The first steps to change

 

If you are ready to start considering change and choosing recovery like I did, I found that a good place to start is by weighing up the pros and cons of your anorexia, not just to you but for your family and friends. This can be really really tough. I wanted to be thin and be attractive and happy in my body – yet I hated looking at my ribs and skinny arms and wrists, so the I knew that the two don’t go hand-in-hand. This is why anorexia is such a horrible disease, it gives you the sense that it can’t be beaten – it forces you to punish yourself, even though what you are doing to yourself is wrong. However, weighing up the pros and cons and seeing that there are more downsides in having anorexia is the first step on your journey to recovery.

 

 Setting Goals

As you can see, I saw how much better making the change would be – but if I was to recover I needed some goals. But in working out my goals I needed to identify my problem areas. Restricting food is just one of the symptoms of anorexia, there are other underlying issues to the disease too, such as how you perceive yourself and how you interact with others. My main problems were the following:

FOOD

• I don’t eat enough for someone of my height and build
• I can’t eat big meals without feeling bloated or being sick
• I am scared of putting on weight and will avoid junk food
• Everything I eat has to be low-calorie or sugar free

SELF PERCEPTION

• I do not like my face or how it looks
• I worry all the time that I’m not good enough
• I hate looking at my ribcage and skinny arms and wrists, I want to be more manly
• I hate the sight of fat, ‘spare tyres’, double chins and fat stomachs

INTERPERSONAL

• I lose everything and everyone I get close too, so I can’t trust them
• I am very withdrawn in myself
• I can be very controlling and take things very personally
• I often hurt my family when I know they are trying to help

Now comes the easy part. Because I had my problem areas clearly set out, I could work on my goals. These will help you recover because every day, when you feel down or feel those anorexic thoughts come into your mind, they will remind you of the choice you made to get better and what you are working towards.

Whenever I feel those thoughts coming back, I gently remind myself of the following goals.

MY GOALS

FOOD

• I want to eat enough for my size and not be classed as underweight
• I want to be able to manage bigger ‘normal’ portions
• I want to be able to treat myself now and again with a chocolate bar or a McDonalds!
• I want to overcome my addiction to low-calorie foods and sugar-free drinks

SELF-PERCEPTION

• I cannot change my face or how it looks
• I want to stop worrying all the time and realise I have so much to live for
• I want to have a more masculine and muscular body
• I must rid myself of the fear of getting fat

INTERPERSONAL

• I want to learn how to trust again, I can’t change the past or what happened to me
• I want to be the old, outgoing fun and friendly Liam I used to be again
• I must realise I can’t control others or what they think of me
• I must let people help and accept it

 

Working out your problems, your aims and your goals is a BIG step and probably one of the hardest things an anorexia suffer can do. It takes a lot of courage to make the decision to change, but once you are ready it really is a decision you will never look back on.

But remember that change takes time, it won’t happen overnight, so it’s important to take one step at a time. But setting out your aims and goals will give you the best chance to succeed in your fight against anorexia.

When I started my recovery, these were the pros and cons I wrote down

- Staying the same

PROS – Feeling in control, feeling cared for, food is familiar and safe, It’s nice to be thin and not be bullied or called ‘fatboy’
CONS – I’ll die and my family will suffer, I could get seriously sick or have serious health issues, I’ll lose my career and everything I have worked so hard for, I’ll keep pushing people away

- Making a change

CONS – I could get fat again, I won’t fit into my nice clothes, I won’t feel attractive, I might not feel happy anyway so no point?

PROS – I’ll be healthier, life won’t be all about food, I can eat what I want when I want, I won’t be punishing my body anymore, I won’t be addicted to counting calories on back of packets, I can go to restaurants and not order salads or drink diet cokes, I’ll look more like how a man should look

Months two to five

The second month

Moving into the second month of recovery my body continued to undergo drastic changes. My skin started to look and feel much smoother, veins disappeared by the day, my ribcage no longer looked so prominent, and feeling started to return to my fingers and toes – although they still felt cold. My face also started to fill out, and having a bloated stomach after eating became a distant memory.

