Wellness Influencer Opens Up About 'Soul-Killing' Eating Disorder

It looked like Lee Tilghman had it all during her height as a wellness influencer from 2014 to 2019.

But Instagram is not real life, and off-camera, Tilghman, 35, was suffering from anxiety, depression and an eating disorder that controlled her life.

“It was soul-killing,” she told the New York Post in a story published Wednesday, August 13.

Known as @LeeFromAmerica on Instagram, Tilghman had more than 400,000 followers at her peak and was making $300,000 a year via sponsored posts. But, as she explains in her new memoir, If You Don’t Like This Post, I Will Die, her diet began to dominate her life.

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“I did two twenty-one-day cleanses back-to-back,” she writes. “I got rid of gluten, dairy, soy, peanuts, and sugar. I paid [a Reiki-certified healer] the first half of an $8,000 coaching package, which included breathwork, moon circles, and unlimited text support.”

Obsessed with her image, Tilghman said she would often take up to 200 photos just to find one in which she thought she looked thin enough to post. She was so afraid of ingesting something she had cut out of her diet that she stopped going out to eat.

Courtesy of Lee Tilghman/Instagram

Even when she was honest with her followers, posting about her health struggles and past with anorexia, the opportunities kept rolling in. Those opportunities kept her glued to her phone, feeding the problem.

“I put my health [and Instagram] above everything, including family and relationships,” she told the Post. “If your body is a temple and you treat it super well and you eat all the right foods and do all the things, but you don’t have anyone close to you because you’re trying to control your life so much, it’s a dark place.”

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The beginning of the end came in 2018 when Tilghman organized a wellness workshop, charging $350 for the cheapest tickets. She faced steep criticism for her so-called white privilege, and her apology only made things worse, as she began losing sponsors.

Around the same time, her apartment flooded. It was at that point that she realized almost everything she owned was a gift from a brand in search of promotion.

“I was a prop too — a disposable, soulless, increasingly emaciated mannequin used by companies to sell more stuff,” she writes in her book. “We all were — all the billions of us who thought we were using Instagram when really it was the other way around.”

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In 2019, Tilghman deleted her Instagram and checked herself into a six-week intensive treatment center for her eating disorder.

“I felt like an addict when they’re so done with their drug of choice that they can’t wait to throw it away,” she said of her first day without Instagram. “It was amazing.”

She did eventually log back on, but her updates became sporadic until it came time to promote her book. Though she hasn’t ruled out doing influencer content in the future, Tilghman is happy where she is now.

“The whimsy is back,” she said.

If You Don’t Like This Post, I Will Die is out now.