Eating healthily is often seen as a cornerstone of a balanced lifestyle, but can an obsession with healthy eating actually be negative to your health? In this article, we will look into orthorexia and explore when healthy eating can cross the line into harmful behaviour. We will examine the symptoms of orthorexia, the potential negative impacts of an excessive focus on healthy foods and consider how these habits might affect your gut microbiome.

Here are the top 5 takeaways from this article about orthorexia:

• A well-balanced diet provides essential nutrients for energy, growth, and repair, helping to prevent diet-related illnesses and support overall health.

• Orthorexia is an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating that begins with cutting out certain foods and can expand to exclude a wide range of items, leading to potential nutritional imbalances and health issues.

• Orthorexia manifests through various behavioural, psychological, and physical symptoms, including poor concentration, judgement of others' eating habits, anxiety, guilt and physical signs like weight loss and low energy levels.

• The restrictive nature of orthorexia can lead to significant weight loss, compromised nutritional balance and overall health deterioration.

• Shifting to a healthier diet can temporarily disrupt gut health, causing bloating and wind as the digestive system adjusts to new, high-fibre foods and their associated microbes.

Yes, healthy eating is generally good for you. A well-balanced diet provides all the energy you need to stay active throughout the day and supplies essential nutrients required for growth and repair. This helps you remain strong and healthy while also preventing diet-related illnesses. Maintaining an active lifestyle combined with a healthy diet can assist in keeping a healthy weight. Deficiencies in key nutrients like vitamins A, B, C, and E, as well as zinc, iron, and selenium, can weaken parts of your immune system. This outlines why a balanced diet is crucial for overall health and well-being [1].

Orthorexia

While healthy eating is generally considered to be beneficial, it can become harmful when it turns into an obsession. This is known as orthorexia. Orthorexia often begins with the desire to eliminate foods that people think are unhealthy such as processed, sugary, or fatty foods, while increasing the intake of fresh foods. The obsession occurs when this behaviour becomes compulsive and the list of foods deemed unhealthy expands. Commonly excluded items include:

• Refined carbohydrates

• Dairy

• Sugar

• Meat

Restrictive eating can lead to significant weight loss, although, unlike anorexia or bulimia, the primary focus in orthorexia is on healthy eating, with weight loss being a secondary effect. This obsessive behaviour can compromise nutritional balance and overall health [2].

Orthorexia is characterised by behavioural, psychological, and physical signs you can look out for, including [3]:

Behavioural Signs:

• Cutting out specific foods or food groups to make their diet healthier, with the list of forbidden foods expanding over time.

• Adapting existing healthy eating theories with additional personal beliefs.

• Poor concentration.

• Judging the eating habits of others.

• An obsession with a healthy or supposedly healthy diet.

• Increased focus on diet interfering with other areas of life, such as relationships or work.

Psychological Signs:

• Obsession with healthy eating interfering with daily life.

• Inability to set aside personal dietary rules, even when desired.

• Anxiety, guilt, or feelings of uncleanliness when eating foods deemed unhealthy.

• Emotional well-being being overly dependent on consuming the “right” foods.

• Low mood or depression.

Physical Signs:

• Weight loss.

• Weakness.

• Tiredness.

• Prolonged recovery from illness.

• Feeling cold.

• Low energy levels.

Yes, eating healthily can have a short-term negative impact on your gut. When you make significant changes to your diet, especially by increasing the intake of high-fibre foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains, your gut needs time to adjust. This adjustment period can lead to temporary bloating and wind as your digestive system gets used to processing the new microbes and nutrients introduced by these foods [4]. However, these symptoms typically subside as your gut microbiome adapts to the healthier diet.

While healthy eating is essential for overall well-being, it is important to maintain a balanced and flexible approach. Orthorexia, an unhealthy obsession with eating 'pure' or 'clean' foods, can lead to serious physical and psychological consequences, including nutritional deficiencies, weight loss, anxiety, and disrupted daily life. Recognising the signs of orthorexia is key to seeking help early and restoring a healthier relationship with food. It’s also worth noting that a sudden shift to a high-fibre diet may cause short-term digestive discomfort, but this usually settles as your gut adjusts.

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[1] Health benefits of eating well | NHS inform

[2] Orthorexia: when ‘healthy’ eating becomes obsessive - ion

[3] Orthorexia - Beat

[4] How quickly can you improve your gut bacteria? - BBC Food