Deadly Diets, Part 2: Healthy vs. obsessive

Dieting is something many people will attempt at least once in their lives. A study from Boston Medical Center finds an estimated 45 million Americans will go on a diet each year, but what happens when a diet and exercise regimen goes too far?

One expert we spoke to says a diet can start out innocently enough but when it becomes the center of your focus, it could lead people to develop eating disorders. It was something Berlin resident Alex Pinto struggled with while she was a college freshman and sophomore.

“I wouldn’t eat anything, like certain or particularly, from certain sections of the dining hall.” Says Pinto.

Before transferring to Salisbury University this year, Alex was a star on her soccer team at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia; however, behind her natural ability on the field, Alex was hiding a secret.

“Even if I was to work out one day…do seven miles, which that’s what I do..seven miles, and then the next day I did like 6.5, I would feel extreme guilt that I didn’t just do seven miles like I did the day before.” She tells 47ABC.

Alex says restrictive eating and compulsive over-exercising hit what she calls her lowest when she was a sophomore. That spring semester, she says she only weighed about 98 pounds.

In her mind, gaining weight and not being at her physical peak was going to hurt her as an athlete; however, she tells 47 ABC this started in high school.

Alex was on the Stephen Decatur Varsity Girls’ soccer team all four years. An ankle injury during her freshman year forced her to be out all season, but she says she didn’t get many chances to play until senior year. This was after she began running two to three miles each day and playing soccer outside of school.

“To me, it made it seem like…I wasn’t good enough because I was not fit enough, if that makes sense.” Explains Alex. “And I know that’s not rational thinking now and that’s the disease but at the time, I thought that’s why.”

Alex was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, which has the smallest population within eating disorders.

A “fixation on righteous eating” and being “overly health-obsessed”, which Alex admits she was, are the characteristics of what experts have coined as Orthorexia Nervosa. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, it’s currently not recognized as a clinical diagnosis.

Melinda Brett, a licensed clinical counselor in Salisbury, says sufferers usually end up meeting the criteria of Bulimia nervosa. In many cases, people with the tendencies would use exercise as a purge and move from a balanced diet to one that is rigid and missing complete food groups.

According to Brett, there’s a fine line between when a diet turns into a disorder.

“Most people who don’t have an eating disorder, they don’t spend that much time and energy trying to restrict their eating that much, you know?” She says. “People with eating disorders, they spend all their time and energy focused on what they’re eating and what they’re not eating and if they’re exercising and if they’re not exercising.”

Salisbury resident Susan Smith tells 47ABC, she understands that intense focus. The mother of two has battled her cycle of restrictive eating, binging and purging and excessive exercise for 25 years.

” I wouldn’t even eat a lifesaver. Everything that went in my mouth was accounted for and was extremely healthy, not anything bad went in my mouth,” Says Smith.

For her, it started as a diet when she began teaching aerobics as a student-instructor at James Madison University. Looking back, she says her absolute lowest was exercising four hours a day, coupled with restricting food intake all during the day, and then binging and purging at night.

Smith admits often times, she didn’t see a problem despite feeling guilt if she missed a work-out.

“I thought I was very healthy.” She says. “I loved being thin and even though some people would say things to me, because my body weight would just go up and done like twenty pounds through the past 25 years depending on where I am.”

The idea of eating healthy, according to Brett, has lost meaning. It needs to be individualized.

“Eating “healthy” is way too broad of a term. I don’t even know what it means anymore,” Says Brett. “If somebody has high cholesterol and they want to reduce their cholesterol then that’s their goal and they would do some diet therapy to make it happen. If they were overweight and they wanted their dietary goal to lose weight, we can make that happen therapeutically.”

The first step is to define your own nutritional goals, she says.

Deadly Diets, Part 3: Road To Recovery will air on Wednesday, February 25 at 6 p.m.