"Clean Eating": A Note on Orthorexia

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Orthorexia and the problems it poses.

Orthorexia literally means "right eating" and is an eating disorder covering the obsession of eating healthy. Physically speaking, there is nothing wrong with orthorexia, but mentally, it can pose a number of problems. An orthorexic may be of a healthy weight and may eat very healthily, but inside it is eating them up.

The problems that come from orthorexia come from feelings of extreme guilt and failure when the person "slips up" or eats something that is not on their list of acceptable foods. It can also have a large impact on their social life. For example, they may choose to stay at home if their friends are going out to ice cream because they believe ice cream is not an acceptable food to eat even occasionally.


In addition, orthorexia can lead onto other eating disorders with more severe physiological repercussions. The obsession over diet and exercise tends to become more and more extreme and restrictive and consumes more of their life. This is partly how my eating disorder started. I wanted to simply start a "clean eating" plan to help with my Endo. I began to focus on weight loss for other reasons, got further and further into it, and thus an ED was born. I was addicted.

The reason I bring up orthorexia is that it is often overlooked. People don't see it as a problem because, physiologically, orthorexics are rather healthy (naturally, because their eating is perfect). But it is still a huge problem in the ED world that people need to be aware of. Orthorexia causes guilt, suffering, and effects social lives just like any other eating disorder, and thus should not be forgotten.