“delusion is pulling in your stomach when you step on the scales”

:D

Really glad you liked our review. I certainly think that the good has seriously outweighed the bad.

Where does one find your fiction?

I actually never intended to write more than my initial essay on this topic … but a publisher pushed me into it. What I enjoyed most was telling all the funny stories, and making gentle fun of myself. I never wanted to invent yet another disease, or criticize anyone, or even set a position.

But the concept has now taken on a life of its own — very few people have actually read the book, but rather have reacted to what other people said, and then the process kept going. From what I gather, the idea of “orthorexia” has been helpful to some and hurtful to others. I can only hope the good parts outweighed the bad …. these days, I only write fiction. (Being a doctor is my day job …)

Steve Bratman

There’s something I want to say that I’m having a hard time formulating. It’s about priorities, I suppose, and a skewing of the significance of certain behaviors. And it’s likely to come across as judgmental. I don’t believe there is One True Way for anything, and food carries different emotional significance for everyone.

Still. Balance. Priorities. What *really* matters in the end?

Eating for most people isn’t the point of life. When it becomes “too important” (a point that will differ for each person, depending on everything from profession to taste buds), it’s a problem. For some of us, eating is not important enough — I’m capable of taking both pleasure and spiritual meaning from food, but mostly I don’t, so I neglect myself badly.

It’s the same with anything, really. You need a sense of proportion about everything. And our culture overemphasizes creating a good appearance and the gratification of the individual. Spending all your time obsessing over the most nutritious recipe may be as foolish as obsessing over the silkiness of your skin, the size of your house and bank account, the humiliation and defeat of your enemies. Or the polish on your prose.

Whether we call orthorexia (or scrupulosity, or being a control freak) an illness or a sin or just a different way of doing things, these behaviors are out of proportion for most people.

But for some people that over-emphasis is what works. I am aware of my own disproportionate literary obsessions and compulsions. For most people, reading books, the details of grammar and punctuation, and the lives of imaginary characters are just not that important.

This feels incomplete and awkward, but I’ll let it stand. Maybe someone else can help me tease out the meaning.

I picked up a brochure at a county fair once, from a Catholic group, describing “Scrupulous Anonymous”, an organization for those who have a problem with scrupulosity. Many of the saints lives would seem to be examples of this.

Dunno. I can’t quite put my finger on what i find so insidious about the whole “Health First” ideology prevalent in Western (both mainstream and counter-) culture. I think it offends my libertarian instincts somehow, but i’m not sure exactly how… maybe the vague suggestion of paternalistic “for your own good” thinking (only turned to oneself, rather than to others… which means as a libertarian i can’t condemn it per se, but perhaps can still criticize it…)?

I’ve never liked the idea that you should deprive yourself of something that you like doing because you think it’s “unhealthy”, despite the fact that i see a lot of my friends doing that. However, i think defining that as an “illness” is… kind of circular, and not very helpful – it’s still based on an idea of “you shouldn’t do X because it’s unhealthy”, despite that being the very idea it seems to be trying to criticise…

I think my fundamental problem is actually with the whole equation of “health” with moral goodness – which implicitly is a moral condemnation of people who are “unhealthy”. Also with the prioritisation of “health” over happiness or enjoyment. I’m vegetarian, but my reasons are ecological, not health-related, and i don’t see eating meat as an “absolute evil” (for example, if a friend had some meat that would go to waste if no one ate it, and couldn’t eat it all hirself, and i was short of money for food, i would probably eat some of it with hir rather than let it go to waste. Although, i actually don’t like the taste of meat much anyway, so part of my reason for being vegetarian is actually to give me a “good excuse” not to eat things which i don’t like the taste of, but which in mainstream culture it’s “not normal” not to like).

I get “joyous about zucchini” (or courgettes as we call them in the UK – i always found it odd that two variants of English use the French and Italian names for a vegetable), because i really love the taste of them – also most vegetables, when treated right. Food is a massive sensual pleasure in my life. It’s self-deprivation of that pleasure which i think is “wrong”, and which i observe in far too many people (especially women) around me. (I’ve noticed that, among vegetarians/vegans, men usually give primarily ecological or animal-rights reasons for their dietary choice, while women usually give health as a primary reason.)

As a child i was suspected of something akin to anorexia because of the amount of foods i refused to eat, and the very limited range of food i *would* eat (and other “rules” i set myself, such as not being able to eat one type of food if it was touching another type of food on the plate). This, however, was nothing to do with body image or health (I had absolutely no concern for either), but a typically autistic over-sensitivity to tastes and textures which i found disgusting or actually painful. (There are still some things, such as baked beans, which i literally can’t even look at, let alone eat, because of traumatic experience from childhood.) Would this have been classified as “orthorexia”? I’m not sure – it certainly was “eating according to rules”, at leat from a superficial standpoint.

I knew one vegan whose veganism got gradually more extreme, eventually refusing to eat anything that wasn’t organic, totally cutting out all fats, all sugars, etc (and even trying to feed her cats on a vegan diet, which led to the death of one of them from kidney failure). Then again, she passionately believed all sorts of other irrational and mutually contradictory stuff, and i think she was basically an “acid casualty” (was taking serious hallucinogens regularly at the age of 14, etc).

Amanda from Ballastexistenz wrote a post about this subject here: http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=236

Wriggles, I completely agree with you about medicalizing. One interesting thing about Bratman’s book is that although he invented and uses this medicalizing term, he doesn’t really talk about the behaviors that way, and he’s not recommending drug interventions, which is a relief. And you’re still right, and also right that anorexia is much more dangerous (which he also says).

Everyone, yes, thoughtfully savoring the taste of a food is important; perhaps that wasn’t the best-chosen quotation to make the point.

Susan, orthorexia can kill; there are a few examples in the book, and a particularly sad one on the author’s out-of-date website, http://www.orthorexia.com

Lynne, very good point that this slides easily into being judgmental. Again, the tone of the book mitigates against that, but we all know how easy a trap that is to fall into.

Lisa and Group Benefits, yes.

Jill, I never heard “scrupulosity”; very useful. And I completely see the issue you raise in the last paragraph. This is hard to talk about because we’re so used to having it oversimplified, among other reasons.

I don’t think all attempts to eat in accordance with health are orthorexia by any means. But I have definitely seen rigorous self-limitations justified by “health” concerns take over people’s lives, leaving sadly little room for other concerns. That is what I without yet having read the book would call orthorexia.

It’s amazing how difficult it is to find the right words to talk about this. The sentence I wrote above with the word “health” in quotes sounds a bit like the kind of thing that people sneer when they think my celiac disease is all in my head.