Symptoms of orthorexia

Symptoms of orthorexia

It is not easy to recognize an orthorexic person although the unhealthy desire to eat a healthy diet is at the heart of its concerns.

The signs of orthorexia are similar to:

  • Follow binding dietary rules to minimize your intake of salt, sugar and fat;
  • Classify foods by categories: “good / healthy” or “bad / unhealthy”;
  • Be obsessed with the qualitative aspect food. An orthorexic person may even go so far as to foresee relief meal if she does not eat at home;
  • To regard food as a medicine to the detriment of taste or pleasure. Oily or sweet dishes are considered poison;
  • Spend several hours a day thinking about how to optimize your diet;
  • Abuse of food supplements;
  • Decipher food labels looking especially at additives, preservatives and colorants. Logically, an orthorexic person relies on foods of organic origin without pesticides;
  • View this obsession become quasi spiritual. A person suffering from orthorexia thinks to preserve his health and his bodily purity by feeding ideally;
  • Do a lot of research to find the ideal diet;
  • Forcing oneself to real ritual : chew food at least 50 times before swallowing them, do not eat vegetables picked for more than a few hours, steam the beans for 12 minutes precisely in order to keep their nutritional value;
  • Hold moralistic and rigid rhetoric about healthy eating.

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