Am I Recovered If I Don’t Eat Meat?

Dear Ellen:

I’m making a lot of progress toward a complete recovery from anorexia. My mother has helped a great deal by preparing my meals, and not letting me get away with shortchanging myself with small portions and the lowest calorie foods I can find. I’m doing well with this. But my mother and I are arguing about red meat. I genuinely don’t like it and don’t want to eat it, but she says that I can’t consider myself completely recovered unless I include it in my diet. Who is right?

R.C., North Vancouver

Dear R.C.:

I haven’t eaten red meat since I was five years old, and I consider myself completely recovered from my eating disorder. It’s normal to have likes and dislikes, and it’s common to have aversions to certain foods after having a bad experience with an item.  When I was a little girl, I’d accompany my mother on her errands, including the butcher shop, which was a terrifying place to me with its smells, blood, and dead flesh hanging about. At dinner one night, while eating a hamburger, I bit into a piece of gristle, threw up, and never ate red meat again. It’s a completely separate issue from the anorexia I developed as a teenager.  I know someone who had the flu while eating cottage and cantaloupe, barfed it up, and never ate either food again. She’d never consider herself as having an eating disorder, and neither would I.

If I or anyone else with an aversion wants to get over it, systematic desensitization or some other type of exposure therapy would most likely be effective, but the question is, would life be that much better as a result? Does the aversion interfere with the ability to live a happy, healthy existence with food? I think not.

As long as your iron levels are normal and you’re getting adequate protein intake from other sources, I wouldn’t worry about adding red meat to your diet, and I wouldn’t consider it the ultimate test of your recovery. Tell your mother to adjust her expectations and keep up the great work!

With love,

Ellen

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