Anorexia and plant based?

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Anorexia and plant based?

Postby Beclaw » Thu Jan 04, 2018 7:53 am

I am in a treatment program for anorexia. I’m really struggling with the food component- the meal planning/prepping. The dietician at the program is hesitant with me leaning towards eating vegan due to the problem of severe restriction that I’ve lived with for so long. They want to promote a healthier mindset of moderate thinking. I’m allergic to dairy and eggs, and have no desire to eat meat. I struggle with plant based due to the amount of carbs each meal contains. (Something I’m working with them to overcome). I’m wondering if focusing on a whole food plant based diet will help me beat anorexia and be healthy again. I have a lot of digestive issues, my body is no longer coping. At the program they’ve been working with me to meal plan, but I’m not getting far. Would the meal planner service be a good option? I’m hesitant to sign up for it, not knowing if it will help.
Last edited by Beclaw on Thu Jan 04, 2018 7:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Anorexia and plant based?

Postby roundcoconut » Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:36 pm

I would hope that you would be supported in constructing a food plan that is calorie-sufficient, by a sympathetic counsellor or dietician. And if you want to be plant-based, then I would hope that you would be supported in that.

If you have an A-Hole counsellor or dietician, then yeah, they will probably say, “You CAN’T avoid oil” or “You CAN’T construct a well-balanced diet without dairy”. But screw them, right? I would shop around until you find health professionals who support you in how you want to eat, assuming you are planning to eat in a nutritionally- and calorie-sufficient way.

The thing about becoming a successful and long-term non-anorexic, is that you want to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, and want to achieve and maintain calorie-sufficient intake on a daily basis. If you can do this on a plant-based diet (and many of us CAN, so there’s no reason why you can’t do so as well), then your food choices just need to be nutritionally sufficient as well (meaning, if you punch into a cronometer, you find that you are getting the vitamins and such that the body needs to function well).

There are many health professionals such as Dr Barnard, Dr Esselstyn and Dr McDougall, whose nutritional approaches are sound, for someone recovering from obesity or bulimia or anorexia or whatever. Good nutrition, is good nutrition. Simple as that.

The big mistake that anorexics often make, is to eat a lot of packaged and processed foods, because the calorie counts on these foods, is printed on the package. So please steer clear of this tendency, going forward, especially if that was a tendency in your active-anorexia days. You almost gotta get over the idea of not having a “nutrition facts” label on your potato, or on your apple, and so not having as precise a notion of where your intake is for the day.

Nevertheless, frozen foods can offer you some amount of comfort in that regard — a bag of frozen cauliflower, or frozen corn, is fairly precise. Because you DO want to be in the ballpark of correct nutrition — you want to feel confident that you are getting ENOUGH, without getting way too much. (Calorically speaking!)

I hope this is useful! I am not speaking to your exact situation, because I don’t know it. But assuming you are an adult, you should be able to choose how you want to eat, and not have oils or dairy pressured into your diet, by outside forces who say they are doing it for your own good. :)
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