Eating Disorder Awareness Week: a message from Ella.

(If you think you're struggling with an eating disorder, please check out the links at the bottom of this post - there is plenty help out there! )

When I was around 14, I moved in with my dad and my grandma. Around this time, I also started to gain some weight (I mean come on, I lived with my grandma). Since being a child, I was always aware of weight, diets and good vs bad food, but I had never needed to think too much about it before. When my weight gain was brought to my attention, I decided to try to lose a little bit of weight. Harmless, right? A 14 year old with no concept of calories and nutrition, searching online and asking other clueless 14 year olds for diet advice – in hindsight, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Harmful Websites

This blog post is about my struggles with eating, and how I created a warped relationship with food throughout my later teenage years. I want to start with the main catalyst for my destructive behaviours: “Pro Ana” websites. “Pro-Ana” is short for Pro-Anorexia… I know. These websites, forums and blogs have been designed to apparently “give sufferers a place to belong”, but really, they glorified eating disorders – giving tips on things like how to hide food, how to make yourself sick, and how to cheat your weigh-ins.

One of the first things I came across on these websites was a 50 day diet plan that lay out your calorie goal for each day – this diet never went over 800 calories, and probably averaged around 400 a day for the whole 50 days. Like I said, I was a child that didn’t even know what a calorie was, let alone thought that I could be eating 2000+ calories a day whilst maintaining a healthy physique. To me, 800 calories was a lot! So, my diet began. Being totally honest, I don’t think I ever got past the second day of this diet – I mean, of course, 500 calories is one decent sized meal to a normal person. The problem was that these pro-ana websites glorified eating disorders so much, with pictures of severely underweight girls labelled “thinspiration” that they created a sense of jealousy, failure and guilt for a slightly chubby 14 year old girl.

All-or-Nothing Mentality

Now that my perception of food, calories and a healthy or ideal body/look had been completely destroyed, the real problem began. When I wasn’t able to successfully limit myself to 500 calories a day or less, or when I didn’t manage to starve myself, I would subconsciously punish myself by binge-eating. If I ate one thing that I wasn’t supposed to, after a long school day of eating 2 easy-peeler tangerines, I would basically think “fuck it” and I would eat everything. And then I would cry. I ended up hating myself. This all-or-nothing mentality eventually led to more weight gain, which led to more self-hatred, then attempting to starve, then another binge – a truly vicious cycle.

The original problem of just “not being able to” starve myself, eventually led to emotional eating. Comfort food. I have a vivid memory of somebody calling me “thunder thighs”. I was so distraught that I had been called fat, that I went home, cried and ate a family sized bar of dairy milk. I know how contradictory my thoughts and my actions were, in fact, I knew that at the time. But it wasn’t something I could control, I was stuck in a cycle of food and self-hate.

Not Sick Enough

One of the worst parts about this time in my life, I think, is that I didn’t tell anybody. I still have close friends now that might read this and be shocked. My parents and family also had no idea what I was going through. I was ashamed – I couldn’t possibly have told anybody that I was struggling with eating problems when I was so fat! They would probably laugh! That’s what I thought – I thought that if I could get to a point of being sickly underweight, that somebody would notice that there was something wrong with me and they would reach out! I really did want somebody to know, but I was so ashamed of how I looked, and how greedy I felt when I was binging, that I couldn’t bring myself to admit my feelings to anybody.

Looking back, I was definitely not okay.

I had a panic attack in year 11 when I couldn’t fit into my dream prom dress. I tried to throw up my Christmas dinner because I felt so guilty and fat. I cried, and ate, and cried, and exercised, and cried some more. I felt guilty for eating the smallest amount of food, and these feelings didn’t disappear after high school – even in sixth form I would eat the bare minimum before an exam, to prevent my belly from rumbling – to go home and raid the fridge and fully indulge myself in the cycle that was binge-eating. My weight fluctuated so much, and it was only by the time that I went to university that I finally started to lose the unhealthy relationship I had with food. Even now, as someone interested in health and fitness, I can’t track my calories and macro nutrients without into spiralling into obsessive behaviours and coming back to that dreaded all or nothing mentality.

Overcoming and Combating Binge Eating Disorders

In hindsight, I am so happy and relieved that my brain somehow didn’t let me go through with things like starving myself and making myself sick and even eating small amounts for more than a few days. However, I wish I never had to go through any disordered eating habits at all. But the reality is that most young people, especially girls, will do. I’m not going to dive into the many reasons behind this, but instead, I want to bring your attention to the extremely dangerous and harmful websites that I used to read, and to hopefully let my experience show you some identifiers of someone with disordered eating patterns.

Thanks for reading!

Useful websites:

https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/

https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/feelings-and-symptoms/eating-problems/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMItsKW6eDj4AIV4bftCh3kRgcmEAAYAyAAEgLd9PD_BwE