My family said I looked so much healthier too, that my eyes were brighter and that the old Liam was returning. And guess what, I even managed to fight my fear of McDonalds – having my first Big Mac meal in over six years!

I can’t deny that anorexic thoughts came back into my head every day, manifesting themselves in checking backs of packets and weighing myself, but day by day I cut these down and just went for it.

The third month

By the third month of recovery food was no longer as much as an issue as it once was. Virtually gone are the days of checking on backs and packets to estimate just how many calories were in them were long gone, and in is the new thought process that your body will adjust to take account for the increased calories took its place. I could now eat a normal size portion meal with no oroblems of feeling guilt or sick, and would often ask for seconds (it’ts in the insides calling for it, not me!!)

I still had problems though – my sleep was shot to pieces. I kept waking up 4 hours after falling asleep, and when I woke I’d have to get up and pee. The same thing started to happen two hours later. I was told this would go in time, when my body stopped crying out for food food food.

The fourth month

By the fourth month I was only just 5 pounds away from what the doctors call a healthy weight. However, my body had one last throw of the dice to show me just how much damage I had done to myself. One morning my feet just ballooned in size, fluid was everywhere. When I lifted my legs my toes and feet drained out, and then when I put them down they filled up again. Walking was so very painful, and I had blood clots around my ankles. I was rushed up to hospital..

The doctors were very concerned that either my heart or my kidneys had failed. They rushed me through to the surgery took my blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugars, took a urine sample, gave me an ECG an ultrasound echo, and a chest X Ray. I was stuck in the hospital for five hours – and guess what, they could not explain my swollen feet. They desperately urged me to take warfarin to thin my blood – which is something I’m not going to do!

The fifth month

July 12th, 2009 will be a day I will remember for the rest of my life. I woke up that morning, after yet another awful night’s sleep and pulled out the scales. The screen started up, the digits flashed 0.00. I stepped up onto the cold glass, and braced myself.

10st 7lbs.

I had done it. I had finally hit the healthy weight!

The first month

Eating the food however and getting into a routine was a problem. The feeling of starvation was so normal to me that I had lost all concept of what it was like to have a full stomach, and I had no idea what a normal portion size was. Throw in the fact that my stomach couldn’t hold much down and you can see how daunting it was.

Determined to press on I went for it, and it felt like I was eating all the time because I was eating a meal or snacking once every 3-4 hours, slowly increasing the amount I was eating each time. But there were downsides to this sudden change I was putting my body through.

I often thought I’d overdone it. The backs of my legs, fingers and hands often felt dead, my heart thumped inside my chest every time I ate and my digestive system struggled horribly. Within 10 minutes of eating a ‘proper meal’, the veins across my body and stomach appeared more prominent, and my stomach looked bloated. I worried about edema because when I raised my legs or arms I could feel and see the blood rush through.

I was also worried that I’d lost the feeling of hunger and the ability for my body to tell me I was hungry again – and this would lead me to I’d balloon in size, especially because I was still weighing myself every morning. What didn’t help was that my weight seemed to shoot up overnight – however, the doctor said this was just because my body was storing so much more water in my body and that it would settle down. Sleep was a big problem, and I seemed to be waking every 2-3 hours to go for a pee!

But I cracked on with it, despite the feelings of guilt with each and every mouthful. I had to keep telling myself that every time I swallowed the food my insides were saying thank you. Thank you for thinking of us, thank you for doing the right thing, thank you for giving us the energy and nutrients to get better. It felt good in many ways, like I was saying sorry to my body for putting it through so much pain and exhaustion, giving it good healthy nutritious food to start repairing itself.

Gradually many of the negative physical effects started to disappear. By the end of the first month my stomach was finally able to hold so much more food without me being sick or tasting it in the back of my throat. The feeling of hunger began to return in the second week and I answered it every time. However I can’t deny I had a few down days. On a trip to an Indian restaurant I was so hungry I seemed to gorge myself, and remember being sick. I drank too much white wine one day and couldn’t hold down my tea, and there were many occasions when I skipped a meal or a snack because I was out, or busy, or forgot.

