Is Healthmaxxing Disordered Eating? Protein, Fitness Trackers, & Eating Disorder Recovery With Amy Ornelas, RD

When does trying to be healthy cross the line into rigid or disordered eating?

Healthmaxxing focuses on optimizing nutrition, protein, exercise, sleep, steps, and other health metrics. But for someone with an eating disorder or history of disordered eating, healthmaxxing can become another way to follow rigid rules, compulsively track behaviors, and disconnect from the body.

In this episode of Dr. Marianne-Land, Dr. Marianne talks with registered dietitian and eating disorder specialist Amy Ornelas, RD, about healthmaxxing, diet culture, protein obsession, fitness trackers, compulsive exercise, and eating disorder recovery.

Is Healthmaxxing the New Diet Culture?

Healthmaxxing may look different from traditional dieting, but some of the messages sound familiar: eat the “right” foods, maximize protein, hit your steps, exercise consistently, track your metrics, and keep improving.

Dr. Marianne and Amy discuss how healthmaxxing can become a socially acceptable form of rigid or disordered behavior. For someone recovering from an eating disorder, relying on an Apple Watch, Oura Ring, calorie tracker, or wellness influencer may also make it harder to rebuild trust in hunger, fullness, fatigue, and other body cues.

Protein, Fitness Trackers, & Compulsive Exercise

Protein has become one of the biggest trends in nutrition and wellness culture. Amy compares today's protein obsession to previous diet trends, including the fat-free craze of the 1980s and 1990s. Protein matters, but maximizing protein at every meal doesn't automatically make eating healthier.

Dr. Marianne and Amy also unpack step counts, exercise goals, calorie tracking, and wearable fitness devices. Fitness data can provide useful information for some people, but it can also reinforce compulsive exercise, perfectionism, and eating disorder behaviors.

Your body's needs change. Rest, relationships, sleep, pleasure, and spontaneity matter too.

Eating Disorder Recovery & Rebuilding Body Trust

Eating disorders can make hunger, fullness, fatigue, emotion, and physical sensations difficult to interpret. That uncertainty can make external rules and health metrics especially appealing.

Amy explains how eating disorder nutrition therapy can provide appropriate structure as someone rebuilds nourishment and reconnects with their body. Unlike an algorithm or influencer, individualized nutrition support considers a person's history, eating disorder behaviors, physical needs, and recovery.

Dr. Marianne and Amy also discuss what happens when fitness becomes part of your identity. Letting go of compulsive exercise or rigid health behaviors can raise a difficult question: Who am I if I'm no longer the person who always works out, eats a certain way, or prioritizes fitness?

Recovery can create room to discover an identity beyond food, weight, exercise, and optimization.

What You'll Learn

You'll hear Dr. Marianne and Amy discuss healthmaxxing and disordered eating, diet culture and wellness culture, protein obsession and nutrition trends, fitness trackers and calorie tracking, compulsive exercise and step goals, fitness identity, hunger and fullness cues, body trust, and nutrition therapy in eating disorder recovery.

They also ask a bigger question: What happens when trying to optimize your health starts taking away from your life?

About Amy Ornelas, RD

Amy Ornelas is a registered dietitian and eating disorder specialist with more than two decades of experience. She incorporates nutrition therapy, somatic therapy, yoga, and intuitive practices into her work with adolescents and adults.

Her own eating disorder recovery helped shape her commitment to helping people move away from diet culture, rigid food rules, body image struggles, and disconnection from their bodies.

Instagram: @amyornelasRD Website: i-heart-nutrition.com

Related Episodes

Have you ever had the experience of suddenly feeling huge in your body, even though nothing about your body has actually changed? That moment of intense body distress is incredibly common in eating disorder recovery. But what if that feeling is not really about body size at all?

In this episode of Dr. Marianne-Land, Dr. Marianne Miller is joined by Amy Ornelas, RDN, an eating disorder dietitian, yoga teacher, and somatic therapy practitioner, to explore what body distress may actually be signaling underneath the surface. Together, they unpack how thoughts like “I feel huge” can often reflect emotional activation, overwhelm, grief, shame, anger, or stress rather than a literal change in body size.

Amy explains how eating disorder behaviors such as restriction, binge eating, and purging can alter brain chemistry and disconnect people from their internal emotional world. When those behaviors begin to shift in recovery, many people suddenly find themselves face to face with emotions that may have been numbed or pushed aside for years. This can feel confusing, intense, and sometimes even frightening.

