I recently was out with my friends and for once we were not using food as the social medium for our get together, we were just sitting and talking. However, I noticed that all we seemed to keep talking about was food. But it wasn’t in the good, “oh this was delicious way,” it was “well I cut grains out because they’re pointless” or “I only eat dessert on this day” or “I can’t eat out because the portions are just ridiculous.” As I have said before, I like to be healthy and I like to eat healthy, but this was a step beyond. Looking back over the past year, I have realized how many conversations like this I have had.
Living in a country where obesity is a problem has created so many health trends of which no one can keep track. Every day, there are new articles and research saying eat this, not that; it is overwhelming and sometimes unreliable. The worst part is the way I have seen it consume the lives of females. Yes, we have reached that age where we start filling out a little more and everyone is deathly afraid of “the 15,” but there is a fine line that we must make sure ourselves and our friends aren’t crossing when it comes to healthy eating.
Orthorexia is a disorder defined by the National Eating Disorder Association as “a fixation on righteous eating.” It happens when people become too obsessed with the quality of food that it starts dominating their lives. Exampls of this disorder are if you are constantly looking for ways that food is unhealthy or if you feel in control when you stick to what’s right or if you can’t eat a meal prepared by someone else and enjoy it. I personally have had some of these thoughts since going to and coming home from college, whether it is from being surrounded by people who are more health conscious or because I was afraid of gaining weight. When I was sitting there with my friends, I realized that being so obsessed with healthy eating is no way to live. There is a fine line between eating healthy and orthorexia. Orthorexia leads people to not enjoy going out (think of how many times you have social gatherings with food) and when they stray from their “righteous diet,” it causes self-loathing, anxiety, and guilt. In extreme cases, it leads people to be too restrictive with their diets leading to malnourishment. For me, I sometimes get anxiety over healthy eating and I know it is ridiculous, but for whatever reason it wasn’t until I heard my friends talking and how miserable all the calorie counting and food control sounded that I knew I needed to just relax.
It took my friends telling me one day – just eat the froyo. I ate the froyo and I felt absolutely fine. I love dessert and I will love dessert until the day I die so why restrict myself from something I love? It’s miserable! One of my English teachers in high school told us about how people can live life aiming for longevity, every move is made with health or safety or status in mind, or people can actually live life to live. You can drink, you can smoke pot, you eat a Cheet-o when you want a Cheet-o, and you bet you eat an ice cream sundae when the opportunity presents itself. I don’t want to go through my Christmas dinners having anxiety because of the food that’s in front of me, I want to enjoy every minute of it.
So if you’re reading this and thinking that maybe this applies to you, breathe and then look at your relationship with food. It should be easy; work at your romance relationships, not your food ones. Talk to your friends about it, get it off your chest that you have this obsession because they can reassure you that healthy eating doesn’t have to consume your life. And for all girls, I think we talk about food too much and eating healthy and we can blame that on society, but I challenge you next time you’re out with your friends and it comes up, steer the conversation away. Don’t let it get to the “I’m so fat,” “I’m such a pig,” “God I’m so full” conversation. You never know if it might lead to an obsession or factor into someone’s already established obsession. Eat healthy my friends, but don’t let it take over your life.
For more information on Orthorexia visit this link or this link.
“Don’t forget to love yourself” -Soren Kierkegaard
Side note: For this article, I decided to use pictures of girls who are enjoying life eating, because there is no dainty and proper – girls like to eat and that’s a fact, but it is sad to see that when you Google “happy women eating,” many of the pictures are women eating salad.
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