(Written by Lila Flint Roberts)

I have nothing against the principles of a Vegan diet: I believe and admire. I am currently vegan (again) and am trying to ensure I do it in the healthiest way possible. I was just another individual who turned veganism into an eating disorder.

For the many, veganism is a conscious decision towards a more considerate and wholesome life. For me, it became a viable and socially acceptable excuse for my restriction of food. Essentially, fuelled by plant based pin-ups and an overwhelming self-hatred, I managed to disguise my eating disorder as veganism and pick up orthorexia along my way.

This started in February 2015, and was the last resort in my pursuit of happiness/skinniness (same thing, right?). I’d tried starving myself for as long as I could, which inevitably resulted in binge eating. Notably, making raw brownies for my friends, but eating them all on a drunken binge before they could. I’d ‘tried’ bulimia, but found it difficult whilst spending stints at home. Learning to love myself? Haha, take a hike. I turned to Instagram, and became obsessed with advocates of a plant based diet.

I went from your average vegan, to “raw before four” and then quickly slipped into a completely raw, zero carbohydrate diet and exercised EVERY morning. I was in the grips of orthorexia: an obsession with eating foods that one considers healthy. I woke up at 5am in order to run, do circuits and yoga before being in the library at 8am to study (I was in my third year at University). I would have a ‘large’ breakfast, consisting of overnight chia with fruit, and then a bag of kale and some cashews for lunch. I vetoed drinking, eating out and socialising. I lost friends, cancelled dates and alienated myself. I thought about food ALL. THE. TIME. I was both ecstatically happy and devastatingly sad at the same time.

This was part of a much wider shift in my life. I was feeling the pressure at University, was (still) getting over my first love, and had just started taking medication for anxiety and depression. It was a lot, and my combination of veganism and orthorexia allowed me a new level of control over what entered my body. It gave me such a thrill.

It’s no revelation that social media and social pressures cause confidence issues for the millennial. Search “vegan” on Instagram and you come across slim women and beautifully merchandised food bowls. Search “popular diet” into your search engine and you come across The Skinny Bitch Diet, which promises wonderful and permanent results by adopting a calorie controlled vegan diet. Search “dieting” on Tumblr and you come across posts promoting the coupling of vegan and anorexia. It’s difficult to escape from the external pressures of beauty, I know that all too well working in the fashion industry, and it has never been more important to learn to love yourself and food.

If you are thinking about going Vegan, please think about the below and consider your motivations.

Why are you doing it? Are your motivations environmental? After all, veganism conserves water, reduces energy consumption and contributes to purifying the air. Ethical? I don’t need to expand on this. Or, are your motivations to lose weight and look like the girls on Instagram? If the latter, please consider that there are other ways to lose weight healthily. Diets like The Skinny Bitch state that their guidelines are “extremely restrictive and may place dieters at risk of nutrient deficiencies”, “most people do not do well on a vegan diet (in this context) in the long term) and “menu plans are not nutritionally balanced”. This is not a safe way to live, and is certainly not what the majority of vegans live on.

This leads me onto my next consideration. Are you depriving yourself, or finding plant-based alternatives? This is where a lot of my problems lay. Ice cream? Nope. Cheese? Nope. Meat? Nope. Cake? Nope. You see where I am going with this? There are a wide range of replacements available if you are willing to swap. I, however, went cold turkey and cut all of these foods out. I then began to cull more. I said goodbye to carbohydrates, and this included cutting off a lot of fruit and vegetables due to their carb density. This in unhealthy and indicative of an eating disorder. In my case, it was my conscious decision to eliminate certain things from my diet because I considered them unhealthy for me due to extensive googling. Carbohydrates make you fat: cut them out. There’s also a large amount of carbs in some vegetables such as sweetcorn. Cut it out. Everything spiralled out of control, and I was constantly tired and melancholic. This isn’t what being a vegan is about, especially as now there are so many wonderful options. Ben & Jerry’s now do a vegan ice cream! There are great meat, cake and cheese replacements! It’s a miracle! My other half the other day even cooked me a vegan meal and said he didn’t miss meat or cheese! Huzzah! Contemporaneously it is becoming much easier, and more ‘socially acceptable’, to eat healthily as a vegan. I recently went into an All Bar One and they had a veganuary menu (in February)! ALL BAR ONE?!

I found veganism also justified my examining of food labels. Was I looking at ingredients? No, I was looking at carbohydrate, protein, fat and sugar levels. After purchasing a seemingly vegan product one evening at University, one of my housemates pointed out to me that it in fact wasn’t – it contained milk. I was furious with myself, and felt sick. But I wasn’t angry because I ate an animal product: I was angry because I had cheated my diet. I could feel and see the fat clinging to me when I woke up the next morning. So question number three: how would YOU feel if you ate a non-vegan product? If the answer is anything like the above, please reconsider the path you are about to take. Fast forward three years, and I am giving it a go again. Just last night I consumed some Quorn Mince, which isn’t vegan – it has milk powder in it. Milk is seemingly very sneaky, hey? I didn’t have the same feeling as I did at University, and I didn’t feel I was cheating my diet. I accepted that I made a mistake when reading the ingredients label, and carried on whilst acknowledging that not everyone is perfect and one little hiccup doesn’t mean I am not doing a good thing for the planet.

On a similar thread, I come to my last point. Picture this: your friends, who were once against your choice as it no longer meant cheeky trips to Nando’s, take you to vegan junk food heaven. It’s full of dairy-free cheese, chips, meat free burgers/chicken and all sorts of gluttonous snacks. But, it’s still ‘junk’ food. How do you feel? Panic, because what is your excuse now? “I can’t eat that, I’m vegan” is no longer suffice. Can you say you’re not hungry? No, because you are out for dinner. You’re starving, but terrified of the guilt you are about to experience after having those (fake) cheesy chips. This should sound alarm bells – this is not a valid reason to turn to veganism. Most would rejoice over the fact that such a place exists! And believe me, they DO. The plethora of alternatives available now should be embraced and welcomed, not be seen as a hurdle on your track to losing weight by cutting the majority of food groups.

Now, if you hadn’t already clocked – I am not a doctor. I just about got a B in GCSE Science. I am speaking from my personal experience, and hope that it encourages a few people to seek help if any of this reminisces with them. I am therefore not going to give advice on how to be a good vegan, there are a plethora of sites and books that can do that for you.

As previously mentioned, I am a born-again-vegan. I’m trying again because I have now educated myself on environmental and health benefits, but I would be telling a lie if I said I wasn’t hoping to lose weight. I believe once you have an eating disorder, it is with you forever. It’s a mental health issue, like depression, and you must learn how to live with and suppress your demons. I still binge, I still exercise and I still obsess over what I am putting into my body. I am still very much under the grips of orthorexia. But compared to three years ago, I am in a much better place. I recently ate a vegan pizza from a takeaway, and I didn’t immediately feel full of regret. I’m okay with the pace of my progression, and I am happier now than I have ever been. I no longer live by the philosophy that I Will Feel Better Once I Am Skinny.