confessions of a vegan

I read an article on Yahoo the other day called “The Dark Side of Vegetarianism.” You can read it here if you’d like: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20090401/hl_hsn/thedarksideofvegetarianism. I’ll sum it up. It was talking about how teenagers may use vegetarianism to mask eating disorders. In regards to teens 15-18, they found “about 21 percent of teens who had been vegetarians said they used unhealthy weight-control behaviors, compared with 10 percent of teens who had never been vegetarians.”

As someone who had an eating disorder at 15, I can relate somewhat. I, too, would normally eat only fruits and vegetables when given the chance. But vegetarianism is also what helped me develop healthy eating habits in the end. I have never liked meat. Beef especially sickened me when I had an eating disorder. To me, it just seemed like it was entirely fat.

I never ate meat at school; if I ate anything it would be fruit or dressingless salad. However, my family was big on “family meals”, so I had no choice but to choke down some disgusting hamburger they put in front of me. Vegetarian meals were not an option. I would make myself throw it up as soon as possible after dinner. I know how appalling this will sound, but one summer night my mother beat me to the bathroom, so I walked nearly a mile to my neighborhood Target and threw up in their bathroom.

About a year and a half after I got help for my eating disorder, I decided I really wanted to be a vegetarian. Given the fact that they finally knew about my past eating habits, my parents were skeptical. So, I did a lot of research and literally gave them a presentation on how I would still eat well, without meat. Although it was a pain to do all that research and practically sell them on MY vegetarianism, it just showed their concern for my health. I think that's where some parents go wrong. They never have meals together so their kids are either: a) eating nothing but mcdonald's with their friends every night, or b) not eating at all, but their parents don't know because they assume their child gets food elsewhere. Granted, that's not every family that doesn't eat together, but I'm just saying that although I hated eating dinner with my family, they were more aware of what I was doing, and I wasn't able to hide my eating disorder for very long.