‘Healthy anorexia’: The complexity of care in disordered eating

Abstract

This paper examines how contemporary understandings of 'health' and 'care' are engaged with and practiced by women with disordered eating. Based on findings from an Australian study investigating why people with disordered eating are reluctant to engage with treatment services (March 2012 to March 2015), we demonstrate how young women use elements of a 'health habitus' and 'care' to rationalise and justify their practices. Moving beyond Foucauldian theories of self-discipline and individual responsibility we argue that Bourdieu's concept of habitus and ethnographic concepts of care provide a deeper understanding of the ways in which people with disordered eating embody health practices as a form of care and distinction. We demonstrate how eating and bodily practices that entail 'natural', medical and ethical concerns (in particular, the new food regime known as orthorexia) are successfully incorporated into participants' eating disorder repertoires and embodied as a logic of care. Understanding how categories of health and care are tinkered with and practiced by people with disordered eating has important implications for health professionals, family members and peers engaging with and identifying people at all stages of help-seeking.

Neglected features of lifestyle: Their relevance in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

“…Communication and perception of risks, as traditionally recognized, are flanked by communication and induction of apparently neutral behavior that can behave as true risk factors for disease. The strong pressure towards practices aimed at optimizing physical fitness and dietary methods aimed at healthy foods often involves forms of orthorexia[18]; such strategies are widely used to gain and maintain niches of food and fitness markets. All this would be irrelevant, except that, as in the case of prevention of obesity and fatty liver, and probably also in the field of atherosclerotic, neurodegenerative and cancer diseases, dietary caloric intake and a sedentary lifestyle are not the only factors exerting independent synergistic effects[6].…”

On a correct diet: exploration of the orthorexia construct from the essential nuclei of experimental discourse

“…24,43,44 The present study can help to clear those limits and know more deeply the condition of living concerned about healthy eating.…”

“…19 And as data concerning gender and age, although the orthorexic disposition occurs more in men and in different age groups, it continues to be proportionally superior in women, 20,21 being, in short, a risk factor of mental and physical health. 22 In a similar way, there is bibliographic testimony that supports the condition of orthorexia as a lifestyle in which fits the appearance (esthetics), and the cultivation and processing of food (nature or essence); the purchase of non-toxic food (organic, ecologic, pure, without pesticides or other artificial products) and a thorough examination of its components; 23 food and ritual practices according to a logic of care that also engages the family; 24 illusory sense of security (belief in preventing disease), a need for absolute control over oneself, "a hidden conformism" to achieve a culturally accepted model as beautiful; perfectionism towards oneself and oriented to others, fruit of self-demand and social constructions;…”

Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Practice offers nurses a framework to uncover embodied knowledge of patients living with disabilities or illnesses: A discussion paper

“…Brown, Tanner, and Padley () examined the experience of individuals suffering from a surgical site infection and found that the emotional capital gained from stoicism led patients to avoid seeking the help they needed when they experienced an infection. Musolino, Warin, Wade, and Gilchrist () explored disordered eating in women. Healthy eating was commonly associated with the embodiment of the “healthism habitus” or the choices made surrounding the consumptions of certain foods, which signified the conformity to the dominant habitus (thinness associated with feminine beauty).…”