Tiny Buddha

Tag: orthorexia

  • Obsessed with Healthy Eating? 9 Things I’ve Learned Since Recovering from Orthorexia

    Obsessed with Healthy Eating? 9 Things I’ve Learned Since Recovering from Orthorexia

    “Sending love to everyone who’s doing their best to heal from things they don’t discuss.” ~Unknown

    I used to obsess over healthy eating, and I mean OB-SESSSSS. I spent virtually every waking moment thinking about food. What should I eat today? Is there too much sugar in that? What will I eat when we go out next week? Should I claim that I’m allergic to gluten?

    Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was suffering from orthorexia (that is, an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating). Yes, I fully agree that eating nutritious food is good for you—there’s few who would deny that—but when you are thinking about food non-stop, something has definitely gone awry.

    It all started innocently enough. My daughter (who’s my youngest) was about a year old, and I was ready to “get back in shape” and reclaim my pre-pregnancy weight. However, since I was against the idea of fad diets, I was looking for something else.

    That “something else” turned out to be wellness culture, and I absorbed it all. I followed several influencers who said we must eat in a certain way for ideal health, which often meant organic, gluten-free, dairy-free, and absolutely no sugar. The influencers also used a lot of pseudoscience to support their ideas, and I totally fell for it.

    With the idea of eating in a certain way for optimum health swirling round my brain, I decided to follow a thirty-day kick-starter healthy eating plan. It was all about focusing on health (and not weight loss). Easy enough, hey?

    There was no counting calories, macros, or weighing food. No points. It was just about eating nutritious, wholesome food and having a protein shake for breakfast. What could be the harm in that?

    Well, it was probably the long list of “not allowed” foods that you cut for thirty days (such as sugar, dairy, gluten, and soy)—essentially an elimination diet. The idea being that after thirty days you reintroduce the foods to help you identify your food intolerances. See? It’s all for health! Or so I thought…

    And, as my “clean eating” regime was underway, I started to get a lot of positive feedback.

    You’re so disciplined! How do you eat so healthy? Wow, you look really well.

    It was alluring.

    This was my slippery slope and the beginning of an unhealthy obsession with food.

    Three years in, my life looked something like this: I claimed a gluten and dairy intolerance and was experimenting with being vegan, all for the sake of my health. Unfortunately, there’s not much food left to eat on this kind of restrictive diet.

    Every few months I would follow an elimination diet (again) and would cut out all sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and soy (alongside the dairy and gluten that I was no longer eating). I started avoiding social events because the list of “safe foods” was getting so complicated; it often seemed easier to stay home.

    All of this in the name of “health.” Except that it wasn’t healthy.

    I was missing social events and avoided spending time with friends, my mental health was suffering, and I was developing an extremely disordered relationship with food.

    While orthorexia isn’t classified as an eating disorder according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, some healthcare professionals believe that it should be. And, personally speaking, my relationship with food was starting to remind me of the time when I’d suffered from an eating disorder back in my twenties.

    I had a series of aha moments that finally woke me up to the fact that my behavior was not at all healthy and my extreme approach to food was doing me more harm than good.

    It was when I started feeling embarrassed going to someone’s house for dinner and sending a long list of foods I couldn’t eat.

    It was when I started to notice bingeing behavior: I’d binge on five sweet potato brownies because they were supposedly “healthy.” I’m sure that if I’d just had access to a chocolate brownie, I might have only eaten one

    It was when I was doing my elimination diet so frequently, I had to make lots of excuses about why I couldn’t join evenings out.

    Eventually I realized that my old eating disorder had morphed into orthorexia.

    Thankfully, I had the resources to make a quick recovery, and my relationship with food has done a full 180 turn… In hindsight I can see clearly how very disordered my thinking, feelings, and behavior were.

    With that in mind, here are nine lessons I learnt from my brush with orthorexia. My hope is that if you question some of your own food behaviors, you seek help before too much damage is done.

    #1 There is no need to restrict food groups from your diet.

