Eating Disorders awareness week 2025

 This week is Eating disorders awareness week ( 24th February until 2nd March 2025. The theme this year is anyone can be affected by eating disorders at any age, gender, race, disability and importantly can happen to anyone at any size.

We live in a society that judges bigger people, praises weight loss however achieved especially in people in a larger body and then expects us to socialise with food and drink, no wonder so many people suffer with eating disorders.

When people think of eating disorders they think of young girls suffering from anorexia at low weights but the majority of people with Eating Disorders are never a low weight and have bulimia or a category called Ednos ( eating disorders not otherwise specified) which has the same symptoms of anorexia and or bulimia but is of less frequency with bulimia or people with atypical anorexia have all the symptoms of anorexia yet are not a low weight because despite losing weight with starvation and other dangerous eating disorder behaviours, they started at a higher weight. Even people who are low weight anorexic started at a higher weight, the mental illness started long before they reached that low weight. Yet even eating disorder services funded by the nhs only treat anorexia but then often only force feeding without dealing with the mental health causes of an eating disorder and then class recovery on weight. 50 percent of people with anorexia develop bulimia and I've even known eating disorder services class people with bulimia as recovered anorexic, telling them well done maintaining their weight. Mentally the bulimia is harder to deal with as the eating disorder voice that wanted you to lose weight and achieve weight loss as the goal is still there but the control you have of your weight with anorexia is gone and so you hate yourself more as even at lower weights you felt too fat and despite still struggling alot physically and mentally you then can't get help for your eating disorder because your classed as high functioning, not severe, not at medical risk.

Yet many people die of eating disorders at all weights from the physical effects of the eating disorder or from suicide. 

