Orthorexia is a transition from normal healthy eating to an adverse obsession with eating healthy. This condition is an eating disorder that can cause great harm.
Orthorexia usually starts out as a normal healthy diet routine to obtain several health benefits. However, it may mutate to become a dangerous obsession with strict dieting and food deprivation.
It may be difficult to determine whether or not a person is suffering from Orthorexia. However, this is a 2-stage analysis that can be used to make an accurate diagnosis:
- Obsession with Healthy Eating: At the earliest stage, there’s an obsession with healthy dieting. This obsession is characterized by certain mental and behavioral changes.
They could include:
- Behaviors or thinking patterns that reflect an absurd level of focus on health-benefiting diets.
- Self-imposed anxieties are experienced in people with Orthorexia. Such people feel anxious about their dietary health and may feel unnecessarily ashamed.
- Severe restrictions are an escalated form of normal healthy eating routines. These severe restrictions involve starving oneself of food at a dangerous level.
- Life Disturbing Behavior: At this second stage things begin to get worse, and the Orthorexia is more visible in the person’s life. Normal daily activities would be affected and even impeded sometimes.
- Medical issues like excessive weight loss can be experienced
- The affected individual suffers from a lifestyle disruption. Regular daily activities are impeded.
- The individual becomes emotionally dependent.
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