Melina Mäkelä says on social media that she got sick with orthorexia.
MElina Mäkelä in autumn 2025. MATTI MATIKAINEN
Radio host and Special forces– series pilot Melina Mäkelä says on Instagram that she got sick with orthorexia a few years ago.
Orthorexia means Health Library including obsessive eating, the overriding idea of which is to eat only foods that are considered healthy, which can result in severe nutritional disorders.
Mäkelä’s illness started from a life change that started in 2024, which continued too far.
– The downhill that started was not helped by the fact that when I applied for breast reduction surgery, the doctor laughed a shitty laugh and told me to look in the mirror, first you have to try to lose weight if you want to. He also stated his assumption that it will hardly happen. I thought heck I’ll show you.
At the end of 2025, Mäkelä no longer recognized himself. He had become separated from loved ones and friends, and he didn’t go anywhere anymore.
– I lied about my own choices so that I could only carry out the morbid, exhausting workouts scheduled for myself and eat my own carefully weighed meals. Nothing extra. The forbidden lists went with me in terms of foods and I ranked the foods into prohibited and permitted notes.
– People noticed the turmoil around me, but when someone pointed it out – I distanced him immediately. So that he wouldn’t be an “obstacle”, he says.
Mäkelä says that his loved ones nevertheless tried to intervene and sat him down one after the other. Those close to him tried to make Mäkelä wake up to the problem, but Mäkelä only got a real awakening when he was hospitalized a year and a half ago. Mäkelä’s body lacked all nutrients.
Mäkelä says that he got professional help for the matter. At the same time, he also got a coach who has talked to him about the importance of eating and resting. Mäkelä says that, among other things, he started eating normal food, arriving at friends’ parties and training so that the goal was no longer to have a body as small as possible.
– And you know what? The fact that nothing bad happened when I added food and exercised healthily: that was my salvation.
By telling stories, Mäkelä wants to help others and hopes that no one else would end up in the same situation as him.