I always had issues with food from primary school age I was sent into first sitting in the pack up room whatever year group was in first and it took me the whole hour to eat 2 small sandwiches, a yogert and packet of crisps I offered around the table and I was fussy and didn't like alot of foods. When I was 11 my mum won slimmer of the year at a slimming group and we went to an awards night and calories were often mentioned in our house then. At the same time I also remember reading about and watching programs about anorexia and I thought if I could be good at losing weight I could be good at something. I never felt good enough at anything, I never fitted in and was bullied through primary and secondary school, food was the thing I could control. By secondary school I was skipping breakfast and throwing away school dinners until I was caught and got banned from school dinners and took pack up which I also threw away. At school I was known for not eating and not talking as I was really quiet and anxious. I was 13 the first time I made myself sick and took laxatives and I would go between restricting and bingeing and purging, mostly restricting though. Once I was at college and university I got away with eating less but somehow managed to work and go to college and uni and graduate despite often only eating a tin of soup a day whilst doing an active course horse riding and doing yard duties looking after the horses as well as lectures. I did drink hot chocolate or other drinks with sugar to get by and would sleep in between lectures. When I was at school a couple of teachers were concerned about my eating disorder and some self harm but I saw camhs when I was 14 I wasn't a low weight and wasn't regularly self harming, my eating wasn't even really mentioned and I was discharged after 6 sessions. After that I didn't go near a dr until I was 21 with bulimia as when I was losing weight I didn't see it as a problem and other than having blue fingers, always feeling dizzy and cold I didn't have any medical complications then. After uni I got a job with rescue horses in Lancashire miles from home away from friends and family living in a shared house with strangers and travelling on a moped. I told myself I had to eat to be able to look after the horses and I don't know if I ate normal or binge ate but I put on weight after years of starving myself to be lower weights but I wasn't overweight but the manager of where I worked told me one day I was too heavy to ride a horse he had told me to ride, he would weigh us and say fat riders don't care about their horses. So I told myself I couldn't eat again but I wouldn't eat all day but then would be that hungry when I went home I would binge and have to make myself sick to deal with the guilt and as the bingeing and purging regularly hadn't been regular before and I was doing an active job I did lose weight. But I was then taking laxatives and diet pills and getting in debt with all the binge foods and other things I was buying and I was struggling to do the job so I moved back home to my parents. I hid my bulimia for ages, being sick in carrier bags in the garden or when my parents were asleep or out until my mum unexpectedly came home one day and caught me bingeing and purging. Anyone who says eating disorders are for attention is so wrong, if it was for attention and care why did I hide it and avoid asking for help for years. I went to my gp when I was 21 after coming back from that job and I saw various mental health nurses and a trainee psychologist none with eating disorder experience and so I got no eating disorder help other than I found an eating disorder support group in Hull. In 2006 I had a stressful job supporting people with challenging behaviour as a support worker and was struggling alot with my eating disorder and I began self harming. I was signed off work for 3 months (until then I had consistently worked and studied despite my eating disorder), my gp put me on prozac which is known to cause suicidal thoughts, impulsively and anorexia especially in young adults and that was the first time I took any overdoses and took 3 overdoses in one weekend yet despite not been known to mental health services really then, I was just sent home with no help for the overdoses or eating disorder I came off the prozac and went back to work as a carer and teaching horse riding but was still struggling alot with my bulimia. In 2007 my heart consultant I'm under for a hereditary heart conditionthat can cause sudden death was concerned I was constantly having low potassium which was making the heart arrhythmia worse and I was told I was at high risk of dying so I got a pacemaker which later was upgraded to a defibrillator because of a higher risk with my eating disorder and mental health meds. Despite needing the pacemaker, mental health services still wouldn't help me and so in 2009, Marg from SEED eating disorders support group helped my dad complain that I was getting no help. Finally in 2009, 7 years after first asking for help I was referred to an eating disorder clinic in Leeds where they said I was too severe for outpatient and needed inpatient on a bulimia symptom interruption program for 8 weeks where I got bed and food and told to get therapy back home as I wasn't there long enough to get the amount of psychology I needed. If I had been in there with anorexia there was an option to do full recovery program but it was based on weight and was for people with low weight anorexia to reach their " set point" weight the healthiest weight for the individual person when eating 3 meals 3 snacks and they got the individual and group therapies for however long it took over months upto a year. I was sick after all the meals I had to eat as I couldn't deal with the guilt and fear of weight gain yet I was told I wouldn't have support at home so they wouldn't give me it there and I went home no better than I went in. I came home to a care co ordinator who was off sick and a 2 year psychology waiting list and local eating disorder services weren't interested in helping me so I continued to work focused on wanting to be a mental health nurse to help others in a way I hadn't been helped but I relapsed badly and eventually chased up getting a new care co ordinator after mine had been off sick for 2 years so despite having been in an eating disorder clinic no one cared when I came back. The new care co ordinator just kept saying do my nursing and forget my own mental health but I couldn't I was self harming alot and struggling alot with my bulimia but I had been working full time and doing an access to nursing course which I paid for myself and passed and I got offered a place at Hull uni to study mental health nursing. But I was never stable enough myself. 2 years after getting discharged from the eating disorder clinic I did finally get 20 sessions of cbt for eating disorders with a good eating disorder therapist but then she moved away, I still wasn't better and I felt hopeless and got into a cycle of taking overdoses. Over 2 years I took about 60 overdoses yet was just medically treated and sent home. I was told I had chronic kidney disease and had heart failure. Local services said I was too complex and there was no treatment for me they couldn't admit to the mental health ward just to stay safe, it's more luck than judgement I'm still alive definitely not because of any caring, compassionate services, I definitely wasn't taking overdoses to get care I was fed up living with an eating disorder and feeling a failure that I couldn't help people in the way I wanted as a nurse and I felt I deserved to die if I wasn't able to help others. By then I had had to stop working after I had consistently worked and studied for 17 years. I was then labelled with personality disorders, a label overly given to complex cases then excluding people from services especially eating disorder services classed as too complex because of suicide risk and then only thing that would over ride the personality disorder label would be if became a low weight. When I had heart failure I got water retention causing weight gain which I couldn't lose despite only being able to eat small amounts because I was coughing and feeling sick all the time and also mirtazapine and antidepressant made me gain weight so since 2014 I have been overweight yet it's only recently a good gp is investigating hormonal and other reasons for my weight gain as I actually binge ate more when I was thinner and often don't eat every day now or am sick when I do. My mum found a therapeutic community in London for personality disorders but it was an open until and I wasn't safe and took more overdoses then was admitted to the local mental health ward and tied a ligature and was found unconscious and was banging my head on walls and pulled all my hair out I was then sectioned for a year and sent to a locked unit for ladies with personality disorders for intensive psychology but the psychologist left and they said they didn't treat eating disorders so I got no therapy, staff stopped me self harming but I either didn't eat for days or was sick when I did and still I didn't get any help for my eating disorder. I was discharged to a mental health rehab where when I first went they just focused on wanting me to live independently and go back to volunteering and work despite having been in hospital with staff with me 24 hours a day and still struggling with the eating disorder that had made my self  harm and suicide attempts worse in the first place. I did qualify as a horse riding instructor and volunteer at a horse rescue centre at their events and despite my bulimia being bad and taking overdoses I did do some sponsored swims. I moved to my own flat with support workers helping me food shop, clean my flat, give me my meds twice a day and go out with me socially and I was doing some volunteering still and I was doing better with support at living on my own despite my eating disorder but then I had a care co ordinator who said I was too high functioning yo be in services and should just go back to work and get rid of support but I knew that added pressure would make me relapse with overdoses so I agreed to go to a therapeutic community for personality disorders. They said it would help my eating disorder but kept saying they weren't an eating disorder service and so they didn't understand eating disorders and there was often diet talk. Someone with bulimia was even praised for losing weight. The group helped me feel supported rather than just discharged from services straight away it gave me time to set my own goals and I did get rid of support at my flat and go back to work. I got 10 sessions of cbt for eating disorders but then I got scared of gaining weight when I was discharged so I did a calorie counting diet which spiralled my eating disorder to atypical anorexia, I lost 3 stone  but then took an overdose because I felt guilty about the calories in  a yogert. I think the added pressure of losing support and adding work pressure made my anxiety and depression worse and I've struggled to get any more help since other than dbt once a week group and once a week individual without any eating disorder support to do proper meal plans by a dietitian and no help to deal with the anxiety and underlying causes of my eating disorder that prevent me recovering.