    Unless you have a medical reason to do so (like coeliac disease), restricting food groups from your diet is unnecessary. Nope, you don’t need to be carb free; in fact, research shows that in the long term, a low-carb diet is actually bad for you.

    #2 A flexible approach to eating is best.

    You just don’t need overly rigid food rules. My food rules were too rigid, and I tried to eat perfectly all the time. Perfectly to me was organic, gluten-free, dairy-free, and absolutely no processed sugar. Alongside that, I stopped eating fruit because it has sugar in it. So, for a while, the only fruits I would eat were berries. Bananas, red apples, grapes, and tropical fruits were totally out of the question.

    The problem with rigid rules is that all the fun things in life become stressful, like holidays, eating out, and going to a friend’s house, so flexibility is key.

    #3 If you get overly upset when food rules are broken, something’s wrong.

    I felt compelled to stick to my food rules, and I would feel emotional, distraught, and upset if I broke them. Like I had failed. I remember once crying in a French supermarket on holiday because I couldn’t buy the organic and gluten-free versions of food I wanted. It’s kind of missing the point of a holiday, isn’t it?

    #4 Food is NOT just fuel.

    Have you heard the quote “food is fuel”? It’s bandied around everywhere in the wellness and fitness spheres. But food isn’t just fuel. It’s about so much more, and this kind of thinking limits our potential to enjoy food to its fullest potential.

    Food can be comforting; it can be a time to connect with friends and family. It’s nourishing for our bodies, and also nourishing for our souls; it can be nostalgic or related to our culture. A cup of tea and a biscuit can remind you of your granny, while a single meal can take you back to your childhood.

    #5 All foods can fit in a balanced diet.

    Yes, even sweets, chocolate, and pastries. It’s totally unsustainable to cut out “bad” foods for the rest of your life. I’ve also found that you’re more likely to crave these “bad” foods if you tell yourself you can never eat them again. When all foods fit, the ice cream comes off the pedestal and you can keep it in the house without bingeing. It’s a total revelation.

    #6 It’s worse for your health to stress about sugar in food than to actually eat a damn cookie.

    I used to stress about the sugar in food constantly. I would read every food label when shopping; I would calculate grams of sugar in things like raisins; I would only eat a green apple and not a red apple (too much sugar, apparently). Yup, I was one of those mums who cooked gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free cakes for the kids’ birthdays. Yuk! Poor kids.

    I’ve learned the stress of worrying about food is way worse than just eating the food itself. So relax, and enjoy that cookie.

    #7 “Health” is more than just the food we eat.

    Health is not just about what we eat; it’s way more than that. It’s about your genetics and your access to nutritious food and decent healthcare, which means it’s associated with your income level.

    Also, what you consider “healthy” is different to what I consider “healthy.” Maybe my “health” is about being able to run around after my kids without feeling breathless, or improving my flexibility to keep my body feeling supple.

    Your health might be about improving stamina and strength to run a marathon, or about sleeping seven to eight hours a night.

    #8 Social events shouldn’t be awkward.

    Quite the opposite. Social events should be fun, or relaxing and enjoyable. Not fraught and stressful. I had many an awkward conversation with hosts about things that I couldn’t eat.

    I would avoid events when doing my cleanse, or re-arrange things around these months. And if I did venture out, I would endlessly worry about what I’d eat, sometimes calling the restaurant ahead to see what they had on the menu to fit my rigid rules. Or I would claim allergies so I could work out what was gluten-free and dairy-free. #awkward

    And finally, if you are a parent…

    #9 Your kids are watching you.

    You might not say anything to your kids, but they are watching you. They notice what you do, reading those labels, and how you talk about food. They see when you skip the fun meals or cook something separate for yourself. They see when you are down on yourself and your body.

    They are watching. Everything.

    If I’m truly honest, this was the biggest driver for me to heal my relationship with food. The last thing I wanted to do was pass my disordered eating down to my kids.

    Finding food freedom was the best thing that happened to me. I no longer fall to pieces in a restaurant or on holiday. Eating is no longer a stressful experience. I love food for all the things the eating experience gives us—connection, chats, family, and friends. I hope you can too.