Dr. Marianne and Amy talk about how eating disorders can function as powerful survival strategies that help people manage overwhelming emotional states. Rather than demonizing these behaviors, they explore how they often develop as adaptive coping mechanisms in environments where emotional expression was discouraged, dismissed, or unsafe.

The conversation also highlights how family dynamics, culture, trauma, and neurodivergence can shape the way people learn to relate to their emotions. Many individuals grow up hearing messages that they are too sensitive, too emotional, or should simply get over what they feel. Over time, these messages can make emotional awareness feel dangerous or overwhelming.

Amy introduces the role of somatic therapy in eating disorder recovery and explains how body-based approaches can help people reconnect with their internal sensations in a gradual and supportive way. Instead of forcing emotional processing, somatic work focuses on building safety in the nervous system and slowly increasing the capacity to notice and tolerate emotional states.

Dr. Marianne and Amy also discuss how body image distress can function as a powerful distraction. It can feel easier to focus anger, fear, or grief on the body than to confront deeper sources of pain, such as relational conflict, social stress, or systemic injustice. Learning to translate body distress into emotional language can help people understand what their internal system is truly trying to communicate.

This episode also addresses an important reality in eating disorder recovery: sometimes people appear more emotionally dysregulated as they begin healing. That increase in emotional expression can actually be a sign that someone is reconnecting with their inner world after years of emotional numbing.

Amy shares several practical tools that can help people begin reconnecting with their emotions, including brief emotional check-ins throughout the day, asking simple questions about what feelings may be present when eating disorder urges arise, and using movement to help emotional energy move through the body. Dr. Marianne also brings in a neurodivergent-affirming lens, discussing how stimming, rocking, sensory soothing, and other nervous system supports can help people stay connected to themselves during emotionally intense moments.

Together, they emphasize that emotions are not problems to eliminate. They are information from our internal systems that help guide us toward safety, boundaries, authenticity, and healing.

In this episode, we discuss

How eating disorder behaviors can numb or redirect difficult emotions.

Why recovery often brings a surge of feelings to the surface,

What somatic therapy is and how it can support eating disorder recovery.

Why the thought “I feel huge” often reflects emotional distress rather than body change.

How trauma, family systems, and culture shape emotional expression.

Why body image distress can act as a distraction from deeper pain.

The difference between compartmentalizing emotions and avoiding them.

Why increased emotional intensity can be a sign of progress in recovery.

Practical ways to begin noticing and naming emotions during recovery.

How neurodivergent people may benefit from stimming and sensory supports.

About the guest

Amy Ornelas, RDN, is a registered dietitian nutritionist, eating disorder specialist, yoga teacher, and somatic therapy practitioner based in California. She works with individuals, families, and groups and integrates nutrition care with somatic and nervous system–informed approaches to eating disorder recovery.

Connect with Amy Ornelas

Instagram: @amyornelasRD Website: i-heart-nutrition.com

Listen if you are

Experiencing intense body image distress during eating disorder recovery.

Trying to understand why recovery can bring more emotion, not less.

Curious about somatic therapy and body-based approaches to healing.

Looking for tools to help manage urges to restrict, binge, or purge.

Interested in understanding the emotional layers beneath body distress.

Related episodes

On "I Feel Huge" Versus "What I'm Actually Feeling": Translating Body Distress Into Emotions" via Apple or Spotify.

On Eating Disorders as a Coping Strategy for Deeper Pain via Apple or Spotify.

On Eating Disorders in Midlife & Our Personal Recovery Stories via Apple or Spotify.

On Atypical Anorexia via Apple or Spotify

On Eating Disorder Recovery, Higher Level of Care, & Renourishment via Apple or Spotify

On Reconnecting With Your Body in Eating Disorder Recovery via Apple or Spotify

On Trauma, Eating Disorders, & Levels of Care via Apple or Spotify.

Work With Dr. Marianne

If healthmaxxing, compulsive exercise, rigid food rules, body image concerns, or anxiety around eating have become tangled up with your eating disorder, Dr. Marianne offers a neurodivergent-affirming, trauma-informed approach to eating disorder recovery.

Dr. Marianne specializes in ARFID, binge eating, anorexia, and bulimia, including the ways eating disorders intersect with autism, ADHD, sensory needs, and trauma.

She offers eating disorder therapy in California and Washington, D.C., as well as virtual coaching for people elsewhere. She also offers a self-paced ARFID & Selective Eating course for adults with ARFID, parents and caregivers, and providers.

Visit drmariannemiller.com to learn more about working with Dr. Marianne. Follow @drmariannemiller on Instagram and listen to Dr. Marianne-Land on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.