From a life of eating disorders to a positive relationship with food and my body!
For those of you that read the intro on this website, you’ll know I suffered with eating disorders for many years. So I thought I’d just give some more details surrounding my own journey.
It started back in primary school, where I spent most of my time there being bullied. No matter how strong of a person you are, when you’re being called fat every day, you will eventually start to believe it. Now remember at this time I was a child, I didn’t even know what an eating disorder was, never mind understanding that I had one.
It started properly when I was in I think around year 4 of primary school. So I think I was about 8 years old.
Let me also just point out I was a very active child already! I never was overweight! I was always playing outside, I loved sports of any kind, sports day at school was my favourite day of the year! But I truly started to believe I was fat. I was unhappy. I didn’t want to be called fat anymore. So all I knew at that age was food makes me fat. If I don’t eat I won’t be fat anymore. That’s exactly what I did, I stopped eating, id have the odd meal if I was around someone but that was it. I remember at lunch time at primary school, I’d take the smallest nibbles of my sandwiches so the dinner lady’s thought I was eating, then right at the end I’d screw all my food up into a tiny ball so that it looked like I only left a small amount and throw it in the bin. When really it was most, if not all of my lunch I was throwing away.
In all honesty I can’t remember how long this went on for, as my mum fills in a lot of the blanks for me. There are certain things which I can remember, but time periods isn’t one of them things. Eventually people started to notice that I wasn’t eating. So at school I then spent every lunchtime sat on my own with a dinner lady watching me eat every last bit of my meal.
I really hope that schools are more educated now to handle situations like this differently. Because looking back, a child who already feels secluded, lonely and sad- to then isolate them on their own drawing attention to them most definitely wasn’t the best way to handle it.
This is then when I developed bulimia. I knew in my mind I didn’t want to have this food, but I was being forced to eat. So the only way to get around it was to make myself sick and bring all the food back up. I remember being in the toilets making myself sick and someone in my school shouting over and telling me not to do it to myself and asking me why.
But no one understood. I don’t think at this point I even understood myself. I just knew I didn’t want to be fat anymore and food was the enemy to me.
Again I’m not sure how long this went on for. But my mum said she eventually had to block the toilet at home so that I was unable to flush the toilet after making myself sick. She also made me live off milkshakes. Like I said I was a child, so I didn’t know that liquids contain calories!
My mum was an absolute angel at this point in my life. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been to watch your child go through this for years.
I’ve always believed I recovered from my eating disorders in my teenage years, but over the last few years I’ve realised this is far from the truth. I’ve found pictures where I was so thin you can see my hip bones sticking out.
When reflecting over these years I realised I still very much had disordered eating. I’d spend many a month’s obsessing over not wanting to obsess about my weight. Therefore I ate whatever I wanted. Causing me to then put on weight. Becoming unhappy in myself again and spending months restricting myself.
My weight was constantly yo-yoing for years.
It hand on heart wasn’t until I got my own coach Kate, who helped to educate me on why our bodies NEED food to survive that it all started to click. Sure I can enjoy a meal out if I want to- but I won’t ever feel guilty for it. Yes ill provide my body now with all the goodness it needs, because food is an important part of living. It provides us with the energy it needs to get out of bed in the morning. We need food to survive. And trust me I want to LIVE!
I don’t think I’ll ever be fully recovered. But I now love my body for what it is, young and healthy! And I also LOVE food!