  • Disordered Eating: What We Need to Understand and How to Heal

    Disordered Eating: What We Need to Understand and How to Heal

    “Food can distract you from your pain but food cannot take away your pain.” ~Karen Salmansohn

    Long before I was watching The Biggest Loser (a popular weight loss reality TV series) and trying to look like a swimsuit model, I was hiding in my closet eating candy, fiercely addicted to sugar.

    I remember feeling completely out of control over my cravings for all things sweet, and I didn’t know how to stop myself from eating until I felt sick. Food played a bigger role in my life than simply to support the processes in my body that lead to optimal health. To my “child self,” who wasn’t sure the world was a safe and welcoming place, food was a lifeboat.

    No little kid imagines, “Oh, it would be fun to starve myself and see what happens!” Or enjoys waking up in the middle of the night to work out for hours for the reward of being “loved” by those around them. But when faced with adversity in childhood, our number one goal is to survive, and in order to do so, we look for ways to reassure ourselves that we have some element of control.

    I grasped for anything I could to create a sense of agency and stability in my life, but at the cost of disconnecting from my inner wisdom and abandoning the core of who I was created to be. I was trying to survive by becoming less. Less of myself, less visible to the world around me, while at the same time crying out to be seen.

    As you consider your own childhood experiences with food, notice any emotions that come forward. How old were you? What was the backdrop in which these early experiences with food occurred?

    As I reflect on my own food story, I see how my emotional pain and a complicated relationship with food became intertwined. It was one of the only levers I could pull to manage the chaos both in my home and within myself.

    What appeared on the surface as a “fear of food” was in truth a fear of feeling. Feeling meant facing the ache of growing up in a home where strong emotions were suppressed, intuition ignored, and many conversations critical for the healthy maturation process of an adolescent, avoided.

    For example, any discussion around the topic of sexuality and what it meant to embody and express mine, was considered “taboo,” and shameful in the highly religious culture of my upbringing. Therefore, it is no coincidence my disordered eating patterns surfaced in tandem with my body’s transition into puberty.

    The changes in my body, at that time, felt terrifying, and the disordered eating served as an attempt to shut down the process of sexual maturation—a means to avoid the shame of being “sexual.”

    In my rehabilitation process from anorexia, bulimia, and orthorexia I found again and again that behind a binge, purge, or restrictive behavior was often a deep emotional pain I felt ill-equipped to meet and care for in a healing manner.

    Disordered eating was “pain-management.” Albeit not the most effective strategy for coping with distress, but it was the one I knew inside and out.

    The first time I recall recognizing disordered eating as a way to handle emotional turmoil, I was sitting in therapy feeling guarded and hesitant to believe that the healing answers lived anywhere in that room. I didn’t fully understand why I was there, aside from being told it was the “right” thing to do to get professional help.

    The therapist looked at me with concern in her eyes and asked, as if the answer should be simple, “Why are you so afraid of food? Why the eating disorder?”

    Now, I’d been asked that question by many well-meaning, worried adults before, but on this day, I felt an unexpected flood of emotion rise within, and fighting back tears, I replied,

    “I’m not afraid of food. I’m afraid my parents will divorce.”

    The moment the words left my mouth, I realized the question my heart had been desiring for someone to ask all along was: “Why the pain?”

    Think back to your childhood home and the role food played, beyond physical sustenance.

    Was food a reward for good behavior?

    Did food cause fights between your parents (i.e., one parent burns dinner, and the other explodes in anger)?

    Was food used as a way to “regulate” you—help you “calm down,” feel comforted when you were sad, or numb pain?

    When you faced challenges, was food more available than the ears of the adults in your life?

    Did you feel safe in your childhood home to express internal pain?

    Furthermore, if you grew up in an intense emotional climate, and your primary caregivers lacked the level of consciousness, and resources, to support you in learning healthy emotional regulation, food might have been the only “state-changer” (the only thing to take the edge off painful experiences) available. Food was your therapy.

    Emotions ended up being “fed” instead of felt. Eating became a way to cope with the feelings that seemed out of control in your life. Instead of fueling your body with the building blocks required for healing, you ate to numb your pain.

