Orthorexia: The Hidden Disorder Stealing Women’s Health — And Why I’m Seeing It Everywhere By Coach Elle Jolie | ElleJolieWellness | Kelowna, BC

When I sit with women in my studio — women in their 30s, 40s, 50s — something keeps popping up more and more. It isn’t always obvious at first. It starts with “I’m trying to eat clean,” or “I don’t eat that, it’s toxic,” or “My naturopath says I’m sensitive to… everything.”

And after working with hundreds of women, I can see the pattern instantly.

It’s orthorexia.

Not formally in the DSM-5 yet, but trust me — every clinician who works with food and women’s health knows it’s coming. And honestly, it should be. The suffering is real.

Orthorexia isn’t about how much women are eating. It’s about how scared they are to eat. It’s the obsession with purity, with perfection, with eating only the “right” foods — and avoiding entire categories of nutrition because someone online or in a white coat convinced them those foods were poison.

The tricky part? It hides under the word “wellness.”

And because it’s wrapped in kale and collagen and gluten-free sourdough, women blame themselves instead of recognizing they’re being conditioned into rigidity, fear, and self-punishment.

And here’s the part that always makes me smile gently — the woman who proudly tells me, “I eat super clean, I don’t touch potatoes,” while also knocking back vodka sodas every weekend without a second thought. And I love her, I really do, but I also have to say it out loud: vodka is literally made from potatoes. The thing she’s terrified to put on her dinner plate is the same thing she’s happily pouring into a martini glass… because diet culture turned the potato into a villain but gave vodka a free pass. That’s not science — that’s food fear wearing a halo. Potatoes aren’t the problem. A rigid relationship with food is. And the irony is that the potato has fiber, vitamins, potassium, satiety, and actual nutrition — while the vodka… well, it’s just the potato without the nutrients.

What Orthorexia Looks Like in Real Life

It’s the woman who won’t eat at a restaurant unless she can see the full ingredient list.
It’s the woman who panics if her salad has dressing on it.
It’s the woman convinced fruit is “too sugary” while she’s literally fatigued, inflamed, and underfed.
It’s the woman who brings her own dinner to someone else’s house because she’s terrified of oils.
It’s the woman whose entire personality has collapsed into “clean eating” while her metabolism quietly shuts down underneath her.

And women don’t fall into this because they’re shallow or uninformed.
They fall into it because they’re overwhelmed, scared, hormonal, and desperate for answers.

The wellness world preys on that.

Influencers do it for engagement.
Naturopaths do it for supplement sales.
And women pay for it with their mental health, their metabolism, and their joy.

Research has already started documenting this rise in “health-driven eating pathology,” especially among women. One study from Eating Behaviors describes orthorexia as a psychological pattern “characterized by fixation on healthy eating leading to significant impairment” (link here).

Sound familiar?

Why Midlife Women Are the Perfect Targets

Perimenopause and menopause create the perfect storm. Hormones shift, weight distribution changes, sleep gets weird, mood gets tender, and everything feels just a tiny bit out of control.

And when women feel out of control, they reach for rules.

Food rules feel like safety.
But they come with a cost.

There’s strong evidence that hormonal changes during perimenopause increase anxiety, perfectionism, and heightened stress responses (Harvard Review of Psychiatry). Combine that with decades of diet culture, influencer messaging, and naturopathic elimination diets, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for food fear disguised as self-care.

Women start eliminating foods not because they’re intolerant, but because they’re afraid. And fear-driven eating is fertile ground for orthorexia.

How Orthorexia Damages the Body (Even When It “Looks Healthy”)

Here’s the messy truth. Orthorexia doesn’t make women healthier — it makes them metabolically unstable, emotionally reactive, and physiologically depleted.

When women eliminate major food groups, research consistently shows:

• Metabolism slows due to chronic under-fueling
(See the metabolic adaptation research from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/88/4/951/4633307?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

• Muscle loss accelerates
(Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcsm.12602?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

• Hormone production suffers — especially thyroid and sex hormones
(Thyroid journal review:
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/thy.2014.0028?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

• Blood sugar becomes unstable because carbs are often the first thing women eliminate
(Diabetes Care:
https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/42/5/835/36453/Glycemic-Variability-and-Long-term-Outcomes-in?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

• Mood worsens due to reduced serotonin availability
(Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience:
https://www.jpn.ca/content/43/4/235?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

The body doesn’t want purity.
It wants nourishment.

How Orthorexia Damages the Mind

Psychologically, the consequences are just as real.

Women describe:

• constant food fear
• shame when they “break” a rule
• avoidance of social events
• emotional rigidity
• heightened anxiety
• identity tied to eating “perfectly”
• exhaustion from decision fatigue

There’s mounting evidence that orthorexic behavior shares traits with OCD, anxiety disorders, and traditional eating disorders like anorexia. A study in Appetite notes that orthorexia is associated with anxiety, perfectionism, and impaired functioning in daily life (link).

And again — it masquerades as “wellness,” so it gets applauded instead of flagged.

The Influencer & Naturopath Problem

This part needs honesty.

Most influencers are not nutrition professionals.
They don’t understand metabolism, psychology, or evidence-based nutrition.
They understand engagement, fear tactics, and trends.

And many naturopaths push:

• food sensitivity tests (scientifically discredited)
• extreme elimination diets
• supplement-heavy “healing protocols”
• anti-science narratives about “toxicity” and “clean eating”

Women are being indoctrinated into orthorexia, not supported.

And that’s why it’s exploding.

What I Teach at ElleJolieWellness

In my StrongHER coaching, we always come back to something radical in today’s wellness world:

Sanity.
Balance.
Nourishment.
Flexibility.
Strength.
Actual evidence.

I teach women how to eat like adults again — not disciples of an imaginary food religion.

I teach women to lift.
To fuel their muscle.
To stop starving.
To stop restricting.
To stop moralizing food.
To rebuild trust with their body.
To enjoy eating without fear.
To live with freedom instead of obsession.

And the shift is dramatic.

Women who were anxious, rigid, inflamed, exhausted, and confused suddenly become grounded, stable, strong, joyful, and sane again.

Because their body finally feels safe.
Because their brain finally feels fed.
Because their identity expands beyond food.

That is the real healing.
Not purity — sanity.

The StrongHER Truth

Orthorexia is not discipline.
It’s distress dressed up in wellness aesthetics.

It doesn’t make women healthier.
It makes them afraid.

And if you’re living inside food rules that are stealing your joy, your mood, your metabolism, or your sense of self, you deserve support — not another restriction list.

I’m Coach Elle Jolie in Kelowna, BC, and this is the work I do every day at ElleJolieWellness.

If you’re ready to feel strong, nourished, grounded, and free again, I’m here.

We build women up — we don’t shrink them.

StrongHER, always.