This is why I don’t eat hot dogs 😉In talking about orthorexia, I hear the same comments over and over again. The thing that seems to confuse people most about the unofficial eating disorder is how one can be so concerned with eating healthy and end up so unhealthy. So, in the interest of public service, here’s my step-by-step guide on how to be as messed up as I was:
Step One – Find Authoritative Sounding Research
For me it started with a sincere desire to “get healthy.” Sadly, I had no idea what that meant. I’d grown up, like many of my peers, on white-bread sandwiches with processed cheese followed by a Little Debbie chaser. Adding peach slices in heavy syrup made it healthy, not to mention rounding out the “orange” theme on my plate. In home-ec class (yeah, they actually had one in my high school and I actually took it) we learned essential skills like how to fold cloth napkins into a bird and how to sew the legs of your drawstring pants together but zilch about nutrition. College was the height of my eating disorder so my menus were entertaining little tidbits like one fun-size package of chewy gobstoppers. Per day. Occasionally I’d mix it up with Lipton rice-n-sauce. I remember one time my roommate brought home a 20-lb box of orchard fresh apples. We ate that entire box in 2 days, so starved for produce we were. Obviously I needed help.
Thankfully in our country nutritive help abounds. I read every book, website and magazine article I could get my hands on. For instance take this little gem about milk: Lose Four Times The Fat And Build Twice the Muscle Drinking Milk!
Step Two – Implement Advice
The study sounds believable. But then, they almost always do – at least to me. My love of research is probably one of my worst orthorexic weaknesses. Even the best study is not infallible, and I know it, but those researchers, they always sound so sure of themselves! And they’re smart! And I’m losing IQ points by the child! So I do what they say. In this case, drink a cup of milk post workout.
Step Three – Find Contradictory Research
If there is anything researchers love more than research (and forwarding arcane insider jokes to each other over their University intranets) it is contradicting other researcher’s research. Nothing grabs headlines like refuting a popular study. In fact I hear Britney was almost bumped from her #1 Google spot by those Women’s Health Initiative people. Okay, not true but it should be. For example, this study: Milk Studies Misleading – Milk Does Not Aid in Weight Loss. This one is particularly good because it manages to refute ALL milk studies at the same time. Genius!
Step Four – Get Confused
Since I trust other people’s knowledge, particularly science-y types, more than my own I am left in a quandary. Milk is da bomb! Milk sucks! Milk chocolate often has no actual milk in it! So what am I to do?
Step Five – Try Logic
By far the worst step. Some people try and cheat past this step by just blindly following a particular diet like South Beach or Atkins or Mariah Carey’s purple bender. Sheep! At this point, I would try and figure out the flaws of each study. Sample sizes? Research institution? Funding source? Duration of test? Longitudinal? Case study? Self report? Were twins involved? Animals? Oijia boards??
Okay, so maybe all milk isn’t bad. If I go up a dollar on the price scale there’s the no-hormone milk. But it’s not organic. Another dollar gets me organic but not from grass-fed cows. Another dollar gets me grass (oh, the joke I could make here about the street value of cow juice compared to MJ these days but I’m too busy being neurotic – excuse me while I continue getting worked up) And then there’s the whole issue of are the cows just finished on grass or actually grass fed their entire lives? And is the grass organic? Another dollar up – now like 12$ a half gallon – gets you organic, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, free-range, unpasteurized, unhomogenized and totally grassed-up cows. But… I can’t afford that!
Besides, cows are the single biggest contributor of methane – a greenhouse gas four times worse than CO2. And cows pollute ground water. And eat up valuable land that could be used to grow food for starving Africans. And cows are named cute things like Bessie and Daisy. Not to mention everyone says that dairy makes you bloat.
Step Six – Make Arbitrary Rule
Once you’re this far down the crazy path you either let your brain explode or you have to decide something. Fine. There’s just too much uncertainty. Milk is out.
Step Seven – Repeat
Now repeat steps one through six for eggs, meat, soy, nuts, seeds, fruits, tubers, leafy vegetables, cheese, bread, sugar, artificial sweeteners, boxed cereals, canned produce, frozen produce, juice, microwave meals, grains, caffeine… ad nauseum.
Which is exactly how I got to the point where all I ate were green veggies, some fruits and nuts. Congratulations – you’re a squirrel!! Welcome to the nut house.
(of course this is so well written as all your posts are…clear and OOOH NOW I GET IT-y) thanks also for baring yourself in the name of educating the masses.
orthorexia is still so unheard of/not talked about which amazes me (the arbitrary rule at the end threw me for a loop as I was surprised youd toss something healthy OUT).
thanks C!
