No.3 Eating Disorders in College: The Thin Line Between Healthy Living and an "Unhealthy Obsession" - Women Compus - Women Campus
With all the (often skewed) information bestowed upon us by our peers and the popular media regarding the “appropriate” number of calories we should consume; the “optimal” Body-Mass Index; the “necessary” amount of exercise we must perform each week—you name it—where do we draw the line between following a healthy lifestyle and having a disordered mentality and behavior?
This has been an ongoing debate in the world of eating disorder experts, where some advocate incorporating the term “orthorexia nervosa” into the medical manuals, while others claim that the term is too broad. Time magazine defines orthorexia as being “characterized by an obsession with avoiding foods perceived to be unhealthy.” Cynthia Bulik, the director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, told Time that orthorexia should not be introduced into the medical manuals, as it could be connected to an anxiety disorder or be a precursor to a more commonly diagnosed condition.
Marci Anderson, R.D., on the other hand, is one of the experts who consider orthorexia to be a real and serious condition. “[Orthorexia] is a true disorder that affects both the physical and emotional health of a lot of people,” Anderson wrote on her blog. Furthermore, the nutritionist believes that the difference between “healthy living” and orthorexia is found in the existence of an “unhealthy obsession.”
Herein lies the challenge for most of us collegiettesTM: How do we combat the information constantly presented to us by the media, culture, and even our peers, while maintaining a healthy lifestyle that doesn’t border on an “unhealthy obsession”?
This is a question that many of us struggle with daily, and there is not one definitive answer. Yet the potential consequences of disordered eating and mentality—aside from the perceived “benefit” of obtaining a culturally desirable slim figure—are alarming enough to ask yourself whether or not you fall into Anderson’s “unhealthy obsession” category.
According to Self magazine, “Without adequate body fat to supply hormones critical to bone health, you can develop an aggressive, irreversible form of osteoporosis as early as your 20s, leaving you with the easily broken bones more common to women in their 70s. Malnutrition can also cause hair loss, brittle nails and even nerve damage.”
Not to mention the psychological damage that results from an obsessive mentality towards food and weight. According to Anderson, psychological sings and symptoms that you have an eating disorder include if you are “…withdrawing from friends and family, you find it difficult to socialize, you feel tired a lot, you find that thinking about food and body-related issues takes up a significant portion of your day.”