Sorry that was long but my story highlights that even at 43 I'm still struggling with an eating disorder, many older people do develop eating disorders and they are mental illnesses not weight disorders and early intervention is so important. I'm still alive and I'm fed up of just surviving rather than just living. I'm not hopeful about recovery myself now but I want to share my story do that hopefully services help more people earlier and not just those at low weights. My teeth have fell out, I have weak bones, chronic fatigue, a heart condition seeing a defibrillator, kidney damage and severe anxiety and depression after years of struggling but because I haven't been under an eating disorder service with low weight anorexia I haven't been medically monitored other than if I have been to gp myself or been treated medically for overdoses and even then the eating disorder wasn't considered. I rarely ate or drank in hospital when in for overdoses yet no one said anything and just left me to it. 

People under an eating disorder service for low weight anorexia get regular blood tests, ecgs and bone scans yet even though bulimia and atypical anorexia (weight above very low bmi) have the same if not more medical risks people with Eating Disorders in larger bodies aren't medically monitored.

I've mentioned anorexia, bulimia and ednos  (eating disorders not otherwise specified) as these have been the eating disorders I've suffered with but binge eating disorder is also an eating disorder where people binge eat to deal with emotions but unlike bulimia they don't purge (purging isn't just being sick it's any compensatory behaviour to counteract a binge it can be fasting (a cycle of starving then bingeing then starving again is bulimia), taking laxatives or excessive exercise are also ways of purging. Yet people are often praised and seen as disciplined when they exercise alot and only eat healthy. Orthopedic is also an eating disorder where people only eat " healthy" food thinking they are being healthy but miss out on essential nutrients by only eating low fat, low sugar etc often ending up an unintentional low weight. Arfid is also an eating disorder where sufferers have a fear of certain foods and so can only eat their safe foods which also means they miss out on essential nutrients.

All eating disorders are dangerous and deserve help whatever size