However, by the end of the first month I had got into a routine, planning my meals and snacks the night before to avoid the stress of snap eating decisions – I was waving goodbye to Anorexia.

My meal plan in the first month went something like this:

Breakfast – bowl of cereal, plus a slice of toast and a glass of fruit juice or a piece of fruit

Snack – piece of fruit or handful of mixed nuts

Lunch – beans on toast with salad, or sandwich, crisps, salad / yoghurt or cereal bar

Snack – chocolate bar / biscuit / crackers

Dinner – baked potato with cheese / pasta etc plus dessert

Pre-bed – glass of hot milk with a biscuit

I’ll tell you about month 2 tomorrow…

The recovery

The first week of recovering from my anorexia was very tough. Unfortunately it wasn’t as simple as just eating more, as any dietitian will tell you. I don’t want to scare you, but ‘re-feeding’ carries with it a whole host of problems if done incorrectly, and depending on how low your BMI is, so it’s worth knowing what I had to find out before embarking on a new diet and hopefully a new me. I am not a doctor or dietitian, so please don’t take this as official advice – it’s just something to be aware of. Please seek professional advice to estabilish a sensible eating plan before you begin!

The dangers of refeeding syndrome

Because I had starved myself for so long, the amount of insulin in my body was dangerously low due to the reduced amount of carbohydrates I was eating, so my body was used to turning protein and fat in my body to produce energy.
But tapping these stores ultimately results in a loss of phosphate (an electrolyte) in the body’s cells. When an anorexic person begins to eat again or be re-fed in a hospital, insulin secretion begins again and the cells absorb the available phosphate.

The problem is that the available phosphate comes from the bloodstream, which needs its own supply. The presence of phosphate in the blood is necessary to regulate a number of physical processes.

Beyond the depletion of phosphates, low potassium level) and hypomagnesemia (low magnesium) are also possible. These electrolytes are necessary for nervous system processing, including heartbeat regulation. According to the NHS, without proper electrolyte levels, a number of problems can occur:

respiratory failure
cardiac failure
hypotension (low blood pressure)
irregular heartbeats
rhabdomyolysis — breaking down of muscle tissue, which flows into the bloodstream and can damage the kidneys
seizures
coma
sudden death
I was told that the most important element in avoiding refeeding syndrome is a slow increase in additional calories as this gives the body time to adjust to food in quantities it has not seen in some time. With this in mind I began my journey…….

My first week

My first week of getting back into a normal pattern was very tough, and with ‘refeeding’ in mind I was extremely scared. My parents and me took a trip to the local supermarket, they gave me a basket and told me to go off and get whatever I wanted, to pick anything I thought I could keep down, but on the condition that anything I could couldn’t be the ‘healthy option’. From the receipt I have kept we bought:

Bananas, apples, pears, mushrooms, baked potatoes, onions, tomatoes, salad

Whole fat milk (not skimmed, my bones needed the calcium and the extra calories), garlic cheese, mature cheddar, mustard cheese slices,

Roast chicken slices, roast beef, honey roast ham

Wholemeal bread, white rolls, baked beans, kidney beans, All Bran, Shredded Wheats, porridge, crackers, mixed nuts, cereal bars

Orange juice, apple juice, Ribena

Multivitamins

All healthy foods, but for my next trick came the sweets and crisps aisle. I had not ventured down one of these in months and it was daunting, but kind of exciting at the same time. But fighting the anorexia and with a smile on my face I banished those ‘unhealthy thoughts’ and went for caramel digestives, chocolate bars, chocolate mini rings, rich tea biscuits and treatsize Milky Ways and Mars Bars. I also picked up some McCoy crisps and Quavers. I was determined that I was going to stop denying myself the odd treat and I was looking forward to it.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the first month of recovery…

The choice to live….

I had gone from a happy 12.5st man with a girlfriend, a social life, good friends and a job he liked…to a stick-thin depressed loner with no life and a London job that didn’t pay enough in the course of 12 months.

