From diet to disordered: Where’s the line?
6 ‘normal’ diet behaviors that can lead to eating disorders
In today’s weight-obsessed world, it can be difficult to discern between behaviors that are seemingly “healthy” and ones that are dangerous. Probably because there’s hardly any line at all.
But know that if you’re dipping your toe into any part of the diet culture pond, you’re at risk of eventually being swallowed by disordered eating.
How?
Scroll down to learn how certain diet-adjacent behaviors can tip the scales and lay the groundwork for the eating disorders listed next to each behavior. Click the links to learn more about each disorder.
Please note: Just because you engage in any of the behaviors below does not mean you will definitely develop an eating disorder. These are merely examples of how the behaviors diet culture encourages can lead to something more sinister.
If you’re concerned that you or a loved one is struggling with any of the below, please speak to a medical professional or counselor. For information on resources and people to talk to, click here.
Cutting calories ➡️ Binge eating disorder, Bulimia nervosa
Cutting calories from your diet has long been a touted strategy to lose weight. But denying your body the caloric energy it needs also deprives your body of the nutrition it needs. We don’t get the energy we need to do even the most basic tasks, like sitting on the couch and watching Netflix. This can backfire and can lead to intense feelings of hunger.
Paying attention to calorie counts in food forces us to neglect our natural hunger cues and depend on an arbitrary number to tell us when we’re hungry and when we’re full. And this is anything but intuitive.
To learn more about the origins of the bright, bold, ubiquitous calories displayed on the packages of food or splash across menus, click here to listen to an episode of Maintenance Phase.
Personal story
Cutting calories was unknowingly my gateway to developing a full-blown eating disorder. I, like most diet-minded individuals, assumed that the fewer calories I consumed, the more weight I would lose.
But this backfired.
Cutting calories only made me more hungry, especially because my physical activity didn’t stop. In fact, it increased.
My body wasn’t getting the energy it needed to perform strenuous exercise, and eventually, it wasn’t even nourished enough to complete basic bodily functions, like menstruation.
Once I began renourishing my body by giving it what it needed, I felt more energetic, more focused, and—believe it or not—I actually started to enjoy eating again.
Intermittent fasting ➡️ Anorexia nervosa
Intermittent fasting has become a diet industry darling during the last few years. But what proponents of the “non-diet” don’t want to tell you is that intermittent fasting is just normalized restriction.
It’s right there in the name: fasting. Fasting involves going long periods of time without nourishing ourselves (i.e., eating), even when hunger cues tell us we need to eat.
Surrendering our hunger cues to a random schedule takes away our body’s natural ability to detect hunger and forces us to rely, once again, on external cues to tell us when we can eat and when we can’t. And as we’ve established in this post, our bodies don’t like that.
In fact, our bodies tend to want to compensate for hours (or even days) of such a regimen by replacing those calories once the fasting period is over (i.e., a binge).
“But what about the touted health benefits of intermittent fasting?” you may be asking. So far, there is no clear proof that intermittent fasting helps reduce the risk for diabetes, cancer, or signs of aging.
Going vegan or vegetarian for ‘health reasons’ ➡️ Orthorexia nervosa
Deciding to eat a vegan (no animal products) or vegetarian (no meat or fish) diet is a decision that can evolve from myriad reasons.
Maybe you’re a fierce proponent of ethical food practices. Maybe you disagree with the way animals are treated as a means to create food for human consumption. Maybe you’ve heard that eating a plant-based diet means you’ll consume fewer calories and less fat from animal products like milk and cheese.
These are only a few reasons, but they help start the conversation about why we might choose to remove certain foods from our fridges and cupboards. It’s not uncommon for eating disorders to begin as a simple decision to cut out a specific food group. It can be a slippery slope from “clean eating” to the dirt-filled mental hellscape that is an eating disorder.
First you cut dairy. Then you cut deli meats. Then you’re whittling away at other food groups that you (or diet culture) have convinced yourself are unhealthy. Whatever your reasons for eliminating certain foods from your diet, I urge you to dig deeper.
(In the next section, I offer suggested questions to ask yourself when you’re considering removing food from your daily consumption.)
Personal story
I’m the first to admit that during the early days of my eating disorder, I cut out certain food groups because diet culture had convinced me they would lead to weight gain. In other words, they were “bad.”
As a consumer of mostly plant-based foods, I never actually call myself “vegan” and I’m flexible about my meat and dairy consumption, especially when dining out. But I can happily say that this is not a decision implored to me by my eating disorder. Insted, it has been a personal decision to not eat foods that don’t taste good (to me).
The flexibility with which I allow myself to enjoy foods that aren’t plant-based allows me the freedom to eat the foods I want and ignore the eating disorder’s agenda.
Cutting out entire food groups for any reason other than a life-threatening allergy ➡️ Anorexia nervosa, Orthorexia nervosa
There are all kinds of “elimination diets” on the market today. And yes, I say “market” because that’s what diets are: ways to market certain lifestyles to consumers so that they create demand for certain products that fall within these “lifestyle choices.”
But some people do actually need to eliminate ingredients from their diet because their bodies might not agree with that substance. In fact, the substances might even be deadly.
There are still people (we all know them) who use the supposed “health benefits” of such elimination diets as a rationale to remove certain foods from our homes. Or some of us may use it as an attempt to “eat clean”, or only consume foods that are organic and unprocessed.
While this may seem harmless—after all, diet culture would tell us we’re doing the right thing!—it’s worth taking a closer look at your own personal reasons for making these dietary decisions. To start, ask yourself the following questions:
Am I removing this food because I don’t like how it tastes?
Am I removing this food because I don’t like how it makes me feel? (i.e., does it make me feel sick?)
Am I removing this food because I’ve received messages that it’s bad for me?
Am I removing this food because I’ve received messages that it leads to weight gain?
Am I removing this food because I am trying to “eat clean”?
*If you’re still unsure about your decision after answering these questions, I encourage you to speak to a professional who has experience with disordered eating.
‘Saving’ calories for a big meal ➡️ Bulimia nervosa
Similar to the first behavior on this list (cutting calories), the act of “saving” calories for a bigger meal you plan to eat later in the day is just another form of restriction.
It’s worth repeating: deprivation sends your body into starvation mode. By the time you actually allow yourself to eat, you may be feeling physical and mental manifestations of that hunger, such as heartburn, indigestion, and bloating. Plus, the restriction also leads to fatigue, irritability, mood swings, anxiety, and depression.
Exercising more than necessary to ‘burn off’ food you have eaten ➡️ ‘Exercise bulimia’
Is “exercise bulimia” an official term according to the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-V? No. But it’s something I struggled with during the throes of my eating disorder.
I labeled my behaviors this way because every calorie I took in had to come out, and I chose exercise as my preferred method of purging. Years later, I learned this is a form of bingeing and purging, i.e., bulimia.
Final thoughts
Again, if you engage in any of these behaviors, it doesn’t mean you will definitely develop an eating disorder, but it can increase the risk.
When you devote so much effort and attention to food intake and its effects on your body, you remove your body’s ability to monitor and regulate itself. You’re interfering with natural hunger signals, which can take a long time to reprogram. (Trust me.)
Plus, you’re basically telling your body you don’t trust it to handle food the way human bodies have been doing for millions of years.
Marketing has made us feel that millions of years of evidence aren’t good enough. That indeed we can’t trust our bodies. That we need to exert some sort of impossible willpower over the vessel that enables us to walk, laugh, and breathe air.
But we don’t need to mold it or shape it or push it too hard or starve it. It’s getting us through life, so we need to take care of it. But we also need to trust that it knows what it’s doing.
