Ditching Diets and Falling Into Something Worse: Orthorexia.

CW: vague disordered eating behaviors mentioned.

I remember the day I decided I would “stop dieting.” I had graduated from college, and I was living alone. I had been struggling with binge eating, calorie counting, and restrictive dieting off and on throughout the past 7 years, and I was over it. I decided it was time to learn to love myself and be “healthy.”

I truly believed that what I was doing was going to bring me happiness and peace. I threw myself into spirituality and the self-help world. That lead me to the wellness world, and as someone with chronic health issues, it was beyond enticing. I sought out answers to self-optimize myself into oblivion. Little did I know that it would come at the cost of most of my relationships: with other people, with food, with my body, and with myself.

I tried every single wellness diet under the sun, sometimes in combination. All those diets that promised energy, weight loss, health, and happiness brought me everything but. I broke out in cystic acne (I’ve never had acne in my life), hit a wall of fatigue, swelled up like a balloon, and had the worst struggle with bingeing I had ever experienced. I blamed everything but the diets. I began obsessing over non-toxic skincare and buckled down on “anti-inflammatory” foods to cure me of all my other symptoms. I went to naturopath after naturopath, taking so many “gut health” supplements and powders that I almost burst.

Pulling myself out of orthorexia was like pulling out teeth: slow and painful. I wish I could say there was a single moment where I realized I had a problem and needed to recover. I stayed in denial as long as I possibly could before I had no choice but to completely and radically change my behavior and thinking.

Finding the intuitive eating instagram community is what began to change things for me. I learned about not compensating after a binge, and I started practicing authentic self-compassion for the first time in my life. I started to see through the wellness façade, and how it was causing me so much harm. I started incorporating all the food groups back into my life, and allowed myself to keep binge trigger foods in the house again. It wasn’t a linear process, because it took me a really long time to fully let go of the belief that there was a “perfect” version of me out there.

I had to heal my relationship with food, with my body, with spirituality, and with the concept of “wellness” altogether. My journey was messy. There were many different times in my recovery when I thought I was “recovered,” only to face new knowledge that required me to grow even more. I was extremely resistant at first, but now that I’ve experienced not only the food freedom but the life freedom that comes with recovery, I now seek out information that will challenge me and encourage me to expand my thinking. I feel so grateful that I can now use what I’ve learned and continue to learn to help others heal.