So, on my sick leave from work I went back to Norwich one weekend to stay in the house I owned which had just been left by its tenant. I used to love living there in 2006-7…but it brought back all of the memories and the tears shed, the happy times with my ex-girlfriend and best friend. The ghosts of the past were still there, but the walls were empty and it was a shell. It sounds strange but I guess me and the house belonged together. We were both empty. We were both crying out inside for some care and attention.

But I was lucky, this was my house, my space, my place to call my own. I was alone and in charge of what I was going to be eating and drinking that March weekend. Lucky for me the sun was out, it was a gorgeous day and I wasn’t cold. On the Friday I went out with one of my a small group of friends I had left behind before leaving for London and they were shocked. They said I looked ill, I looked sick, that ‘I needed a kebab’. After a few hours I wasn’t the same old Liam they knew and loved going out with. I was tired, I wasn’t in the mood to party or drink beer. Girls weren’t looking at me anymore, my soul felt destroyed.

Dinner at Pizza Hut with them was a no no. I had made do on a white roll with a bit of chicken and lettuce and couldn’t justify having any, even though my stomach was aching for a slice, so I took some pizza home and hoarded it in the fridge, nestled amongst a Tesco low calorie meal and skimmed milk. A waste, I knew I would never eat it, I would look at it, I would let it torture me, and I would bin it.

The next morning I woke up, at 6.30 on the dot as usual after only 4 hours sleep. I wasn’t sleeping well, I hadn’t been for weeks. I had finished the Tamazapan tablets, and no more sleeping pills were left. So, I had a cracker, a cup of tea and a cigarette and sat and watch the sun rise. After buying the weekend papers and doing the crosswords and sudokus, I had a hot bath and had my breakfast – a small bowl of apricot wheats with skimmed milk at 10am. But my friends’ words from the night before were still hanging in the air.

Before I went through my routine of getting ready for the day (a naked weigh-in after breakfast and a weigh-in with clothes on, then with shoes and coat on) I decided to take some pictures of myself and my body, just to see what they saw…

Suddenly I hated myself and what I had become. Who was this skeleton looking back at me? Who was this man with sunken eyes? I looked dead. My veins stuck out of my arms. My ribs protruded. My legs were like sticks. So I weighed myself. The digital scaled threw back the display. 8st 7.5.

I knew that was low, so I checked on the internet to work out my Body Mass Index. It was 15.4. According to wikipedia a BMI reading nearing 15 is bordering on starvation.

Starvation is a severe reduction in vitamin, nutrient, and energy intake, and is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation (in excess of 1-2 months) causes permanent organ damage and, eventually death.

Somewhat shocked, I got dressed, my jeans already too big and my belt too large to fit properly and put it to the back of my mind. Half of me was worried, but the other anorexic and comfortable half of me knew I could have whatever I wanted to eat that day, and it felt good. I walked miles to meet my friend to watch the football – and ate a packet of sour cream cheese crisps, a banana and an apple, plus a bottle of coke zero. I knew I had a ‘be good to yourself chicken tikka meal’ at home, so the 330 calories would do to line my stomach before I went out again that evening. However, I still didn’t feel full even after eating every last scrap. With the pictures from the morning and the starvation label playing through my head I had some 5 caramel crackers and a second banana for dinner – Another 190 calories. But I was racked with guilt and worry the moment I did. I dreaded the post-dinner weigh-in after my shower.

I got ready to go out, but on my way into the city the depression hit me, and I decided en-route I could’nt face it. I’d go to the cinema instead and watch a film by myself.

The wake-up shock I needed

I walked out of the cinema after the film finished and decided to go home. The sound of people enjoying themselves at the Irish bar across the road was too much to bear – I had spent yet another Saturday evening by myself, silently sipping Jack Daniels and diet coke to relieve the numbness of the weekend at the back of the cinema.

