“That's just healthy eating in my opinion” - Balancing understandings of health and ‘orthorexic’ dietary and exercise practices
Abstract
There is a fine line between eating and exercising "for one's health" and adopting obsessive dietary practices. Not currently recognised in the DSM-5, Orthorexia Nervosa is a proposed eating disorder characterized by an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy foods. In this study, we explored people's self-identified experiences of highly significant dietary and exercise practices, which whilst considered to be healthful may paradoxically have become problematic or resulted in dysfunction. Fifteen participants took part in semi-structured interviews. We used reflexive thematic analysis through a post structuralist theoretical lens to analyze the data, and developed three key themes: (1) feeling good and looking good; (2) relationality: the role of connections, community and social responses; (3) disordered or healthy. Daily health practices were understood as positive acts of self-care which were motivated by a range of embodied experiences and entangled within social relationships. Each theme also highlighted how sociocultural influences such as healthism and post-feminist discourses impacted upon participants food choices, exercise engagement and appearance goals-often producing contradictory understandings of what was considered to be (un)healthy. Overall, findings indicate that achieving 'a healthy balance' may be easier said than done and points to the need for nuanced analyses of the tensions that exist within first-person accounts of engaging with "health" in both "healthful" and potentially problematic ways.
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The socio-cultural and political environment is an important contextual factor in an individual's healing and recovery.
“The socio-cultural and political environment for an individual is an important contextual factor in their healing and recovery (i.e., moralisation of food, desire, appetite and health; discrimination against diverse bodies, expressions, and neurodiversity [129–138]).”
From A lived experience response to the proposed diagnosis of terminal anorexia nervosa: learning from iatrogenic harm, ambivalence and enduring hope (2023) · cites this paper as [138]
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- Authors
- Lewthwaite, M., & LaMarre, A.
- Affiliations
- Massey University (NZ)
- Corresponding author
- LaMarre, Andrea
- ORCID
- LaMarre, Andrea
- Venue
- Appetite
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-04
- Volume
- 171
- Pages
- 105938
- ISSN
- 0195-6663 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4206476235
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 3
- FWCI
- 3.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Appetite (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Massey University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health and Lifestyle Studies
- Keywords
- orthorexia nervosa, healthy eating, exercise practice, self-care, healthism, postfeminism, food choice, interpersonal relationships, embodiment, disordered eating, personal account, body image
- MeSH terms
- Diet, Healthy, Feeding and Eating Disorders, Diet, Humans, Obsessive Behavior, Health Behavior, Exercise
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