Orthorexia

(cross-posted on both blogs)

* Do you spend more than 3 hours a day thinking about your diet?
* Do you plan your meals several days ahead?
* Is the nutritional value of your meal more important than the pleasure of eating it?
* Has the quality of your life decreased as the quality of your diet has increased?
* Have you become stricter with yourself lately?
* Does your self-esteem get a boost from eating healthily?
* Have you given up foods you used to enjoy in order to eat the 'right' foods?
* Does your diet make it difficult for you to eat out, distancing you from family and friends?
* Do you feel guilty when you stray from your diet?
* Do you feel at peace with yourself and in total control when you eat healthily?

(from: Lisa's Life Lessons)

There are a lot of questions about this list that come to mind, chiefly who made it? There are a lot of corporations out there that would benefit from converting a solid concern with eating healthy into a disorder.

There are two questions that define a disorder (According to Dr. Winter, my Psy 101 prof - the only man ever who has managed to get me up, alert, and interested on a consistent basis at 8 a.m.). These questions listed above don't facilitate getting good answers to the two key questions.

First of all -- is the behavior abnormal? And by abnormal, it means, does it deviate from the norm. In our culture, I'd say "normal" is pretty wide, because there are certainly subcultures that would support and uplift this thinking and behavior. While in the overall culture, eating organic and going out of the way to seek healthy foods and avoid harmful ones is abnormal, one cannot overlook the cultural system that the person is in.

This leads to the second question -- is the behavior deviant? That is, does it keep the person from functioning in a healthy manner? The question about socializing with family and friends probably comes closest to assessing that. But again, if the person does have social support, eating healthily helps the person feel good about himself, and it is feeding the person's body with nutritious substances, then it probably does not fall under deviant, even if more than four questions can be answered "yes." The one about feeling guilty is another one that looks like it could assess for deviancy, however, it doesn't measure degree of guilt (from "dang, shouldn't have eaten that" to utter despair), and how that guilt effects the person's overall functionality. It's misleading.

A person can be so obsessed with how they eat that it does get in the way of their functioning, but I have seen this already used across the board to describe people who care about eating real food, who go against the mainstream diet, yet manage to hold jobs, raise their families, and enjoy life -- and make enjoying that food a significant part of it.

For most of the history of humankind -- devoting a good deal of our energy toward what we will eat has been central to existence. Being able to open a few packages and have something whipped up in twenty minutes, or to pull into a drive thru is NOT normal, anthropologically speaking. Being able to do this together, and to enjoy these things together is a core part of what community has been about through most of the history of people. And when we look at how food is raised now (See Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma), what it is doing to our environment, and what it is doing to our own bodies and health...if you asked a cultural anthropologist, it would be pretty clear which is deviant.

Some of the questions describe healthy behavior. Any organizational expert, chef, etc. will tell you that making a menu before you shop for groceries is healthy. It also saves you money.

And what about self-esteem for eating well? Watch food commercials, read magazine articles in women's magazines -- We are conditioned to feel good about making good food decisions. We're supposed to want to feel good about eating right. And listen to all the talk about obesity and overeating-- there certainly is conditioning in our culture for obsessing about what we eat and feeling bad about it.

Another important question is "why?" For instance, as of two months ago, I could answer yes to several of these questions. I have celiac disease. I've really had a hard time adjusting to the idea of it, and I certainly can say my that my quality of life has gone down. I don't eat at restaurants I used to love, I don't cook the foods I used to love to cook, and I get to lie to people about how good the cookies were that they gave us for Christmas.

But which would truly be the disorder -- to keep eating in a way that was destroying me and was severely hindering my function, or to be able to eat at McDonalds whenever I wanted?

What they also fail to evaluate in this is when a person CHANGES, it takes all their energy to focus on that change until new habits develop. And sometimes, the way we focus on things that matter to us does separate us from those we love.

It doesn't seem to be anything new to me -- as someone who chose staying at home instead of working, driving one car (to save money), family bed, extended breastfeeding, homeschooling, and even marrying a pastor -- my life is full of decisions that have separated me from my friends and family for something that I felt was more important.

One thing to note here -- trying to eat healthy in a counter-cultural way has been around for a long time, and despite the "disorder" language used here, orthorexia is not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IVTR, (DSMIV-TR), nor are they planning on including it in the DSM V. If the person's obsession with food is truly inhibiting their function, it often will fit under a diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or one of the existent eating disorders. This has all the marks of a propaganda movement on the part of the food industries, because in the end, you're not an obsessive foodie if you eat low fat Dannon yogurt and Special K cereal all the time. You're an obsessive foodie if you decide you want something other than what is in the grocery store.

Related articles

• Obsessive Foodies Are Sick (theawl.com)
• Orthorexia: An Unhealthy Obsession With Healthy Eating (health.usnews.com)

A Homeschooling Article, Local Style

My friend Linda was interviewed for a homeschooling article for our local paper: "A Lifestyle of Learning."

The Temmes are an amazing family. Pastor Temme is in my husband's circuit, and our kids have been in choir together for years. I was so thrilled they were interviewed for this and wanted to pass it on.

Also, a little feedback on the article is due, not with anything Linda said, but with some other things mentioned. Often homeschoolers are portrayed as having to really have their acts together in order to pull this off. Since I lean toward the very unstructured side of things, I took a bit of an issue with Mr. Tenney's statement about "Get organized or die." We seem to get things done pretty well using the "by gosh and by golly" method. I find that while we all may have some faults that make homeschooling harder on ourselves, what tends to work best is something that's compatible with the way you and your family relate to the world, and that "delicate balance of structure and getting things done" tends to fit into that.