But the tops of my legs were burning. A combination of the miles I had walked and the lack of food I had eaten that day were taking their toll, but I soldiered on back home. I lit a cigarette and pressed on, until I heard what sounded like a cat, wailing in pain.

I crossed the road to see where the noise was coming from, and then I saw it laying there, howling, its tiny ribcage potruding further and further out with each high-pitched cry. It’s grey coat was a mat of knots and it’s left eye was oozing, but it was the pain behind those eyes that stirred me to try and help.

I walked towards it slowly, to try and reassure it I was there to help, but it backed off. I just didn’t know what I could do. For the next 10 minutes I felt powerless. The more I called to it, rubbing my fingers together, beckoning it to come closer so I could take it home and give it some milk or ham it refused to come, it just continued to cry out, frustrating me more and more.

 And suddenly I broke down and cried. I cried because I saw myself in that poor cat. I was doing exactly what everyone I know and love was trying to do for me. I too felt alone and I refusing food and help and love, and I too, like the cat, was one step closer to death’s door. But although it was just an animal that cat could offer so much joy and love to someone, that cat had been starved by someone else. I however was making the physical choice to starve myself.

 It was clear that I could do one of two things that night. Choose to live or carry on and die. I chose life.

I knew I’d gone too far. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want my family to feel like I did at that moment anymore. I had selfishly put them through months of feeling the hurt I was feeling looking at that cat, but it must have been so much worse as they saw me deteriorate day after day, month after month. I had so much to live for, so much to offer but I couldn’t see it. I’d let the disease in, take control of my mind and my stomach and mess with it severely.

 So I stood up, wiped the tears from my eyes and waved goodbye to the dying animal. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but I knew it was just the start – the journey I was on now was going to be much tougher. It would involve some drastic changes, both physical and mental.

On the physical side I knew I had to eat, and eat more. But because my stomach had shrunk so much I knew I would not be able to handle ‘normal portions’ without wanting to be sick.  It would mean three square meals a day, eating more calories and eating even if I didn’t want to.

On the mental side it would mean conquering the fear. Conquering the fear of getting fat, seeing the scales go the opposite way, up instead of down. It would mean eating the foods I had deprived myself of for so long, the chips, crisps, chocolate, cheese, white bread. It would mean seeing my body and face change and accepting it and restoring my body back to health.

When I woke up the next day I got straight to work, but because I had starved myself for so long the feeling of hunger was second nature to me. I knew I could last for hours on a cracker or a piece of fruit, so I knew that it was going to be tough. But to my horror I found out that getting back to a healthy BMI and losing my underweight and near-starvation BMI carried with it a whole host of risks…

More on that tomorrow

What does it feel like to suffer from anorexia?

I can’t even begin to describe the physical and psychological pain and the torture of what it felt like to suffer from anorexia, but I’ll give it my best shot.

Physical effects

• I was continually hungry because I was starving myself
  
• Extreme tiredness, you simply can’t function properly – you have slow speech, your reactions are gone, you forget simple things
  
• Simple tasks such as walking or getting dressed can be a struggle. There were times I couldn’t even get out of a bath.
  
• Inability to sleep at night due to the extreme exhaustion.
  
• Forever feeling the cold. My hands, toes and feet all felt dead – in the winter it is torture
  
• You have major digestive problems. Eating anything big leads to really bad bloated feelings, going to the toilet suffers immensely
  
• Inability to keep food down, bringing it up if you eat too much
  
• Dizzyness and low blood pressure, fainting, headaches
  

Psychological effects

• Food dominates your thoughts every waking second of every hour of every day
  
• Weighing yourself constantly, and panic if it’s more than it should be
  
• Extreme worry and loneliness, no drive
  
• Low self-esteem, irrational sense of ‘fatness’
  
• Low libido and ‘get up and go’
  
• Other Irrational thoughts due to chemical changes in your brain, such as always counting calories and nutritional content on backs of packets
  
• Feelings of guilt after eating something ‘unhealthy’
• Strong desires to exercise to burn it off
  

These are all of the symptoms I suffered from. Throw in the emotional pain I was suffering from too due to family and life events and you can see what a nightmare developing anorexia was for me.