    Hear me when I say, there is no shame if you find yourself here—if you’re still stuck in the cycle of using food to survive your own emotional experience. You’re worthy of self-compassion—to be able to look back at your younger self and appreciate the ways you managed the pain you faced, with the resources you had. Whole-body rehabilitation starts by offering gentleness toward oneself.

    Another critical component of healing is giving yourself permission to have the conversations with yourself that, as a child, you didn’t or couldn’t have with others, but longed to. Doing so aids in establishing a “safe” environment within yourself for healing to flow. Set yourself free to explore any and every question that feels important to you.

    As I mentioned earlier, for me one such conversation was around what it meant to be a sexual being. For you this might mean exploring the confusion you felt when your parents split and the challenges you faced adjusting to new blended family dynamics, the loneliness you experienced as a child because it was hard for you to make friends, or a sense of shame about your family’s socioeconomic status.

    And if it was normal in your family of origin to bury and suppress half of the emotional spectrum, as it was in mine, especially the feelings that are uncomfortable, that require deeper self-inquiry, think about whether this culture aligns with your core values, now.

    What culture do you desire to cultivate for your future self around navigating emotional pain? This is your opportunity to excavate a new tunnel from which to travel from emotional pain to healing, for you and generations after you!

    Right now, you have an opportunity to build trust with yourself by committing to allowing every emotion to be experienced. What is one emotion that you believed as a child was “off limits?” What would change today if you allowed yourself to experience that emotion—to permit its flow through you?

    Listen to the little voice within you, with your heart wide open. Witness yourself. Be the listening ear you longed for when things first got “complicated” with food. Only then can you ask your younger self if they’re ready to entertain some alternative strategies, besides food, to help scary emotions move through the body.

    And when you are ready, here are some of the beautiful practices I have found on my own healing journey, that aid in building a space where the body feels free to release big feelings:

    1. Jin Shin Jyutsu- Finger Holding Practice

    This Japanese healing technique works to calm your energetic body. The practice involves holding each finger for one to three minutes on one hand, then repeating on the other hand. Each finger represents a different emotion:

    Thumb- Worry

    Pointer Finger- Fear

    Middle Finger- Anger

    Ring Finger- Insecurity and grief

    Pinkie- Self-confidence

    2. The 4-7-8 Breath or “Relaxing Breath”

    One benefit of this breath practice is its ability to strengthen “vagal tone.” The Vagus Nerve is the longest group of nerves in the body, running from your brain to your gut, and it is a key component in the activation of your parasympathetic nervous system—the branch of the autonomic nervous system that promotes the resting, digesting, and repairing in the body. Improving vagal tone can play a role in reducing stress and anxiety as well as:

    • Improve digestive health
    • Increase HRV (Heart Rate Variability)
    • And lower levels of inflammation in the body

    3. Walking outside barefoot

    Reconnecting to our roots, putting feet to earth, and absorbing the healing nutrients it has to offer can do a world of healing. When you put your bare feet on the earth, the electrical current coming from the ground contains an abundance of negative ions that are then absorbed by your skin and dispersed throughout the body. These negatively charged ions have been shown in clinical research to promote greater physical and psychological well-being.

    Try one or all of the techniques listed above to reconnect to your emotional body, ground yourself, and release stuck feelings. Notice any shifts you experience as a result.

    The goal is to start to create an environment of safety for your inner child to explore the previously forbidden emotions, without fear of abandonment or shame.

    No different from any other coping strategy, disordered eating can be a means to try to create the safety within that we lacked in our outside world early on in life. But there are other interventions, such as the ones mentioned above, that can offer a sense of safety without harm.

    Recovering from disordered eating comes back to finding healing ways to be there for your emotions, rather than numb them with food restriction, binging, or purging. Because it’s really not about the food at all. It’s about becoming the friend your body longed for in your most painful moments.

    Give your body a safe place to express, let go, and experience, without judgment, the total expanse of feelings that come with being human, and watch your relationship with food transform as a side effect.