Detect symptoms of orthorexia, obsession with healthy food & bull; hello healthy

Eating healthy food is one way to adopt a healthy lifestyle. But did you know, if you only want to eat certain foods that are considered healthy, this is usually considered an eating disorder? This disorder is called orthorexia.

In contrast to other eating disorders that limit food in terms of quantity (for example, reducing portions, or not eating at all), people with orthorexia limit food in terms of quality or type of food. Even though it sounds healthy, this can reduce the quality of daily nutritional adequacy and have a negative impact on health.

What is orthorexia?

Orthorexia is an eating disorder relatively recently recognized in recent years, but the term has been introduced since the 90's. This term comes from a combination of the words "anorexia" and "ortho" which means true. People with orthorexia have their own thoughts on creating a perfect diet by eating only foods that are considered healthy, especially vegetables and fruit, and tend to avoid the following types of food:

• Artificial dyes or flavorings
• Pesticides and genetic engineering
• Contains fat, sugar and salt
• Various animal food ingredients
• Various types of food are considered unhealthy

Even though in theory it looks healthy, people with orthorexia usually become too restrictive and only eat a very limited variety of foods and are very low in calories, so that in the end, they are not healthy and cannot fulfill adequate nutritional balance.

How to find out if someone has orthorexia

Orthorexia does not have a clinical diagnostic definition like other eating disorders, but it refers more to a person's psychological condition. Some of the symptoms that can be a sign that someone has orthorexia are:

• Excessive obsession to avoid certain types of food for various reasons of health conditions such as allergies, digestive problems, mood disorders, and so on.
• Avoid certain types of food without any clear medical advice.
• Prefer the consumption of supplements and herbal medicines over food.
• Has a list of foods that he thinks are allowed to be consumed, usually the variation is very little or only about 10 foods.
• Too worried for no apparent reason about the way food is served, especially how to clean food.

Just like people with other eating disorders, people with orthorexia will experience a variety of symptoms that hinder their daily activities due to emotional disturbances and panic. Over a long period of time, this can lead to more serious food disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. Orthorexia that is already severe is characterized by the following:

• Feeling guilty if he eats food that he considers unhealthy.
• Spending a long time thinking about what to eat.
• Too worried about what he will eat later.
• Make a plan for what meals he should eat in the next few days.
• Feeling special satisfaction from eating food that he deems healthy.
• Maintain a distance from friends and family who do not have the same understanding of healthy eating.
• Do not want to eat food served by other people.
• Experiencing depression and mood swing the result of thinking about food.

What is the impact of orthorexia if left untreated?

Due to the limited type of food, people with orthorexia can experience a variety of malnutrition conditions, as experienced by people with bulimia and anorexia. Lack of iron, calcium, and chronic lack of energy are types of malnutrition that are often experienced by someone with eating disorders such as orthorexia. The more serious health effects are problems for heart health and osteoporosis.

How to recover orthorexia?

Recovery efforts can be made more difficult if the person with orthorexia still has the belief that the diet he is consuming is the best diet for health. To overcome this psychological problem, identify what factors cause a person to have thoughts of limiting food types. Providing an understanding of a healthy lifestyle and adequate nutrition for a healthy life is the most important in encouraging people with orthorexia to recover.

In terms of nutritional status, achieving and maintaining an ideal body weight are the main steps that can be taken to restore nutritional balance, followed by a gradual diet plan. Recovery needs to be done gradually in order to become more effective and minimize rejection by people with orthorexia.