I came up with the idea for this article while I was sitting at my daughter’s softball game eating some processed, fried chicken nuggets and some nachos made from soggy pickled jalapenos and that canned glow-in-the-dark ‘cheese’ substance that they use at the ballpark.
For a second or two I thought, “What if someone sees me eating this stuff? What if a patient sees me? How would I ever explain this away?”
But then, the more reasonable part of my brain took over and I answered myself, “Who cares? I don’t even feel remotely guilty.”
Really, who cares if once in a while I get in a bind and eat some stuff that I otherwise tell people they should try to avoid. That doesn’t make me a hypocrite.
We have all heard of anorexia (not eating), and bulimia (binging and purging) but did you know that there is a nervous condition that is characterized by obsessive preoccupation with eating healthy or clean or pure? It is called orthorexia nervosa and it can be as serious an illness as the other more commonly known eating disorders.
A 2016 article by scientists at University of Northern Colorado and California Pacific Medical Center describes orthorexia as, “obsessive focus on food choice, planning, purchase, preparation, and consumption; food regarded primarily as source of health rather than pleasure; distress or disgust when in proximity to prohibited foods; exaggerated faith that inclusion or elimination of particular kinds of food can prevent or cure disease or affect daily well-being; periodic shifts in dietary beliefs while other processes persist unchanged; moral judgment of others based on dietary choices; body image distortion around sense of physical “impurity” rather than weight; persistent belief that dietary practices are health-promoting despite evidence of malnutrition.”
Now, there have been times that I have wondered if I might be teetering on the brink of orthorexia.
This one time we were travelling somewhere and I got caught in a pinch and had to stop at a fast food burger joint to get my kids something to eat. When the worker opened the drive-thru window and cheerfully tried to up-sell me on something, the smell of burgers and french fries rolled out onto me and I almost puked right there. I literally turned green. I think once they threw the bag in my window I burned rubber getting out of there and I had to hang my head out of the window while the kids ate the burgers.
I still won’t eat from a fast food joint unless I’m dying of starvation, but I had almost no aversion to eating equally nasty stuff from the concession stand.
So what’s going on there?
It all comes down to the fact that Discipline results in Freedom. Write that down and stick it on your fridge.
We obviously don’t have permission to eat crazy all the time, so how much discipline do we need to be able to give ourselves some freedom?
Most doctors that talk about patient compliance agree that 80-90% compliance is pretty good. If 80-90% of my meals (5.5 to 6 days out of a week) are based on some good common sense plan, I ought to be able to give myself some slack once in a while.
That doesn’t mean you have to have a ‘cheat day’ every week, but if you get in a bind and have to eat something that is off-plan don’t get upset about it.
Just get back on plan tomorrow.
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Dr. Patrick Parker is the Director of the Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation program at the Cardiovascular Institute of Mississippi in McComb. Visit RoamingParkers.com to see more of what he does to stay fit, well and healthy.
