When eating healthy, counting calories and playing sports becomes “toxic” to the mind: what is orthorexia

The purposes or the healthy habits they can become toxic to the mind and, in the long run, also dangerous to the body. It happens when the self-imposed rules become manic: a trap which especially the
teenagers
.

How do you get started

The areas that most easily lend themselves to this drift, in fact, are excessive attention to healthy foods and exercise which, in the case of young people, can find practical support in the countless downloadable applications from smartphones that can convey wrong messages. They seem to offer valid options to help embark on a healthy journey and often do so observes Stefano Erzegovesi, psychiatrist and primary nutritionist at the Center for Eating Disorders of the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, but they can also push the excessive control training routine and eating behaviors, with the consequent corollary demonization of some foods, in the incorrect belief that there are nutrients that are bad and that are good. People who enter this order of ideas no longer pay attention to limiting excesses, but only to eliminate certain foods, which begin to be seen almost as if they were “poisons”. Following an obsession with over-healthy foods if it results in a fundamentally unbalanced way of eating can make you sick.

The overt disorder

There is an eating disorder called orthorexia which describes precisely this type of drift: In the orthorexic dietary regime what is defined as the right “frequency of use” of foods is not modulated, so the simpler foods are eaten more often and the richer ones less often – says Erzegovesi – because over time, this (healthy and varied) way of eating is no longer enough. Thus more and more foods considered “unhealthy” will be removed, until the essential nutrients are not enough. a mechanism that, in an insidious and gradual way, does not stop and can start from a healthy purpose. Orthorexia is often linked to another healthy habit that can become harmful if lived obsessively, the desire to move: The physical activity that we all should do involves moving regularly, listening to your body and feeling that you are he is better mentally, physically and energetically – explains the expert -. When people feel “Forced” to play sports at any cost (running when it rains or training even if you feel tired or have suffered an injury) have become victims of a mechanism whereby the healthy habit has taken on the characteristics of dependenceso much so that, if that behavior is not carried out, one can feel sick almost as if one were abstinent from a drug.

Understanding the warning signs

Since eating less, and in a healthier way, and moving more are habits that we should all acquire, what the distinction so as not to slip into the wrong attitude? The “trap” that you need to be able to intercept and avoid obsessive control, Erzegovesi replies. Particularly susceptible are adolescents, not only for the particular phase of life in which they find themselves, but also because the continuous use of mobile phones and social networks, as well as the many periods of isolation who have lived (even recently) can represent additional risk factors: Virtual channels offer easy access to all models that have to do with excessive thinness or “super fit” bodies, where obsession becomes collective – clarifies the specialist -. The greatest danger, however, is represented by social isolation. Solitary activities by definition are much more at risk of being absorbed by an obsessive mechanism. In the reality of a physical group of friends, the obsession is less likely and is more easily unmasked: sharing among peers balances excesses thanks to the comparison that helps to evaluate oneself.