How I Recovered from my Obsession with Clean Eating

I decided to become a health coach years into my eating disorder, at a point when my symptoms had changed enough for me to believe it was behind me.

I wasn’t low-functioning anymore. I was able to get out of bed and live a productive life without falling into episodes of depression. I wasn’t in therapy. I was managing my weight. I had a better life than the one I’d had in the throes of my eating issues.

Of course, I still had issues with bingeing and restricting, and even purging now and again, but it wasn’t happening daily anymore. I saw it more as chronic, residual eating disorder symptoms that would never fully go away, because I was kind of broken and screwed up when it came to food. It was, you know, my fault. I accepted that things would never be perfect.

I decided to become a health coach.

I dove in head-first. I loved the program. I felt empowered. I ramped up my already “healthy eating” to new levels. I went from vegan to paleo to keto to sugar-free to everything-free within a year. My entire house became nothing short of 100% organic, down to the condiments and dish towels. Toxins were everywhere. Disease was right around the corner if you weren’t careful enough. Nutrition was of the utmost importance, for me and for my kids.

I would only eat sprouted nuts, grass-fed-and-finished meats, organic vegetables from local farms who I knew I could trust. I spent a small fortune on groceries and an inordinate amount of time preparing food for my family each week. I remember once freaking out about eating an avocado because it was nutrient-dense but also not local or seasonal to my region, so was I really doing what was best for my body??

Meanwhile, my bingeing increased. And the more I binged, the more I restricted. And the cycle steadily devolved.

I knew I was “orthorexic” by definition, (orthorexia=an unhealthy obsession with eating “clean” foods) but I also believed I was right. That everyone else was wrong, even the people who made up the word orthorexic. Nutrition was the key to health and happiness. Dr. Hyman said so.

Except that I was having daily anxiety-attacks and the stress was chipping away at whatever semblance of health I had left.

It wasn’t until my eating disorder had returned so completely that I knew this was all wrapped up together somehow. My eating disorder hadn’t gone away, it had shape-shifted.

And it was all based on restriction and control. I knew I would have to release these things to heal, even though the thought of it terrified me. But I was at a point where the thought of living with these self-destructive rules and patterns was infinitely more terrifying.

And so I began my journey to food freedom.

The concept of allowing all foods meant just that: allowing ALL foods. GMOs included.

Admittedly, I started slow. I was faster to allow increased quantities of food before I allowed deviations from my all-organic, ultra-clean eating style. Letting go of control is a bitch.

The difficulty in recovering from orthorexia is that there is such morality attached to food. With other forms of eating disorders, you kind of *know* that what you’re doing isn’t helping you. But with orthorexia, you truly believe that perfect nutrition is going to save you. It’s going to cleanse you. After all, nutrition isn’t exactly a bad thing the way, say, purging is.

But I quickly realized that it was more about control than nutrition. So instead of following FoodBabe on social media, I started following the FoodScienceBabe, who bases her claims on actual science.

It wasn’t easy for me to accept such a radical departure from my clean-eating-way-of-thinking, but it helped to at least entertain the idea that there might be another side to things. So I started buying ingredients that were slightly less “clean,” slightly more convenient, and a lot less expensive. Suddenly I wasn’t traveling to 4 different grocery stores to optimize the cleanliness of my shopping cart. Trader Joes brand of non-organic Everything Bagel spice was going to have to do. (No more shipments of the organic kind that cost 10x more).

As time went on and I didn’t actually die from eating non-organic food, my fears started to relax. I realized that my kids were more relaxed around food as well, since I was forcing myself to buy the forbidden treats that they occasionally asked for because their friends were eating it at school. I also realized that there is joy in being able to eat foods in fun packaging, and enjoy it with friends instead of eating it with guilt and shame.

I’ll be honest with you — nutrition is still important to me. I don’t apologize for that. I feel great when I eat my big salads (with all the fixings) and I actually enjoy blueberries and nuts as a snack.

But I also eat Ben & Jerry’s, and Thin Mints from my daughter’s Girl Scout troop. I buy Oreos when my kids ask, and I go out for ice cream — locally — not only to the organic ice cream shoppe 45 miles away. I no longer spend $50 on maca powder that never regulated my hormones as promised. (Note: eating food on a regular basis did that, no superfoods required.)

Essentially, I figured out how to balance nutrition with stress, joy, convenience, and practicality. I make choices that factor in all of these things instead of ONLY focusing on nutrition. And my life is better for that.