Eating - Ethics and Digestive Woes; Making Changes During Recovery

Let me start off my making this very clear – no two people and their bodies are the same. The beauty of the human race is that we are all fabulously unique and this needs to be embraced and not something to be minimized. What worked for me does not mean you have to do the same – the same message goes for whoever you are around (both in real life and online). You have to remember that not everyone is in recovery from an eating disorder, and like I mentioned before, each person and body is different. The energy required for each of us is not the same, regardless of what you read about calorie/kilo-joule requirements (the topic of counting these is for another time).

Before my eating disorder, my diet was “eat whatever, whenever” – I was able to feed both body and soul. Not long after, I fell as a casualty to the diet culture ever-entrenched in society and, cutting a long story short and skipping over information that is not necessary or healthy for people to know, I was whipped under Anorexia’s wing and my diet became no longer sustainable for life.

In the beginning of my recovery, it was about eating any amount of anything – my body needed all it could get. I focused of consuming food at regular intervals, eating three meals and three snacks each day – no exceptions. I would eat what my family ate – with zero exclusions, so dairy, eggs, meat, fish, gluten, and sugar we all in my diet.

My decision to make changes to my diet came from an ethical place stemming from a childhood experience that has not left my mind. Additionally, my depression and anxiety were in full swing, and while medication for these issues as helping I wanted to experiment with my diet to see if some changes could help fix my mind in a natural way. It is important to note that I ran this by the service and professionals that I were seeing and we were in agreeance to let me do this as long as it did not hinder any progress being made in therapy and in my weight. I was also having some *tmi* tummy troubles that I could no longer put off addressing – it was not fun for me and for anyone around me.

The changes saw me transform my diet in many ways. Firstly, I became a vegetarian. I did this slowly, starting with eating only chicken and fish, then just fish, and then finally removing all meat products. This forced me to do some serious research into what I can substitute into my diet in order to keep my meals balanced and nourishing – I still kept free range eggs and probiotic Greek yogurt in my diet to ensure I keep up my protein intake (in addition to other protein sources such as various beans, legumes, and nuts). To address my digestive woes, I trialed cutting back on the amount of both gluten and dairy in my diet. This was initially a test to see if either were an issue for me, and I can confirm that they were part of the problem. To further aid in the restoration of my digestive running, I made the conscious effort to include more probiotic foods – tempeh, sauerkraut, yogurts, and dark dairy-free chocolates – this is something I truly believe has made an impact not only on my tummy but in my mental health as well.

While all of this may sound restrictive and setting off alarm bells in your heads – I made sure that this was coming from a place of body love, and not an attempt to place unnecessary restrictions on my diet. I still eat my dairy-free ice creams (and yes, they still contain sugar), bread products, and other general foods found in anyone’s diet – the only difference was that the brand or type of these products were.

It has now been almost two years since I decided to begin making these shifts in my diet, and I remain committed to continuing this for the foreseeable future, or until my body tells me otherwise. I am trying hard to not label my diet in my head, as I do understand that there may come a time where I do consume products I try to avoid (be it intentional or not). It is important to not put a label on yourself to ensure that if this does happen, you are not too hard or critical on yourself, or feel the need to punish yourself, or think that you did something wrong. Things happen, and while it may not be okay and you may find it hard, it is important to not focus on it too much, and to get back on with life.

There is a lot of talk around the globe and is on the rise in the eating disorder recovery community, of veganism. For those of you that aren’t familiar with this lifestyle, vegans do not consume and animals or their bi-products – so any meat, fish, eggs, dairy, gelatin, and sometimes honey are off the cards. While I am a vegetarian, I do have my reservations about someone making the transition to veganism during their recovery – especially if they switch immediately from diet full of the things absent in veganism. I am not saying that veganism is bad, but I do recommend that for people on a weight restoration journey, or any recovery journey, that they wait until they have been in a steady place for some time before making the switch to veganism. This is just what I believe, but I am aware that for some, making the switch to veganism made recovery from their eating disorder possible; but on the other hand, I have heard of just as many people who did they same shift but ended up hindering their recovery.

One of the main messages I want to say, and one you may hear on multiple occasions, is this; you do you. Everyone is different, ad has different views and opinions on an array of things, one of which is the consumption of certain types of food. There is no one way to recover, and it is not impossible to change your diet during your recovery – you just need to be in the right state in your journey, and you need to make sure that you are doing it for yourself and not for the eating disorder. This may mean that you change your diet, follow it for three months and then have to switch back due to it being too restrictive and easy for your eating disorder to grab a-hold of – and that is okay. The important thing is to recognise where your desire to change your food choices is coming from, and deep down you will know whether or not it is due to your eating disorder.

If you are unsure or want to make changes but are a bit anxious about how people around you may react, talk to your team, your family, partners and carers. While you may not agree or like what they have to say, they can offer opinions and views in which you may have not yet considered. They are not struggling with an eating disorder, and while we may feel like we know what our true self is saying, these disorders have a sneaky way of convincing us otherwise. I encourage you to take your time when approaching a delicate situation such as food and dietary changes, jumping into something too quickly can be a slippery slope downward and may ruffle too many feathers of those around you. It is your life, but make sure you live your life right – we get only one body and we better treat it damn well.

Rawing Meg xx