Eating disorders awareness week 27th February to 5th March 2023

 This week is eating disorders awareness week and it's important to me as I have suffered from eating disorders for the majority of my adult life and if I could rewind the clock I would. Eating Disorders have affected my physical and mental health and I've had friends die from eating disorders and I want more people to recognise the signs in themselves and others and get the help early on before the damage is done and recovery is still possible.

As a society we are judged on what we look like yet expected to socialise with food and drink. You can guarantee in every workplace or social event the topic of diets will come up and there will always be someone saying they're been good only having a salad and being too full for pudding. I often worry about friends doing what I know rationally are unhealthy unsafe diets yet am guilty of trying them myself constantly obsessed with losing weight. 

When you think of eating disorders everyone thinks of a low weight anorexic and is concerned when someone becomes a low weight but the majority of people with Eating Disorders are normal weight or overweight. Bulimia, binge eating disorder and eating disorder not otherwise specified with symptoms of mixed eating disorders are just as serious and even people with anorexia are unwell well before they get to a low weight, often people can switch between anorexia and bulimia they are good at hiding it and sadly as a society we're all praised on weight loss without knowing how someone is losing weight so often we're praised for losing weight with eating disorder behaviours. Eating Disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness either directly from the physical effects of the eating disorder or by suicide. 

I have a pacemaker and defibrillator due to bulimia causing a hereditary heart condition to get worse and I was told if I didn't have a pacemaker and defibrillator I was at high risk of dying at the time I didn't want to die. As time went on I also became suicidal because of my eating disorder and other mental health issues and I am lucky to have survived as I did make alot of severe suicide attempts and spent a year sectioned in hospital in 2015. Years of bulimia have damaged my teeth, I have a front tooth that rotted and snapped and has had to be capped a few times, the rest of my teeth have no enamel left after 18 years of being sick most days damaged them so they are sensitive to hot and cold foods and drink. I had to have my gallbladder out in 2018 and still often get stomach pain, My oesophagus apparently after some tests I had doesnt work properly so I get acid reflux that gets so bad it clogs up my throat and blocks my ears, it affects me being able to sing which I love doing. Sometimes physically I have to be sick to clear that and to get rid of the pain I often get so even times I'm feeling better mentally, physically it is hard to recover after so long.

My eating disorder started when I was about 11 or 12 but I had issues with food before then. In primary school I had packed lunch and would be sent into first sitting and would still be in the lunch room at the end of dinner, it took me a whole hour to eat 2 small square sandwiches and a yogert and packet of crisps which I offered around to everyone else. A psychotherapist I saw once said it could have been my way of avoiding having to go in the playground as I was very quiet and socially anxious and got bullied and struggled to fit in and make friends. I was known for my food issues and not talking so it became my identity at that young age. When I was about 11 my mum won slimmer of the year at a slimming club and we went to an award ceremony. I think I thought I wasn't good at anything and if I became good at losing weight I could be good at something. I also watched a TV program called children's ward there was a girl on it who was anorexic so then I would watch any TV programmes or read any magazines with eating disorder articles and learnt ways to lose weight. I was 13 the first time I made myself sick and took laxatives and would skip breakfast and lunch every day but would have to eat tea at home and would binge and purge when I could secretly do it.

By the time I was at college and uni I often got by on a bread bun or tin of soup a day and hot chocolate with sugar. God knows how I did it as I was studying horse studies and worked in physical jobs with horses and in factories in the holidays and cycled everywhere. I was always cold and my fingers would go blue.

