I have long wanted to write an article about orthorexia. History, description, symptoms - all this has been written many times by many authors, and there is no point in repeating it. It is more important for me to explain to my current and potential clients why I work with those losing weight, and what is important to me so that does not happen So, orthorexia nervosa, in general terms, is a very picky attitude towards food, so picky that it begins to be considered unacceptable for a person to eat something from his “black list”, and if for some reason he has to, then this causes strong dissatisfaction with himself , feelings of guilt, fear, etc. I would say that this is like a kind of “black and white” thinking, when everything is divided into good and bad. Just as the world has many more colors and shades, just as people show the best qualities in some ways, and worse in others, and even with different people they show themselves differently, so food is absolutely diverse, more or less tasty, contains more or less useful substances, while a completely different combination of these substances can have a different effect on each of us, and even have a different effect at different times. To what extent can we even talk about completely excluding something from the diet and relying heavily on something else? Yes, there are generally accepted “empty calories”, instead of which it is much better to eat something more enriched with vitamins, minerals and other macronutrients. - and microelements. For someone in pathological conditions, it is almost fatal to eat fried or fatty foods, a certain allergen, etc. As a rule, we all know about our pronounced health characteristics in adulthood and most often observe them, since this is fundamentally important. But here you can find a lot of research on how a certain diet affects the patient’s health and mood. Many doctors have noticed that diet has a beneficial effect on the course of the disease, but the patient is sad or grumpy, dissatisfied, unhappy. And it is also impossible to underestimate the psychological state of the patient during recovery. Here it is important to start individually from what is happening to the patient; will he not fade away earlier from all these restrictions? Help psychologically if a diet is vital. If there are no severe diseases for which a diet is necessary and the only question is losing weight or a fundamental healthy lifestyle, then the famous quote comes to mind: “I noticed that if you don’t eat bread, sugar, fatty meat, don’t drink beer with a fish, the face becomes smaller, but sadder.” Do you know this one?) By this I want to say that if we are conditionally healthy and there is no doctor’s prescription “one spoon of sugar and you will die,” then by default we can generally do everything. You can read one respected doctor who will say that you need to eat more fish. And another respected doctor who will say that there is a lot of harmful things in it and you need to eat it less often, or even not at all. One very old person will say that he did not eat meat all his life and lived for so long, another very old person will say that he drank, smoked and ate everything, was happy and this is the result. We may look for certain points of view on food and not notice other arguments. This is generally one of the common errors of thinking - selective perception. We select the information that goes into our collection with similar ones already collected, but we do not notice and do not take that which is different. Also, fears of eating certain types of food are often associated with more global fears. The most obvious is the fear of death. An illusion of control is created - “I eat healthy things, I don’t eat harmful things, which means I control my life and death,” “by eating harmful things, I bring myself closer to death.” My favorite joke about this was that you can lead a healthy lifestyle, eat right, and suddenly die from a piano falling on your head. The fear of death is often associated with, and to a greater extent its cause, the fear of “not life.” Who is most afraid to die? To someone who hasn't really lived. And this is what we need to work with, so that life does not pass by, does not wait for “someday then”,?