Dec 9, 2009 11:00 pm US/Eastern
Health Alert: Bad Healthy Choices?
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
For Maggie Miller the obsession to eat healthy started in high school. Most of her time was spent thinking about what she ate. Maggie was exhausted and constantly at the doctors complaining about being tired.
Plus she was getting thin, and yet she couldn't stop.
"On paper perhaps I was eating a lot of really healthy foods. But my day to day life was, it was like walking on a never ending balance beam that I always scared I would you know fall off of," said Maggie.
Doctors say it's a growing trend. People obsessed with eating healthy to the point of making themselves sick. It's being called orthorexia.
"Internally they feel very pure and healthy.
But what ends up happening they end up eating less food, less variety. They end up starving themselves. They end up getting very thin, pale, and they end up having a lot of major healthy problems. Even to the point of death," said Dr. Patricia Pitts an Eating Disorder Specialist. She believes it's a form of anorexia.
"I have people who come in to my office who say I feel so good about myself because I'm not eating junk food and all that. And they see it kind of as a badge of honor," said Dr. Pitts. She says trying to eat as pure as possible doesn't mean you have orthorexia. It's when the obsession with healthy eating takes over and everything else becomes secondary like family, work and social activities.
With counseling, Maggie recovered and wrote a book called "Eat When You're Hungry."
It's something she now does, even fast food occasionally with her husband, and baby.
This she says is the healthy life she always craved.
"Life just got a lot more delicious," said Maggie.
Unlike anorexia and bulimia, orthorexia is not an officially recognized medical disorder. But Dr. Pitts believes it could be in the near future.
RELATED LINKS:
Orthorexia Information
"Eat When You're Hungry" Information
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Eagles Cheerleaders Eco-Sexy Calendar
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
Reporting
Comments