Coming Clean

Today was the first day in over a month that I simultaneously had no dizziness and no homework. How did I celebrate? By cleaning my apartment, of course. I'm not talking about just tidying up. I gave this entire place a good, thorough scrub down, a real "deep cleaning" as my boyfriend calls it. I swept, vacuumed, and mopped all the floors. I cleaned both bedrooms, both bathrooms, the kitchen, the laundry room, the walls, the floorboards. I washed all the sheets and blankets and laundry. I cleaned every inch of this place. And it feels amazing. It feels like it should. I don't consider myself a neat freak by any means, but I like keeping things clean. Since I've been sick, I've done only surface cleanings in the few, fleeting moments I didn't feel like collapsing. It's so great just to sit down in a nice, clean room, breathe in, and relax. So I started thinking,

Isn't it the same for our bodies?

Our bodies feel better clean, too. No only is it important to eat and eat regularly, but it's important to eat smart. Eat healthy. Know what you're eating. Love what you're eating. Let it nourish your body.

Take care of your body. Keep it clean.

I consciously buy foods that don't have additives or chemicals or ingredients I can't pronounce. I don't want to put anything artificial into my body. Instead of buying food flavored with unnecessary dyes or weird things like cochineal/carmine/carminic acid (it's ground up bugs!) I opt for foods colored with natural ingredients I understand--like beet juice. Or carrots. I cook 99% of my meals at home. I make things from scratch. It isn't difficult, it's therapeutic. It's more satisfying that way. It makes me love food for the first time in my life. Simple food. Clean food.

I care about my body, and I care about the earth. Since I became vegan a few years ago (though I've been a vegetarian since childhood) I vowed to put nothing in or on my body I didn't understand, trust, or support, or value. Veganism is a cultural dedication that goes far beyond food. As a vegan, I don't wear fur or leather. I don't use any cosmetics, chemicals, or products that were tested on animals or contain animal ingredients. This is obviously a personal choice, but it's one I stand firmly by. There is no room for guilt in my life.

I'm coming clean.

I understand that my body needs food to survive. I am also sorry for the years of calorie restriction and starvation I subjected it to. I want to make it up to myself. I want to nurture myself, to protect myself. To give only the best things to myself. The best ingredients.

I wouldn't do it if I didn't love myself.

If you asked me if I loved myself six years ago, I would have laughed in your face.

All that baggage. All that pain. The guilt, the sorrow, the lies, the mistakes. The shortcomings, the insecurities, the disappointments.

Washed away.

I've come clean.

Fighting Anemia

It has been some time since I actually planned out my meals. I know that for many people, meal planning is an essential part of recovering from an eating disorder. Some people swear by it. For me personally, it always seems to do more harm than good. Once I see all of that food written down on paper it becomes real. And I don't want to eat it, so I end up eating even less. For me, it's better not to count calories. It's better not to take inventory of everything I'm eating. It triggers the eating disorder and makes me feel miserable.

Since I've had all of these problems with dizziness, I've really tried to get a handle on my anemia. The doctor said that though I am anemic, he doesn't think it's the culprit that's causing all the dizziness. However, getting more iron into my body might help to alleviate some of it and it might help to make me feel better overall. I hate taking any kind of pills or drugs, vitamins included, so I don't want to take iron supplements. I already take multivitamins and B-12 supplements and I can barely remember to take those. My solution to iron deficiency is to make a conscious effort to incorporate more iron into my body naturally by eating iron rich foods. I know that there are two types of iron our body needs: heme iron and non-heme iron. Heme iron comes from meat and is absorbed very easily by the body. The problem is I'm vegan so I'm lacking heme iron. As for non-heme iron, it is found in vegetable form but it needs vitamin c in order to be absorbed by the body. Though I do eat many foods that contain non-heme iron, and though I do get plenty of vitamin c, for the last few days I've been consciously eating more iron rich foods than I might normally eat, or at least in higher quantities. In order to do this, I've been loosely following a meal plan. Here are some of the iron rich foods I am making an effort to eat more of:

Soybeans, Black-Eyed Peas, Barley, Tofu, Lentils, Chickpeas, Sunflower Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Raisins, Spinach, Broccoli, Bok Choy.

Though I already enjoy all of these foods and eat them regularly, I am trying to make sure I eat at least one of them with every meal. So far, the meal planning hasn't made me nervous but I haven't committed any of it to paper. It's more of a mental dietary guideline that I'm keeping loose and unstructured. The minute I get too meticulous and calculated everything falls apart and my eating disorder kicks into overdrive. I'm not going to let that happen.

I'm hoping that eating more of these iron-rich foods will make me feel better. It's a little early to tell since I've only be concentrating on it for the last few days. For dinner last night I made a barley tabbouleh with fresh parsley and mint. Tonight I had "tacos" with black beans and black-eyed peas. I also made some granola with raisins, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, dried cherries, oats, and almonds that I've been snacking on throughout the day. I guess that I have nothing to lose here. Being vegan, I have to be extra careful to make sure all of my nutrient needs are met. It's time I take control and be the healthiest me that I can be.

Who says being vegan is hard?

It's actually not as complicated as most people think. And the good thing about going vegan is that it's healthy for your body, the environment, and the planet. For dinner tonight I made risotto with corn, tomatoes, and fresh basil with an avocado, grapefruit, and pistachio salad and fresh mint lemonade. Delicious and healthy. My boyfriend said it was restaurant quality which means a lot coming from a chef. But now there's all these dishes to do...

I have found that cooking has been an unexpected but very therapeutic way for me to recover from my eating disorder. I've had to learn how to eat healthily, which is something I never did, even before I was anorexic. I have been a vegetarian since I was a child because I couldn't stand the thought of eating an animal. I used to look at chicken nuggets and see nothing but the baby chickens my grandfather raised in his barn, the little yellow puffs of feather and fuzz that I wanted so badly to touch, not to eat. So I didn't. But for me, a vegetarian diet was not a diet of vegetables. I found myself eating lots of french fries, pizza, pasta-- all of those things that are indeed vegetarian, and often wonderfully delicious, but nutritionally invalid.

These days I have traded in my lifetime of vegetarianism for strict veganism. This means no meat, no fish, no eggs, no dairy, no gelatin, no honey. Apart from food, it also means no fur, no leather, no animal-tested cosmetics, toiletries, cleaning supplies, and no products of any sort that use animal by-products of any capacity. It's not as difficult as it sounds. I've been doing it for years and have had to change my lifestyle very little in order to accommodate it.

I am certain my jump to veganism was indirectly related to my anorexia, which, ironic as it sounds, has made me a healthier person. How? By being so conscious of everything I put into my body, I then became conscious of where my food came from and how it was made. I couldn't eat in restaurants because everything was so fat and calorie packed that it terrified me. So did packaged and processed foods. My solution? I didn't eat much, but what I did eat, I made myself.

It is weird to consider cooking as a means of dealing with anorexia, since as an anorexic, I barely ate at all. Instead, I would watch the food network for hours. I could taste the food in my mind just from watching it being prepared without ever having to taste it. I picked up lots of useful information along the way. Somehow I managed to learn how to properly feed myself in the midst of starving myself. When I actually began the recovery process and slowly started to reintegrate food back into my life, I found that cooking was enjoyable, and eating could be enjoyable too. This is what else I have learned:

Food is not the enemy.

Food gives our bodies the fuel they need to survive and to thrive in the world.

We are all so full of potential, each one of us capable of so many wonderful and unique things.

We can't do them while running on empty.

For a list of companies that do and do not test on animals, please visit:
http://search.caringconsumer.com/

For more information on becoming vegan, please visit:
http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/