Yet I carried on living in London, working from 5am in the morning to 6pm at night in the middle of the credit crunch. Banks were sinking by the day, articles and guides needed to be written. I had no time for friends, I was living in a flat I couldn’t afford, I was walking to and from work each day (10 miles) and was barely surviving on very low levels of food and energy. Sure enough I ended up having a nervous breakdown in February 2009.

Tomorrow I will talk about the day I nearly died and the wake up shock I needed to change….

An anorexic day

A typical day for me at the height of my anorexia would include the following routine. Wake up – after an awful night’s sleep of a few hours, weigh-in. If happy with weight proceed to kitchen to have one or two mushrooms or a tomato and kick-start metabolism. If unhappy, consider reasons why. Going to the loo can often knock a pound off, so try that. If successful repeat step 1, if not I resign myself to a day on low rations.

After a morsel or two I will walk or cycle the four miles to work. Upon arrival it would be a cup of tea (no sugar) and I’ll settle down to work with a grumbling stomach. I would try and hold this out for as close to midday as possible, but chewing all the gum in the world will fail by 10-30 to 11, so it’s off to the kitchen for a bowl of hot porridge (120 calories) with a banana (90) and a sprinkling of sugar (20). This will have to last me into the afternoon so I savour every mouthful.

Come 1’o’clock the smell in the office of everyone’s food is unbearable, so I will go for a walk to the library and have a cigarette or three. Come back at 2 and the afternoon begins. By 3pm it’s getting tough, so I’ll fetch myself a handful of carrots or some sugarsnap peas, perhaps even a small handful of cornflakes. But by 4pm my body is aching for food. A box of raisins and an apple or a banana will do here and that will see me through till dinnertime.

When work ends I’d trudge or cycle the four miles back home, where I will reward myself for the good day with one of the two following dishes. A small plate of vegetables with a pitta bread and a couple of slices of ham, maybe half a carrot, or a cup of soup with 2 crackers or a bowl of raisin Shreddies with piping hot skimmed milk. Dessert would be a rich tea biscuit or a small chocolate treat from my secret hoard – followed by guilt.

And that concludes the daily meal sheet. If I was feeling lonely, which was virtually every night, I’d hit the vodka with diet lemonade and get drunk, but no matter how much alcohol I’d drink I’d still wake up hungover the next day and do it again, causing even more damage to myself.

This downward spiral continued for a year – until my body and mind gave up.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the physical effects of Anorexia..

Why anorexia took hold

I wish I could pinpoint a precise date in time that I started to develop anorexia, because at some point in time my life turned into one about control, discipline and punishing myself. I had no desire to slim down for the ‘body beautiful’, or do excessive exercise to get the perfect body. My anorexia developed over time. It was a consequence of some pretty shitty parenting, years of bullying by my stepfather, my brother and a lack of protection from my selfish mother. Throw in the stress of growing up with an absent father and the sudden shock of your little sister becoming pregnant at 16 and you’ve got one hell of a lethal cocktail for being pushed over the edge. From that moment on I let the demon anorexia take control of everything I did in my life – controlling my weight was the only thing I had left.

Recognising the signs

Although I loved my job working in London as a financial journalist, which I started in May 2008, I was signed off sick by my doctor in February 2009. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed and suffering from an irregular heartbeat. You see a number of things had happened over the previous 12 months that had caused anorexia to flare up.

Firstly, I had an irregular heartbeat. I was prescribed Wafarin, which is basically a rat poison, to thin my blood before it was safe to electrocute my heart and shock it back into rhythm (cardioversion). However the drug made me feel dizzy, light headed, and very very cold and didn’t help my condition either.  The doctor had also given me an anti-depressant called Citalopram, but it hadn’t worked. My sleep was awful, trying to manage only 2-3 hours a night, so I was given 28 Tamazapan tablets to help.

So why was I depressed? Why was my heart broken?

