My experience with orthorexia and journey to recovery
Have you heard of orthorexia? Maybe you’re wondering if it’s something you’re struggling with too?
Here I’m sharing my raw and unfiltered journey with orthorexia. I’ll share the tell-tale signs and how my recovery unfolded. I hope you find this helpful and encouraging in your journey too.
So what is orthorexia?
It’s not yet a formally recognised eating disorder, but essentially it’s an unhealthy (and perhaps extreme) focus on eating in a healthy way. Yes eating nutritious food is good for you, but with orthorexia, you obsess about it to the point that it damages your well being.
Whilst I was in it, I didn’t recognise what I had as orthorexia. It’s only now, looking back that I can see it for what it is.
At the time, I just thought I was eating “clean”, and that is was good for my health. I was very very wrong.
My experience with orthorexia
My experience with orthorexia starts in my mid 30s and lasted around 3 years. I had previously been enjoying food freedom after I recovered from bulimia in my early 20s.
Orthorexia crept in soon after I’d had my children. I struggled with my body image and the changes my body went through after pregnancies, alongside the pressure that women receive to “get their bodies back” post pregnancy.
I felt this huge pressure to get back to my pre-baby weight.
But, since I’d suffered from bulimia over a decade previously I knew that I didn’t want to diet again, as that was just a slippery slope to bingeing and purging (a story for another time maybe).
So here I am, wanting to get my body back, but knowing that I would never diet…
But what I didn’t realise is that the path I was about to take would be a diet, but just by another name.
Wellness culture sucked me in.
I fell for everything hook, line and sinker.
I was following several influencers who were saying that we must eat in a certain way for ideal health. This often meant organic, gluten free, dairy free and absolutely no sugar.
These influencers used a lot of pseudoscience to support their ideas and I just fell for it.
Plus as I started on my “clean eating” regime, I started to get so much positive feedback.
You’re so disciplined
How do you eat so healthy?
How do you eat so well?
It was very alluring.
Except that by now my diet was more restrictive than it ever was before, and as time went on, there was less and less I could eat.
And then every few months I would do an extremely restrictive “cleanse” where I’d cut out gluten, dairy, soy, sugar, caffeine and alcohol. All in the name of health.
Except that it wasn’t healthy.
It was messing up my relationship with food.
I was missing social events
My mental health was suffering.
When I went out there was hardly anything I could eat
It was so disordered, but I just didn’t see it!
Eventually I started to have these aha moments where I’d notice my disordered behaviour.
When I started feeling embarrassed going to someone’s house for dinner and sending a long list of foods I couldn’t eat.
I was also starting to notice bingeing behaviour, where I’d binge on 5 sweet potato brownies because they were “healthy”.
And then missing social events – not seeing friends because I was restricting.
It all started to remind me of my extreme dieting behaviour in my teens and 20s and I knew that it was a slippery slope.
Eventually I realised that my old ED had morphed into orthorexia.
Thankfully my recovery was quick once I realised what was happening and I’ll give you some resources at the end that helped…
But what were the signs?
#1 Extremely rigid food rules
My food rules were very rigid. I was always trying to eat perfectly – it had to be organic, it had to be gluten, dairy free, absolutely no processed sugar.
Alongside that, I wasn’t allowed sugar in fruit – so for a while I would only eat berries. Bananas, red apples grapes were out of the question.
I had to stick to these rules or I would feel like I’d failed. So eating out, going to friend’s, going on holiday, these all became very complicated because of my rules.
There was no balance at all. Honestly, I would cry inside when my kids went to a birthday party that they’d come back with stories of the cake and sweets they had eaten.
And yes, I spent several years cooking the kids sugar free birthday cakes. I mean how disgusting!!
#2 Getting overly upset when rules were broken
I would also feel very emotional, distraught and upset if the rules were broken. I remember once crying a French supermarket on holiday because I couldn’t get the organic and gluten free versions of food I wanted.
I had this feeling that I’d failed myself and my family as I didn’t want them to have non-organic food.
And the time when my son was 7 and he told me that he’d had a coca-cola at a birthday party. I was so upset!!
#3 Obsessing over food
I obsessed over food. I would obsess over sugar-free baking, 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.
For goodness I sake I knew the difference between grams of sugar for raisins and mulberries and would only let the kids have mulberries because raisins were too high in sugar.
I was concerned about almost everything that went into my mouth and also what my kids ate. The hours spent worrying and obsessing.
#4 Awkward social events (or avoiding altogether)
I started to avoid social events, and/or re-arrange things so that they weren’t in the months when I was doing a cleanse. Or if I was going out, I would endlessly worry about what I’d eat. Sometimes calling the restaurant ahead to see what they had on the menu that fit my rigid rules. Or I would pour over the menus, claiming allergies so I could work out what GF and DF things I could eat.
Awkward conversations with hosts about things that I couldn’t eat.
#5 Impact on mental health
And overall it was really stressful. The constant worrying and obsessing.Taking up brain space that could otherwise have bene used for more useful things
And finally I want to leave you with this question – is recovery possible?
Yes absolutely it is! I’m here now as a food freedom coach where I teach people to have a healthy and happy relationship with food, without guilt or emotional eating.
That’s a far cry from where I was three years ago.
I recommend three things you can do straight away
Step 1 Reject the idea that health has a certain size or look.
We can still pursue good health, without dieting, or losing weight. Health does not have a look or a certain size.
Step 2 stop following accounts that are diet culture obsessed
What’s your social media feed like, do you read mags, if so what are they? if you see a lot of before and afters, or people speaking negatively about food, or saying that this or that supplement is the elixir of health… even people who say sugar is addictive - total red flags. Unfollow them all, now!
Step 3 Follow people / read books from people who advocate for food & body freedom
I highly recommend following instead people that promote “health at every size”, body positive accounts, accounts that advocate food freedom and those that advocate loving yourself as you are right now.
Here are books I strongly recommend to help you on your journey:
And if you’re ready to let go of food rules, hop onto my (free) food freedom masterclass, details to register are here.