Orthorexia Awareness

This article is all about healthy and effective diets and related subjects but it turns out there is an extreme form of everything, including the desire to be healthy. It seems like everyone I know is increasingly aware of the importance of a healthier diet and exercise, though everyone implements these changes in their own way and most are far from extreme in their lifestyle changes. But Dr. Steven Bratman has discovered a new and dangerous condition in which people pursue health to the dangerous extreme.

Back in 1997, he coined the term orthorexia which is an unhealthy obsession (as in obsessive-compulsive disorder) with what the sufferer considers to be healthy eating. The person may avoid certain foods, like those containing fats, preservatives, animal products, or other ingredients he or she considers unhealthy. What's worse is that if the dietary restrictions are too severe or improperly managed, malnutrition can result, including emaciation, and this has the potential to reach the extremes seen in anorexia nervosa.

Although orthorexia can reach the extremes that anorexia does, the motivation of orthorexia is quite different; an anorexic wants to lose weight, and an orthorexic wants to feel pure, healthy and natural. So what are the signs of an orthorexic?

He or she may present with the following symptoms:

Spending more than 3 hours a day thinking about healthy food
Planning tomorrow's menu today
Being critical of others who don't eat as well
Skipping foods they once enjoyed in order to eat the "right" foods
Feeling guilt when they stray from their "healthy" diet
Feeling in control when they eat the correct diet
Feeling virtuous about what they eat, but not enjoying it much
Experiencing a reduced quality of life or social isolation

So what do you do if you or a person close to you is experiencing these symptoms? Its important to enlist the help of a nutritionist or doctor who specializes in dealing with this type of eating disorder.

Autor: Judy Feder

Judy feder is a health and nutrition specialist. To read more of her articles, visit her online at http://www.judyfeder.com/

Added: July 8, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/

Overcoming Binge Eating - The First Steps to End Binge Eating

Binge eating is something many of us face - yes MANY of us. Whether we binge out of intense physical or emotional cravings depends on the individual, but I wouldn't be surprised if we had all binged once in our life.

For some though binge eating is something that takes over their lives. Binge eating can be a regular, daily occurrence. The number one issue causing binge eating is usually emotional repression. In a society that encourages us to repress, avoid and take our mind off our feelings, it can be hard to allow ourselves to actually feel due to guilt and shame. When you keep avoiding or distracting yourself from feelings it can be even harder to move from this to a life of feeling. Binge eating is just one way people use to repress feelings.

Overcoming binge eating is a task that can seem quite daunting but taking a few steps in the right direction can really help prevent binges for good. I think it is important that before we address the emotional side of bingeing we must make sure that our body is getting all it needs nutritionally and physically. There are many aspects to overcoming binge eating but I feel the first crucial step is to stop dieting.

Although having a healthy diet is a good thing, the word diet has been used to describe deprivation eating. When you think of the word diet I am sure the first thing that comes into your mind is that you have to "give up" foods you like. This mentality around the term dieting is exactly why most diets fail and most people are unsuccessful at losing weight and preventing themselves from binging. One needs to reframe their mind around the word diet in order to be successful in eating better and overcoming cravings.

Thinking of a diet as deprivation will also push you into a panic mode, which can lead you into a binge. I know when I tried diets (or specifically the mainstream diets) I would do ok the first day but by evening I would almost go into a blind panic, as though all food was being taken away from me. This would lead me to a massive binge. This mentality is partly due to the way the word diet is used but also because of my emotional eating. I was going to "deprive" myself of my comfort foods.

As a result I found the best way to eat healthier and to keep cravings at bay was to slowly introduce healthier foods and to nourish my body with the right foods to diminish.

Most diets out there do not nourish your body sufficiently, are not healthy or geared towards the optimum diet for us as a species and leave you feeling deprived. They also do not address emotional and physical cravings either. So you are bound to fail by using these programs or getting wrapped in their use of the word diet.

Your Thinking

The biggest reason for failing at diets is the way we think. We think of food as good and bad and if we eat the bad stuff we feel guilty and ashamed. On top of this we see bad food as something we aren't allowed or that we are missing out on.

What we should be doing instead is viewing those foods we consider bad as something we have CHOSEN not to eat. You have chosen not to eat that food as opposed to not being allowed to have it. You can freely choose again to have it but you are choosing not to for your health and weight loss goals.

We need to also take the food off the pedestal we have firmly placed it on because those junk foods do not love you like you love them do they? They leave you feeling ashamed, guilty, depressed, sluggish and awful.

If you stop seeing foods as good or as bad, start taking power of your choices and saying to others and to yourself that you are CHOOSING to eat this way, you are CHOOSING to not eat certain foods, then you will find you will have much more success in eating healthy and not binging.

They are not forbidden foods, they are just foods you are choosing to no longer eat.

Autor: Kelly Aziz

Kelly Aziz is an expert in the field of nutrition and addiction psychology. She is the author of the acclaimed "Free to Eat" Combat Your Cravings eBook that helps you eat well and combat cravings for good. For more information please visit: http://www.CombatYourCravings.com

Overcoming Binge Eating.

Added: July 7, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/

Eating Disorders - A Matter of Willpower

The human body is typically designed to heal and recover from disease, illnesses, and disorders that a person may experience in the course of their lives. It may take them some time to do so, but for the most part, people are largely able to recover from most of these illnesses, diseases, and disorders. There are, however, some disorders that tend to affect both the body as well as the mind of the person that is afflicted with the condition. One example of this are the various eating disorders that more and more people all over the world appear to be developing in the course of their lives. An eating disorder is a particular point of concern because of the effect it can have on a person, not only does it deprive the person of much needed nutrients needed in daily life, or conversely, it causes a person to eat much more than what is needed by the body and considered to be safe, but an eating disorder also significantly affects the mind of a person, making the person think that the erroneous eating habit that they had developed because of the eating disorder is not harmful to them in any way. In some cases, people do acknowledge the damage that an eating disorder can bring to them, but they feel that they are powerless to do anything about it, so they will continue to give in to the hazardous habit. In some cases, the person is absolutely afraid that people might discover that they have an eating disorder, and they will do their best to try to hide or deny that they are indeed afflicted with an eating disorder. This act only serves to exacerbate the condition, since people will often choose to believe that a person is just indeed having a bad day and that it is affecting the way they eat rather than attribute the change in eating habits to an eating disorder.

In cases wherein people tend to curb the way they eat, like when they are afflicted with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, they will have an irrational fear of gaining any amount of weight, and will often have a distorted view of how they really look, often seeing themselves as being overweight when they are already dangerously underweight. When this behavior manifests, the disorder has already reached such a severity that will already require intervention, since most people already in this stage will not have the willpower themselves to seek medical attention.

In cases wherein people tend to binge or overeat, they are typically afflicted with the binge eating disorder. This disorder is usually triggered by emotional or psychological stress. People with this disorder tend to eat excessive amounts of food when they feel bothered, disturbed, or depressed. In some cases, this disorder is so bad that the person afflicted with it will take any excuse at all to binge on food, thereby making them gain a significant amount of weight. This disorder creates a vicious cycle of its own, since unhappy people who have this disorder comfort themselves by eating, and when they eat they also become equally unhappy, and the cycle goes on.

The issue to address here is how to best help people with eating disorders gain enough willpower to affect a change in their eating habits, and how to affect a positive mind set in them enough to allow them to develop proper eating habits and maintain those proper eating habits.

Autor: Paul Aragones

If you want to know more about eating disorders and what options you have to treat it, you can visit this link http://eatingdisordertreatmentoptions.blogspot.com/.

Added: July 5, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/