(Maja Kappler/ Healthing) — Vacations were tricky for Jason Wood. Exploring new neighbourhoods, once one of his favourite parts of traveling, was a major source of anxiety. Spontaneity had become scary: it meant he couldn’t research the menu in advance. And that meant there might not be any foods that met his standards.
“I would spend hours, if not days, researching restaurants before we’d even leave for our trip,” says Wood, an office events coordinator in Denver, Colorado. “I’d have everything planned out on a spreadsheet to ensure that whatever my diet looked like at that point in time, I had a plan down. Vacations could easily be ruined if one of the vetted restaurants was unexpectedly closed, or if a menu item wasn’t available.”
Though it took years to realize it, Wood was struggling with orthorexia , a condition where a person’s focus on “healthy eating” becomes obsessive and debilitating. (…)