 I was depressed because of what had happened to me in the past. To give you a very brief overview, I was struggling to cope. I had lost my best friend who had got married and left the house we had bought together which was now plummeting in value, I still had the painful memories of my dad running off with another woman when I was seven, the years of bullying both at school, by my older brother when I got home from it each day, the emotional bullying by my stepdad and a mother who let it all happen because all she thought about was herself.

On top of this I had the stress of living and working in London on very little money and very few friends, and to top it all off I also had the sudden knowledge that my grandfather (on my absent dad’s side) who I never spoke to had won a hefty amount of money on the National Lottery. He’d won over £7 million pounds and there I was eeking out a living in the City of London, while lots of nasty family members on his side were coming out of the woodwork and making contact with me over Facebook. Yes, I had lots of problems I was struggling to deal with emotionally.

Before I truly recognized I had developed anorexia I would know exactly what I’d eaten throughout the day. It had started by counting the precise number of calories (those green, red and orange symbols on food packaging really doesn’t help those of us with eating disorders, take note supermarkets). I’d weigh myself first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I’d weigh myself after a meal or a night out. I’d weigh myself naked, I’d weigh myself clothed. I’d panic when I’ve put on a pound or two, and smile to myself when I’d lose it again.

There are some foods that were a no go. I would do everything in my power to steer clear of bread, cheese, full-fat milk, chocolate, fast food, fatty meats, pasta, chips and crisps. I would however drink diet soft drinks till the cows come home (sugar free is a must), and eat tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, sugarsnap peas, carrots, leeks, peas – even sprouts – but all in moderation. If my blood sugar ever ran low it would be a pear, grapes, apples, pears or bananas. You may think what’s the problem? After all vegetarians manage to survive…Well such a low calorie diet, and given that I am 6’2 meant I was constantly hungry and constantly tired. So I’d perk myself up with some more diet coke, chew gum (sugar-free) or light up a cigarette – the worst thing you can do.

My weight plummeted – and before I knew it I was given just weeks to live….

Describing Anorexia

I’ve spent most of today thinking about what I was going to write tonight, and I think a post about what it feels like to suffer from anorexia would be a good place to start, so here goes.

Imagine yourself sitting in the driving seat of an incredibly fast car. It’s a beautiful summer’s day, there’s not a cloud in the sky. You’re driving through the countryside, the wind buffeting your face. You’re in control. You start to speed up. You crave the speed, the excitement – after all you’re in control. All of a sudden the road starts to turn sharply. You put your foot on the brakes…but they don’t work. You push your foot on the pedal – again and again and again – but there’s no response, you’re speeding towards the corner at an alarming rate…you’re no longer in control. Before you know it you realise you’re going to crash.

The car’s bonnet buckles. It flips over, again and again and again. You’re strapped in and you have no control over your destiny. Your car rolls over and comes to a halt. You have no say in your destiny – all you can think about is how stupid you were to be going so fast. You curse yourself for making such a stupid decision….it felt good at the time, but not any more.

And so as you lay there, your body torn, broken and bruised you swear to yourself, if you make it through this and live to fight another day you’ll never be so stupid again. And as tears run down your face you pray that you’ll see the morning.

Now substitute the car for your body image – something you can control

Substitute speed for food

Substitute the crash for the point when your body decides to give up

And that’s how I describe anorexia.

Hello everyone…welcome to my blog

Quick question for you. How much do you weigh, right this second? Not roughly, not last week, now – as in right this second. Now lets take it to the extreme – how much do you weigh right down to the pound. Can’t answer? Then you probably don’t have anorexia.

You see, I did. I developed anorexia and for two years I let that demon into my life. I let it control me – so much so that I nearly killed myself. But I fought it. I beat it. I won.

Speaking to doctors today they are surprised I am still alive. I was literally weeks away from being six feet under.

So I’ve started this blog to tell you of my journey. To tell you how I beat anorexia and to give courage to those of you out there who may be suffering from, or know someone suffering from this horrible eating disorder. Believe me – it’s not just a teenage girl’s disease. Men get it too – and I’ll show you how.

I hope you find this blog interesting….