After university I got a job with rescue horses in Lancashire and told myself I had to eat to look after the horses well so I ate more and obviously gained weight but wasn't overweight. My boss one day told me to get on a horse to make sure it was safe for a work experience girl but then shouted af me I was too heavy to ride he also made me go on the scales so I told myself I wasn't allowed to eat again. I would go all day without eating but then would go home to the bedsit I lived in on my own I was unhappy as I had no friends or family where I was living and obviously would get hungry, as much as my eating disorder didn't want me to eat, physically we all need to eat so I would end up binge eating. I would shop daily and got into debt with the amount of food i was buying. I would plan to eat only if I knew I could be sick so never ate at work. I moved back home with my parents and hid my bulimia for months I would be sick in the woods out walking the dog or would be sick into to carrier bags in the garden. I would wait until my parents had gone to bed often spending nights bingeing and purging then having to go to work.

It became that there was a constant voice in my head telling me I was too fat and wasn't allowed to eat but I would get hungry and feel physically unwell and was still working so rationally I knew I needed to eat to do my jobs in care work and with horses. One day after years of asking for help with my eating disorder but being sent away told I was too high functioning as was working I remember sitting crying on the kitchen floor I wanted to eat but the voice didn't want me too I ended up throwing a mug in frustration and ended up cutting my arm with a piece of the broken mug. I then ended up self harming regularly, I would eat, be sick then cut to punish myself for giving into eating as even being sick doesn't get rid of all the calories and the voice then gets strong, I even carved the word fat on my arm and leg, it made me that mentally unwell.

After a few more years the eating disorder voice that told me I was fat and didn't deserve to eat and had to punish myself then started telling me I deserved to die and I then would take overdoses and later ended up tying ligatures and banging my head on walls that's when I got sectioned. 

I wish I could say I'm recovered but at times I'm more stressed, anxious or depressed with life in general it is harder to fight the eating disorder voice and like I said earlier physically I often have to be sick. But it is more manageable than it used to be, I set myself goals and I use those goals as reasons I have to be as healthy as possible so I rarely self harm and haven't taken any overdoses since 2018

I haven't mentioned weights as I don't have any before and after weights I've been lower and higher weights, and like i said earlier eating disorders are serious and dangerous at any weight. Being sick causes electolyte imbalances and low potassium can cause heart problems and sudden death. In more recent years water retention from heart failure in 2015 and an antidepressant called mirtazapine made me gain alot of weight. My weight yo yos as I have times I restrict more and times I binge and purge and go short periods of time being able to eat more normally or stick to conventional diets but the eating disorder is unpredictable

I'm open and honest in my blog, I want people especially young people to know there is more to life than what we weigh and I want to be a warning of how an eating disorder can damage us. My life will never be normal I'm 42 I've never had a proper relationship because of hating myself so much and my fear of failure meant I have never followed the career I wanted to do as a nurse. My low confidence caused my eating disorder but then my eating disorder also affected my confidence and made me hate myself more so it becomes a vicious cycle.

If you or someone you know are struggling with an eating disorder go to your gp, push for a referral to an eating disorder service. I didn't get any specialist eating disorder treatment until 8 years after first going to the gp. Locally there wasn't any specialist services and other mental health workers I saw didn't understand eating disorders so I got no therapy. In 2010 after my dad complained to local mental health services I got admitted to an eating disorder clinic in Leeds for 8 weeks but got no therapy and discharged back home to no mental health support until my self harm and suicide attempts took over then I was classed as too complex for eating disorders help and the focus of services became my suicide risk despite it being linked to my eating disorder. I eventually got some therapy in 2012 2 years after being discharged from the eating disorder and clinic but by then my eating disorder was too ingrained then the therapist left and I was in constant mental health crisis then for about 4 years until I got therapy for personality disorders. I got some more therapy for eating disorders tmy eathis year but it was only 10 sessions and I think it's too ingrained in me now. I don't want aproductive nyone else to waste their life I want everyoand as productive ne else to be healthy and to raise awareness.

I try be as positive and productive as I can despite my eating disorder and other mental health problems but i do only work part time as physically and mentally I struggle but I also sing in a choir and do some volunteering for riding for the disabled, a befriending charity for older people and St John Ambulance cadets and have my horse Warwick and my cat Arthur and guinea pig Rocky who are all positive distractions from my mental health.