Ah but MizFit, you are surprised because you are reading it through the lens of your own definition of “healthy.” A vegan would read this post and think “Darn straight she threw out milk – about time!”
But yeah, step six’s the bugger.
I have mixed feelings about the label orthorexia, just because I think there are a lot of people who feel threatened by healthy eaters and use the “diagnosis” inappropriately to make themselves feel better about the crap they eat themselves.
But I’m assuming that you really did have a problem if you think you did (and I’m eagerly awaiting the interview and more discussion of this). And this was a great explanation of how one can start down that path.
What keeps me from being orthorectic despite following all seven steps myself?
Well, you can start with an intention to eat healthy all the time, but if you throw in enough laziness and spaciness and failure of will-power, it never becomes too much of an issue.
Seeing that the majority of adults are so unfit, it’s not surprising that they “worry” about this Orthorexia thing! Like a little of it would really be a problem? That said, I did know someone who, I feel, crossed the line, and it was painful for me to watch. She was initially a very fit physician/runner, who began untra-Marathons, and through her intense exercising, lost too much weight, began having spinal fractures from her exercised induced osteoporosis, and generally destroyed herself! I don’t think this is very common, yet knowing someone who went down this horrible path is a difficult memory. I don’t know how it all ended up as she left the area. The human body has amazing recuperative abilities, I hope she eventually regained her sanity. We are always the last to notice. Sorry about the seriousness of this post 🙁
love your writting. when does the interview air?
Very well written. Laying out the whole process like that helps to understand exactly how orthorexia progresses.
The post was so well written that it took me until the title of step 7 to realize that I _shouldn’t_ do these things. D’oh!
As I fly through my RSS in Google Reader I’ve become conditioned to read all lists and instantly start thinking how to apply them.
I had assimilated everything quick enough, and it wasn’t until step 6 that I started to get that little tickle in the back of my mind telling me that something wasn’t quite right.
There’s just something about lists that make them feel authoritative. I wonder how many other ‘truths’ I’ve incorrectly internalized by speed reading lists. *Yikes*
Thanks again for your frank honesty and insight.
Very well written! (And so familiar! The obsessive eating/not eating part, not the great-writer part.)
Like you and tj, I used to think that if it was written by an “authority” and put into a list, it must be true. Amazing, isn’t it? How much of our well-being we put into the hands of other people? People we’ve never met?
But then, I think all those “experts” out there count on that.
The shift from being simply healthy and being an orthorexic is so slight and such a shaky line that I think many supposedly healthy people will be “borderline” orthorexic. To be able to stay on track and not lean too far to one side is a real skill.
I can see this happening and going to the unhealthy extreme that warrants a label.
Most people set healthy rules for themselves and their kids but they are usually ok with the exceptions. For instance I think goldfish crackers are horrible things to give children, but do I freak out if my friend gives them to my child? Naw, I just take comfort knowing that for the most part we don’t eat them.
So, when do you need a label like orthorexia? When your body suffers from the outcome. Like any disorder, it is only a disorder if it affects your quality of life. Otherwise it is just a quirk or lifestyle.
Lovely, well written, and educational as always, Charlotte.
Thanks for sharing a bit about your experiences with orthorexia. I hadn’t heard of it until very recently. I suppose anything taken to the extreme could potentially be problematic.
I was somewhat like that during my teenage years, I’m over it now. I try to eat mostly healthy, but life is too short to live without bacon!
All kidding aside, I gave up cigarettes, not yet MJ, and I do drink organic grass-fed milk, and it’s about $4 for a quart. Every once in a while, I splurge on the raw stuff, but it’s hard for me to finish before it rots.
Unlike my fruit and veggie only diet of younger days, I eat small amounts of bad stuff, large amounts of good stuff, and don’t worry about it too much.
Interesting. I can see some of those tendencies in myself, but I lack the willpower to impose the restrictions for a long time. Like Sagan said, for those concerned with health, there is a fine line between okay and not so okay.
Step 3? There’s a saying in hard core research that you don’t set out to prove your own hypothesis, you set out to disprove someone else’s hypothesis.
What i thought was a wise woman once told me… “People often trade one addiction for another, healthier addiction.”
Her word “healthier” was relative, but I think it’s true that we have to monitor ourselves if we know the voices exist. By this I mean our tendencies become overly fixated on something.
