How the obsession to eat healthy food meets with the willingness to do sports: the motivational background of orthorexia nervosa

Márton Kiss-Leizer,Adrien Rigó,István Tóth-Király

doi:10.1007/s40519-019-00642-7

Abstract

PurposeGiven its relevance, the present study sought to reveal the motivational background of orthorexia nervosa (ON) and to examine its association to do sports.MethodsA total number of 739 participants completed a self-administered, online questionnaire including questions related to sports and three scales: Ortho-11-Hu, Motivation for Healthy Behaviors in Orthorexia Nervosa Questionnaire (MHBONQ) and Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI). The age of the respondents ranged from 18 to 72 years (M = 29.67, SD = 10.18) and 79.16% of them were female. The majority of the subjects trained 3–4 times a week (37.2%), usually for 1–2 h per week (25.8%).ResultsAccording to the hierarchical multiple regression analysis, social desirability, guilt over skipping training and health anxiety were the strongest predictors of ON with explaining 46% of the variance of ON.DiscussionThe results of the present study suggested that obsessive features of sport activities (guilt over skipping training, counting calories during training) play an important role in ON. People with a higher level of ON tend to reach other people’s respect, protect their general health and regulate negative emotional states through healthy eating.Level of evidenceLevel V, descriptive cross-sectional study.

Highlights

The different manuals of mental disorders may vary from time to time: certain disorders are getting removed from the category of mental illnesses, while others are getting an increasing social and scientific interest by being added to the nosological system
Regarding the reported weekly occasions of training, there was a significant difference between the three groups, F(2,632) = 7.08, p < 0.01
The Bonferroni post-hoc test revealed that the high risk (M = 3.01, SD = 0.72, p < 0.01) and moderate risk (M = 3.10, SD = 0.81, p < 0.05) groups differed from the low-risk one (M = 3.30, SD = 0.80), but not from one another (p = 0.66 between moderate and high-risk groups)

Summary

Introduction

The different manuals of mental disorders may vary from time to time: certain disorders are getting removed from the category of mental illnesses, while others are getting an increasing social and scientific interest by being added to the nosological system. This article is part of topical collection on orthorexia nervosa. The obsession with healthy food and proper nutrition has been described by Bratman [2] who defined orthorexia nervosa (ON) as an eating disorder, characterized by an excessive preoccupation with eating healthy food. ON is not in the medically approved nosology systems (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition-DSM-5 [4], International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 11th Revision—ICD-11) [5]; there are some suggestions that the DSM-5 should modify the category of EDNOS (Eating disorders not otherwise specified), and define new types of eating disorders [6]

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