My transition to vegetarianism (and reading up on veganism) is making it difficult to eat at all. vegetarian

I've struggled with body image since I can remember and an eating disorder since approximately 2008. The past four years I've been in recovery and have managed my ED very successfully. But with my recent changes in diet (combined with weeks of unsuccessful job hunting, an existential crisis, and reading up on animal abuse and veganism) I feel old habits coming back. No food feels safe. I open the refrigerator and nothing inside even registers as food.

I'm feeling like a failure before I've even really begun. It's only been a month or so since I began to limit my diet and I'm reverting to old mechanisms to cope with my anxiety and depression regarding everything going on. It's easier to just not eat.

This morning I threw up (not intentionally!) after forcing down a third of an apple. A damn apple! I recognize that this is not ok and I want to be healthy. I know I can be healthy with a limited diet. The past four years I have made tremendous progress but it feels like I'm slipping back in to an old mindset of existential depression that these recent changes seem to have aggravated. My entire being and existence causes suffering to others...and it feels so heavy. The car I drive, the apple I couldn't eat, the shoes I'm wearing...it's all tainted with greedy capitalist 'bottom lines' that take advantage of the poor, uneducated, the animals, the environment... Why put my health and well-being ahead of any other creatures?

I'm currently still eating fish, eggs, and cheese but not milk. I'm not even fully vegetarian yet. Before I was only eating chicken and occasionally bison. A part of my mind says that this shouldn't be so difficult for me - I haven't cut out that much yet. But with everything I've been reading it's difficult for me to eat even eggs and salmon, now, too. I want to do as much as I can because every change, even small ones, makes a difference. And the difference in this situation involves living creatures.

It doesn't help then when I try to Google this issue I'm flooded with morning sickness information, articles implying I could have cancer, or that I'm using this transition to cover up and perpetuate my ED.

Has anybody been here before? How did you transition successfully? How did you limit your diet without triggering an ED? I tried tracking my meals with the My Fitness Pal app, but as much as I cook the app ended up making me feel more anxious.

Submitted September 24, 2015 at 04:05AM by rabidchiweenie http://ift.tt/1iMRwu1 vegetarian