Reminds me of the movie “A Beautiful Mind” where Russell Crow never gets rid of the voices, but learns to acknowledge them.
Always a joy to read your writing, Charlotte!!
I keep thinking about your post on ED’s where you emphasized, “it’s not about the food.” That’s a common misconception I believe people have about EDs. They think it’s about food, and it’s not. It’s about control, fear, and a whole slew of other emotional/mental/spiritual things. The real issue is what is going on inside the person. You can eat healthy or crappy foods and you’ll still have the ED if you don’t fix what’s in pain inside.
With orthorexia and just being conscious of wanting to be healthy, the key differentiator (to me) is the attitude and the emotions underneath. The food experience should be pleasure and joy knowing that you’re fueling your body with vibrant foods. Because I’m eating healthier, I have a better relationship with food. When the tendencies are driven by fear, then that’s where I see it becoming an un-healthier view of food.
Hmmmm. If I throw out logic, what do I use to make my decisions?
I’m pretty sure the decisions will come very easily — made by raised cortisol levels from stress and sleep deprivation and mild depression. The body already knows it needs serotonin and knows to crave the closest mimics of serotonin. Sugar is the most abundant, cheapest and most convenient drug on the market. Like alcohol in Russia, it’s never more than 50 meters away, and it’s the cheapest thing going, too.
Decisions can also be made by cost. I was a vegetarian from the time I left home and went to college, until I had finally paid off my college loans and — remember the internet boom in 98-99? — was making enough money to finally buy myself meat. Again, letting lack of money make the choice for me… I could return to the top ramen and taco bell (back then, a burrito for 49 cents!!!) diet. For years, I held myself to a budget of about $6 a day for all my food. If you’re not an interesting enough person to want to spend all your money on bling, babes, drugs and a pimp ride and pad, perhaps good food could be a powerful motive to become rich. It actually works that way for me, I’m afraid.
Arthur DeVany was instrumental to me in inspiring my adoption of the paleo diet: http://www.arthurdevany.com/ I think you’ll enjoy reading what he has to say, and he may even challenge you on unrelated topics. 🙂
Kirez – you consistently make the most interesting and well-written comments! Excellent point about life forcing the change. And yes, I am familiar with Art’s site. I am an infrequent commenter but a fairly regular visitor. I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a Primal Experiment but I just can’t get over the meat issue… if only it were just about the cost for me:)
I can really sympathize with the endless cycle of the disorder. I’m a recovering anorexic, and also painstakingly evaluated (and, yes, i admit, often still do evaluate) every aspect of my health.
i want to congratulate you for your advances and thank you for being such an incedible inspiration to me. You are the picture of recovery in my eyes.
Keep on inspiring :]
David Sedaris said in one of his books that he was really OCD as a child and that it really bothered everyone around him. When he got older, he started chain-smoking, and he remarked that basically, he just replaced one obsession with another. But because he was no longer taking an hour to walk 2 blocks because he was obsessing about cracks in the sidewalk, no one noticed. In his circle of friends, smoking was ok. It was just something people did.
Similarly, I once heard a sport commentator remark that it seemed that people with too much money always seemed to have addictions to things like porn or drugs or alcohol–he opined "why isn't anyone ever addicted to, like, broccoli?"
I guess what I'm saying is that certain of us who have the Crazy or are otherwise Mentally Interesting latch on to something to obsess about because the Crazy needs an outlet. But until it annoys them or become inconvenient to them, most people don't see that something like a healthy food or fitness obsession as an addiction.
I love your writing and have been reading your site for several hours since I found it. Though I did find it a little terrifying that when I read this post today, I realized I had had THE EXACT SAME CONVERSATION about milk with myself just last night. *sigh*
Wonderful writing to say the least. My best friend of so long was always coffee, coffee, vegetables and salad. “You don’t make friends with salad!” – Homer Simpson.
Saying that though, I was Omnivore and then went Vegan. It hits shaky ground when two other immediate family members are also Vegan, plus friends around you are also abstaining from gluten, oats, soy and palm oil. Then there is the case of one peer who as an avid exerciser, survived only on bananas and still does to this day. It makes you wonder about your own habits, rather than research the benefits vice versa.
Nowadays I have since said goodbye to Veganism (but not the salads or vegetables). My stomach feels the love of many varied foods. But your first paragraph reminds me of what I was fed as a kid… I remember my Mother telling me that yeast extract spread and cheese sandwiches were good for me. So good in fact, that I ate them straight for two weeks. Least to say, it took me years to ever put those things back in my mouth.
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