Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes #2

Health is not merely the absence of disease, it is the balance of mind, body and soul.
Hippocrates

Finish each day and be done with it ... You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men (sic) - true nobility is being superior to your former self.
Author Unknown

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created --- created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.
John Schaar

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
William James

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky.
Ojibwa saying

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only a person who listens can speak.
Dag Hammarskjold

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
Lao-Tzu

When I began to listen to poetry is when I began to listen to stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And what is most important for all of us, is to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself, in here, but which is also the soul of everyone else.
The Native American poet Joy Harjo on PBS

When you do things from the soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
Jelaluddin Rumi

There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
Martha Graham

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

Don't ask yourself what the world needs ... Ask yourself what makes you alive because what the world needs are people who have come alive.
Ranier Maria Rilke

Common sense is not so common.
Voltaire

And the day came when the risk to remain tight inside the bud was greater than the risk it took to bloom.
Anais Nin

It's Never Too Late to Be What You Might Have Been. George Eliot

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
Alexander Graham Bell

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Loyd Wright

Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
Evan Esar

There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.
David Burns

Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.
Alice Meynell

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Brian Tracy

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius

We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.
Winston Churchill

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius

The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.
Plutarch

Press on! A better fate awaits thee.
Victor Hugo

See also Using Affirmations

See sidebar for more inspirational quotes and quotes of the week.

sources: http://www.overeaters.net/inspirations.html
http://www.freewebs.com/rayneonthemoon/inspiration.htm
http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/
Picture source: MrsMenopausal

Orthorexia: Fixation On Righteous Eating

Orthorexia Nervosa (fixation on righteous eating), is not yet a DSM diagnosis. It’s a phrase coined by Dr. Steven Bratman which describes an eating disorder in which the sufferer fixates on eating only what they define as “healthy food.” The avoidance of certain foods is quite often extreme, ultimately resulting in malnutrition and even death.

“Such people are sometimes affectionately called ‘health food junkies.’ However, in some cases, orthorexia goes beyond a mere lifestyle choice. Obsession with healthy food can progress to the point where it crowds out other activities and interests, impairs relationships, and even becomes physically dangerous. When this happens, orthorexia takes on the dimensions of a true eating disorder, like anorexia nervosa or bulimia,” explains Dr. Bratman.

“Unlike people with anorexia, patients with orthorexia are generally unconcerned about their weight, and do not feel fat. For raw foodists, vegans and fruitarians, what matters most is feeling pure.”

People suffering from this obsession may display the following signs:

* Spending more than three hours a day thinking about healthy food
* Planning tomorrow's menu today
* Feeling virtuous about what they eat, but not enjoying it much
* Continually limiting the number of foods they eat
* Experiencing a reduced quality of life or social isolation (because their diet makes it difficult for them to eat anywhere but at home)
* Feeling critical of others who do not eat as well they do
* Skipping foods they once enjoyed in order to eat the "right" foods
*Eating only foods regarded as healthy
*Relying on only natural products to treat an illness
* Feeling guilt or self-loathing when they stray from their diet
* Feeling in "total" control when they eat the correct diet

“The defining feature of orthorexia is obsession with eating healthy food and avoiding unhealthy food. The definition of healthy and unhealthy food varies widely depending on which dietary beliefs the patients has adopted. The usual immediate source of orthorexia is a health food theory, such as rawfoodism, macrobiotics, non-dairy vegetarianism, Ornish-style very-low-fat diet, or food allergies. Note that, in most cases, the underlying diet is itself reasonably healthy (if unreasonably specific). It's in the obsessive approach to diet taken by an orthorexic that the disorder lies,” says Dr. Bratman.

"We're certainly seeing more of this behavior," says Dr Yellowlees. "Like other eating disorders, the issue at the heart of it all is obsession. Part of it is to do with the way we're constantly bombarded with media messages about what's healthy and what isn't. People don't quite know what to believe, so they lose a sense of perspective. They also take a certain enjoyment from refusing food in front of others, as a way of demonstrating their superior commitment to the purity of what they eat.”

“It’s not that I don’t support eating healthy food. It's only that when healthy eating becomes an obsession, it's no longer healthy, "says Dr. Bratman.

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Sources: http://www.orthorexia.com/index.php?page=katef
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/02/22/hfood122.xml
http://www.eatingdisordershelpguide.com/orthorexia.html
Signs and symptoms: http://www.pamf.org/teen/life/bodyimage/orthorexia.html
http://www.nedic.ca/knowthefacts/definitions.shtml
picture:http://www.flickr.com/photos/grafixer/5189263412/
http://www.flow4theworld.com/2007/08/22/Eating%20an%20apple.jpg
http://spokane-county.wsu.edu/spokane/eastside/images/fruits%20and%20berries.jpg
http://www.seasonedpioneers.co.uk/assets/recipes/roasting%20vegetables%20on%20the%20grill.jpg