Eating Meat To Recover from Anorexia: 6 Things To Try Today

In this series on vegetarianism and veganism we’ve considered the ever-so-persuasive wiles of the ethics trick (Part 1); we’ve explored the relations between V/V and eating disorders to help understand how V/V gets itself and the ED so well embedded (Part 2). We’ve asked the tricky questions of who really benefits from V/V in an eating disorder context (I’ve suggested it’s usually mainly the disorder [Part 3]) and whether you care about recovering enough to put it above pretty much everything else (Part 4). We’ve thought about what it means to turn the focus back on you and your appetites and the needs they’re expressions of (Part 5). We’ve zoomed out to assess the pragmatics of life priority tradeoffs (Part 6) and of not ruling out a temporary tactic that helps us make progress by treating it as if it had to be forever (Part 7). It’s funny how meat-eating can be a pivot for all of this. I certainly didn’t start writing a V/V post thinking it would turn into an 8-parter.

So, where does all this leave us? Maybe you started reading this series convinced that your current dietary exclusions are unquestionable. In that case, I would be happy if your certainty has been unsettled even slightly. Or maybe you were feeling some uncertainty about whether V/V is holding back your recovery, and these explorations have given you a framework for thinking things through with more clarity; that too would make this post feel worth having written.

Wherever you find yourself now, I’ll conclude with a few suggestions for actions you could take. I should note that of course the two Vs aren’t the same—veganism is always, I would say, incompatible with full recovery from a restrictive eating disorder (please let me know if you have proved me wrong!), whereas vegetarianism just makes it a lot harder. You can gauge the urgency of change accordingly.

1. One way to get more clarity could be to interrogate your origin stories. Write a paragraph about when and how your V/V started (or two, if you started vegetarian and became vegan later, or vice versa), and another about how your eating disorder did. Then compare the two/three stories and look for convergences, divergences, and clues to read between the lines. For example, if the V/V story was more about yourself or other humans than about the animals in question (maybe you didn’t like how other people talked about meat eating, or felt better when you didn’t), that may suggest the ethical reasons were never as central as you might like to think when telling the public-facing version. Maybe there are even direct points of intersection between the V/V origin story and the ED one, in terms of dates and/or themes (e.g. a life phase when both started, another illness or crisis point that felt like the shared trigger). This is obviously pointless if you try to tell a story that shows you in an admirable light, so do whatever you need to do to get yourself into a state of mind in which total honesty is the aim.
2. If you dare, invite someone who knew you at the relevant time(s) to do the same thing, maybe a parent, sibling, or old friend. Parents sometimes write to me with brief accounts along the lines of “my daughter’s anorexia hit when she became vegetarian and then took up running to prepare for her first year on a university sports team”. Other people writing your V/V and ED origin stories may pinpoint moments of change and reasons for change that don’t stand out to you. You can then analyse them on your own, or better, share your own versions too, and discuss what you can learn from the similarities and differences.
3. As a next step, map out what your main reasons are now for eating the way you do. Take 5 minutes to brainstorm as many as you can on a large sheet of paper, and then rank them by importance. If any of them are vague (e.g. I avoid red meat to be healthy), interrogate them, maybe in spider diagram form. What do you mean by healthy? What kinds of health do you care about? Why? In what ways are (or aren’t) the relevant ways of eating furthering the things you care about? What are their collateral costs? Could anything else achieve similar benefits with fewer costs? If you’ve written that your diet is V/V because the animal cruelty bothers you, you could consider alternative ways to avoid contributing to animal misery that don’t involve eating no animal products. Let your reflections fill up the page, maybe with lines of connection emerging between apparently disparate factors. Again, be as honest as you can, and as sceptical as you can. If you like not eating a major food group because you think it keeps you skinny, say so—and then push further: Why does that matter, how else might you achieve it, how seriously should you take it?
4. Step 4: What could you change in your diet tomorrow to get more benefits with fewer costs? How do you feel about these options? (Here I think of a reader who once wrote to me to say that she was vegetarian but sometimes wondered about eating fish again. She felt conflicted because it felt “wrong” to imagine eating meat but she also knew it would be useful in providing some much-needed protein, since she was intolerant to soy, beans, lentils, and many other foods—probably because of the digestive damage done by malnutrition. (I don’t know whether she did ever eat any meant, though she said she tried some of her husband’s pain au chocolat that day despite being gluten-intolerant, and loved it.) Sketch out three options for how you could eat differently from tomorrow, with hypothesised benefits for each, and be as observant as you can about how you feel when you contemplate making this change. Make an observation (I feel scared), then ask why, and again, push a bit with your why’s; keep asking until you get to what feels like the heart of the matter. If there’s fear arising, what are you really scared of? Why? Why?
5. Now flesh out the three dietary change options in more detail: If you were going to eat a bit of meat or some eggs or ice cream, what would it be, and how would you do it? Would you make yourself a boiled egg with buttered soldiers for breakfast, or would you ask an old friend to go to McDonald’s with you for cheeseburgers and fries? If you would need to shop, where would you go and when? Flesh out three possible plans in detail to get used to the idea, and to think beyond what your eating disorder would want such a step to be (safest, lowest-cal). If you can’t help automatically starting there, tweak until you get to something that feels like what you might want. Remember the appreciation principle (Part 6): If you’re going to do something that has some negative consequences, make sure it has some real positive ones too, e.g. your enjoyment.
6. Now, finally, try something out: Follow one of your plans! What actually happens? The effect on anything beyond you is minuscule; so what is the effect on you? As ever, only one way to find out.

I hope this series has illuminated a little more of what it might mean for you to relearn how to eat well—without which there is no way for recovery to happen. In sum I’d just say: Yes, of course there are reasons to eat less meat, but no, those reasons may not be good enough if recovery is really what you’re aiming for. If you’re not really, then do whatever. If you are, remember that you need to give yourself all the help you can get.

**Image credit: Nicoguaro via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.**