MY EATING DISORDER JOURNEY

Last year I was diagnosed with Atypical Anorexia.

 

Hearing the word, Anorexia scared me. I didn't think I was skinny enough or ill enough to be diagnosed. However, you do not need to look a certain way to have an eating disorder; it is a mental illness.

 

An Eating Disorder is so clever how it creeps up on you. At the beginning of lockdown, I was finishing University and moving back home, where I was ready to find my first social media marketing role.

 

However, it was really hard to find any work during lockdown, so I decided to lose a bit of weight to keep my mind occupied and have something to focus on. I began calorie counting and exercising and started to lose quite a significant amount of weight in a year.

 

I remember getting to 9 stone and realising that my body didn't look what I imagined a 9 stone body to look like. I didn't have a flat stomach; I had roles and chubby thighs, so I thought I needed to lose more weight. The goal of losing a little bit of weight now changed to wanting a flat stomach, and I began to body check and became obsessed with the number on the scale going down.

 

I wanted my body to look flawless; I wanted to be perfect, and perfect to me, became being the smallest version of myself. My life was dictated around the obsession of food, calories and the scale. I was still so unhappy with the lowest number on the scale I got to. I felt like I was huge, but I was blinded to what my body really looked like.

 

At the time, I didn't realise I had an Eating Disorder. I was trapped in this mentality of losing weight being a game, and my Eating Disorder was thriving off the fact it had total control over me.

 

I completely lost my identity. I became fearful of certain food groups; I needed to be in control of exactly what I was eating; I was obsessed with eating the lowest possible calories; I would skip breakfast, some days even lunch and only eat my dinner.

 

I became addicted to exercising and would feel extremely guilty if I didn't work out one day. I didn't want to leave the house; I was irritable and angry with the people around me who loved and cared for me. I was exhausted and lightheaded all the time, and I also lost my period but completely ignored the fact I had.

 

You don't realise that you're losing yourself. You are fixated on having this unrealistic body type, which your Eating Disorder is tricking you into.

 

You will never be happy listening to your Eating Disorder. You will be happy for a split second that you're at your lowest weight, but then your Eating Disorder will switch and say that you can lose more and more until you've disappeared. It's slowly killing you but disguised as a so-called friend you rely solely on and trust. This voice that never leaves you and is making all your decisions for you.

 

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