Problematic Eating: Red Flags to Look For
By Sara Butler
The relationship many people have with food is complex. Sometimes the lines are easily blurred between unhealthy and healthy eating habits. Food can often become a coping mechanism for emotions or feelings that can feel overwhelming; when it’s driven by body image, emotions, or a desire to achieve a healthy weight, it’s easy to fall into bad behaviors that are anything but healthy. Here are some red flags that your eating habits have gone from healthy territory to unhealthy territory.
Meals are Skipped Regularly
Eliminating entire food groups or skipping meals as a way to cut calories is an unhealthy eating behavior. In the beginning, you may see positive results from these habits, but after a while, your metabolism will slow and make it hard to even achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
Exercising Excessively
Exercise is usually a good thing, but when you feel obligated to exercise to the point where it’s hurting your health and body more than it’s helping, that’s problematic. Many people begin to see exercising for long hours each day as a way to expend calories. If you find yourself working out excessively, you are putting your body at a higher risk of injury, exhaustion, and dehydration.
Refusing to Eat in Front of People
Fear of being judged and feeling uncomfortable eating in front of others can be an indication that something more serious is going on with your relationship with food. Quite often, people struggling don’t like to eat in front of other people.
Obsession with Food
Sometimes an unhealthy relationship with food shows up as an obsession with food. People may look at food blogs, cooking magazines, and Pinterest boards and collect recipes they never make or that they make for others but don’t eat themselves. When you have a healthy relationship with food you understand that sometimes it’s OK to indulge in foods that you wouldn’t eat every day.
Clean Eating Fixation
If you like to eat clean that’s fine, but if you’re fixated on it, then you may want to reevaluate your motivations. Healthy eating can be taken to the extreme with strict diet rules and food eliminations that aren’t healthy. This can begin to interfere with normal functioning and can result in health problems.
Many people start off down the road of unhealthy eating without even realizing it. So always make sure you think about your relationship with food and reflect if it's healthy or not.
To learn more about your health, wellness, and fitness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic in Des Peres, Mo.