-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email This article was originally published on The Conversation . Clean eating diets have become increasingly popular over the past few years. This style of eating emphasizes consuming whole foods and avoiding processed foods (even minimally processed foods) as much as possible.
Given how important diet is for our health, we might assume that the better your diet is, the better your health will be. But as one clean eating influencer has revealed, being too restrictive with your diet can have the opposite effect on your health. Instagram influencer Alice Liveing recently opened up about the harm becoming a clean-eating influencer had on her health.
In an interview in The Times, Liveing revealed her restrictive diet, accompanied by extreme workouts, had a serious effect on her health – leading to poor sleep, low mood and energy levels, poor brain function and even the loss of her period. Liveing's story highlights how focusing on achieving an unrealistic health ideal – in this case, the perfect, healthy diet – can run the risk of becoming all-consuming and "addictive" . For some, this fixation with healthy eating and the pursuit of the "perfect diet" may even result in orthorexia – an unhealthy obsession with eating healthily.
Disordered dieting Orthorexia is not yet officially recognized as an eating disorder. But in 2022, experts in the field released a statement agreeing that orthorexia is distinct from other eating disorders – suc.