to not be recognized as an actual eating disorder, but now it is. Instead of being obsessed with "restricting" or "limiting the amount of food" the person struggling obsesses with the "quality", "cleaness", or "type" of food they eat.

For me, when I decided to recover from my restricted eating disorder, I wanted to do it the "healthy" way. Gaining weight with healthy foods seems like a good idea, but I became of obsessed with health and nutrition. I shifted my obsessive mindset from controlling the amount of food to controlling the healthiness of my food.

In this video I refer to a book that really helped me overcome my Orthorexia, and that is the book Health Food Junkies: Overcoming the Obsession With Healthful Eating. The author, Steven Bratman, actually coined the term "Orthorexia Nervosa" after he had struggled with it himself and seen it in his patients. I recommend this book to anyone who thinks they might have an unhealthy relationship with food, or eating healthy. In the book he asks several questions that indicate if you're dealing with Orthorexia, and I go over them all in this video. :)

A Re-Cap Of Questions Asked In The Video:

1. Do you care more about the virtue of what you eat rather than the pleasure you recieve from eating it?
2. Have you found that as the quality of your diet has increased, the quality of your life has correspondingly diminished?
3. Are you getting stricter with yourself?
4. Do you sacrifice experiences you once enjoyed to eat the food you believe is "right"?
5. Do you feel an increased sense of self esteem when you eat healthy food and superioty to others who don't?
6. Do you feel guilt or self loathing when you stray away from your diet?

I hope you all enjoyed this video, and let me know what other topics you would like me to address! I hope this was helpful and I am here for anyone struggling. Please know that you don't have to have a "perfect" diet to be perfectly healthy. ;)

XoXo,

Stephanie