But you don't have to be really organized to homeschool your children, and it doesn't have to absorb your entire day (teaching one-on-one goes very quickly because you know whether they get it or not, and so much of classroom time is just absorbed in group management). So if it is something you are considering, know that these are issues that can be worked around. There are so many different approaches to homeschooling, and what is "legitimate" for your family may be completely different for someone else's.

What the mother mentioned about the needs of her sixteen month old coming first is right on. One of the things about homeschooling is that the children are learning in the midst of life, they haven't been pulled out of real life in order to learn...and the truth about real life is that when a little one needs love, that comes first. It's a really good lesson to teach kids -- to learn to function in the midst of life, to be able to suspend what they need for others. And when things are taken care of, we return to the routine.

Also, there are MANY reasons that families homeschool. You don't have to be religious or have that as your main priority. Many people of many different religions (or who have none at all), choose to homeschool their kids all the time. You can be liberal or conservative politically, or not even give a whoop.

The article is right. There are SO many different resources out there that whatever your reasons or needs for homeschooling, you are very likely to find something to meet it. Quite often, as a Lutheran, I find I have more theological problems with many of the religious curricula out there, I have a tendency to look at secular curricula, but freely discuss how our beliefs flow through what we are studying, and use the Bible, the Small Catechism, and the Book of Concord often. When your faith flows through your life, and prayer, devotions, etc. have their proper place, it is easy to bring them into everything else.

Together We Thrive?

Why "Together We Thrive?" How about "Together We Mourn?"

What is so wrong with grieving? What is wrong with being angry, searching for meaning? Why do we have to go right to a place of strength, jump to a place of "hope?"

Why do there have to be t-shirts?

I'm not trying to be snide, picky, or mean. Really, I'm not. This just doesn't seem right. Tragedy shouldn't have an upbeat slogan. People who are grieving shouldn't feel compelled to cheer up. The message of hope in the eulogy shouldn't be about how strong WE are, when we've just been shown how truly weak we are.

I don't know...this just seems really...I don't know. The only words that come to mind are askew and incongruent. Hardly words that fit, either.

Cough, Cough, Hack, Sniffle, Sigh

EVERYONE in the house is sick, and it hasn't been some minor cold, either. It went Maggie, Me, Chris, and Jeff. Usually either Jeff gets sick first or I get sick first, but then one is pretty much recovered. Not this time. The kids were sleeping on the pull out beds in the living room because they could barely move, and we were often isolated in our bedroom because there was no room in the living room. Coughs, sneezing, draining, exhaustion, fevers, chills, and a bit of nausea has been the norm. It's been a long time since something has hit us this hard.

While I would be very overdramatic to say that it compared to the time when everybody in the Ingalls family got sick in Little House on the Prairie (you know...the time Ma thought it was watermelon that got them sick?), this did make me think about what it would be like to have everybody in the house really sick and have animals to take care of...because getting out to feed the rabbits has been hard enough. I can't imagine what it would be like back in the day to be sicker than this, and have horses to feed or cows to milk.

Maggie and I are only left with a bit of stuffiness and a cough. Jeff is sounding better, but his went into bronchitis almost right away. Chris is the one kind of still in the midst of it.

New Year's Resolutions

I'm generally not big on New Year's Resolutions, but this year, I do have a few, since it is my last year in my 30's. They are all pretty much related.

1. I am going to exercise at least three times per week. We gave ourselves the Wii Fit Balance Board for Christmas, and we are all having fun with that. I see that as really helping through these next few Winter months. It keeps track of goals, work out sessions, etc. And as a mother, I really admire its skill with guilt trips.

That being said, Wuhu Island is fabulous, and I want to move there.

2. I want to move my bedtime up, at least to 11:30. I know 10 p.m. would be better, but right now that is a HUGE change. I am convinced that my body still operates on Pacific Time. Here, even seven years later, I still go to bed 3 hours later than in California, and wake up about 3 hours later. I've read that some people just don't have the ability to adjust to time zones, especially over several, and continue with health problems until they return to their home time zone. I hope that is not me.

3. 30 pounds (45 total) by my 40th birthday. That's not my final destination - about half way to my final goal. 30 pounds puts me at a place where I was at least a lot more functional and content with my body than I am now. I wasn't snoring, my cycles were regular, and I could fit into clothes I actually liked.

In the end, my goal is to be healthier, not perfect. Not being able to eat grains or sugar has made a huge difference toward those ends. But with all that I've given up recently...I'm definitely skipping out on the "giving up something for Lent" this year. There's nothing left except sex.

So, do you have any resolutions? I'd love to hear them.

Christmas

Over all, this has been a really nice Christmas. It seems like the whole season lacked some of the rush that is normally there, probably because I wasn't working. Shopping was tremendously uncomplicated, and it left everything much more open to enjoy the progress of Advent toward Christ's birth, and also enjoying my family through the month.

The Christmas Eve service was wonderful, followed by our tradition of eating late (some Christmas Eve's later than others. This was a really late one). I found out that this is actually a tradition in some cultures. A friend on Facebook mentioned that they were having dinner at the stroke of midnight, and called it Noche Buena. Other friends mentioned that their French-Canadian relatives did the same thing and called it Reveillon. Since it was so late, we sent the kids to bed and decorated our tree today after presents (had to get those packages out of the way).

After church today, we had some eggs and then opened presents. I'm going to enjoy mine. The kids got me a mandoline, which I have wanted for years. Jeff had me pick out a new food processor. My little Braun is sixteen years old, and was a nice size for the two of us, but I need more sophistication for the way I cook now. We spent the day enjoying each other and learning how to use the new Wii Fit that we got as our family gift. That's been a lot of fun. It was an amazing family day. Have I mentioned that I have great kids?

Dinner was roasted cauliflower-curry soup, broiled salmon with hollandaise sauce, asparagus, pumpkin pie with an almond meal crust, and maple-coconut milk ice cream.