It’s eating disorder awareness week, I have been watching the stories and pictures emerge on social media with a thoughtful eye, wondering whether it was time to tell my story. I am writing this not for my ego, but in the hope that my story might help someone, whether it is someone who is suffering the same suffering I have been through, or a caring onlooker worried about their loved one. I have no idea what my message will be, or where this will end, but it is my experience, spoken from my heart, the part of my body I trust the most.
I appreciate, for someone who has always self regulated and processed their feelings in a healthy way, the idea that someone should choose to self-destruct in order to numb their feelings is still a difficult idea to get your head around. I assure you that having an eating disorder is certainly not a choice. I cannot begin to imagine what it is like for someone without an eating disorder to try and understand why someone would starve, or be sick, or overeat, or over exercise, or take laxatives, or not just eat like a normal person. I’ll do my best to explain through my story.
This is my story…
I was brought up in a beautiful part of London, with a close family unit, I have parents and three siblings, I was privately educated, I always had friends, and the vision to an outsider was that life was perfect.
From a young age I LOVED food, and I still do, I always ate more than my siblings, I would get excited when it was someone’s birthday because there would be chocolate biscuits, jam sandwiches and cake. Mum brought us up on nutritious, healthy, balanced food, which I also adored – Aubergines in tomato sauce was my favourite! What I also remember from growing up was that I always felt a bit left out, a bit like I didn’t quite fit in. I was overweight at primary school, but not massively so, just enough that a few comments were made and I became very aware of myself. I was also very aware that my slightly older sister – in my eyes – was slim, popular, fun, energetic, everything I felt I wasn’t. I made it through primary school pretty much okay, my sister would sometimes send me on a doughnut run to the bakery in the morning, but hey, that’s just kids being kids and pushing boundaries.
Starting secondary school was, I can see now, a difficult experience for me, there was more freedom, there were older beautiful girls and there was a lot more work than there had been at primary school. It was a difficult transition, as I’m sure it is for most children. Rather than talk about my difficult feelings, food became a source of comfort for me. I would shoot down to the tuck shop at break time to buy chocolate, have a snack when I got home, hide away in my room, and sneak more food up to my bedroom after dinner. It was my way of coping – these were the early signs, which I kept very hidden. This went on for a couple of years, I felt increasingly lonely despite having many friends, and my eating got worse. I would sneak off to buy cookies before school, still head to the tuck shop at morning break, and buy family sized bars of chocolate, which I would eat secretly in my room when I got home. It was so automatic for me, I didn’t question it, but I suppose deep down I knew something was wrong. I would go to bed and pray to wake up skinny in the morning, it was something I so desperately longed for, I believed if I was skinny I would be happy, but I couldn’t stop the secretive eating, it comforted me and provided me with peace from my inner turmoil.
For a while things got better, I made a decision to stop buying food, and just like that I stopped, I started being more active, going out with my friends and having some fun,and for a couple of years somehow I was able to self regulate, despite still having intense feelings of loneliness and an increasing awareness of myself and how conscious I was of the way I looked, especially in comparison to my peers. My latter years of school saw drugs, alcohol and truancy play a much larger part in supressing my emotions, which I was still unable to share. Despite all of this, I got into a good university, I left school with many friends, and I took a gap year in which I maintained a job and went on a great adventure to South America.
There is a significant pattern in my life, in which transitional periods spark negative coping behaviours. Starting university was difficult for me, I was scared, as I imagine most 18 year olds are, I didn’t know what was coming, would I make friends? Would I enjoy it? Am I going to fit in? There were a lot of unknowns. As usual, I made friends quickly, and I relied on alcohol to give me confidence at the beginning, but I drank no more than anyone else in my social group. I did, however, start eating secretly in my room again, there was a lot of free time, and there was a lot of loneliness, again, despite having lots of friends. The over eating was a comfort, not much thought went into it, it was fairly automatic. I had started seeing a boy the summer before I left university, he went away when I started university but we decided to stay in touch and see each other when he was back. He returned just before my first Christmas break, after which time through secret eating, pizza eating, and alcohol consumption, I had piled on about two stone. He wasn’t too impressed with this and much to my humiliation, shame and sadness, he called things off. That was a major turning point in my life, it validated everything I had ever thought about how my feelings were related to my appearance. More than ever I believed that if I was thinner, I would be happier, loved, cared for, praised, and the rest.
It was soon after that Christmas break I began exercising, I had decided that something had to change and I was the one who was going to have to do that. My closest friends at uni were also feeling the effects of our unhealthy lifestyle, so it was a journey we embarked on together. That April I signed up to run the London Marathon the following year with the idea that if I committed to something, I would have to commit to the training, and I would undoubtedly lose weight. I spent the next year training with my dad, the weight did start to come off, but it was never enough, after a year of torment, forcing myself to go for long lonely runs in Nottingham every Sunday, I no longer looked forward to the challenge of the marathon, I just wanted to be skinny and I wanted it NOW. I felt as though I had to eat, to have energy to train, and I was so resentful about this, I had made a decision in my mind – as soon as the marathon was over I would start restricting my food, so I could get to the place I had been aiming for the entire year. I ran the marathon, with no sense of achievement at the end, simply a sense of relief and excitement that I had my freedom back.
All the while, I didn’t question what was going on my mind, I didn’t think about my feelings, I was not in touch with Charlotte, I simply had a goal and my goal was to be skinny, and I would do that any way I could. I started spending time on pro Ana websites and blogs, to motivate myself. One day I just decided to cut my calorie intake down to 800 calories, and I would stick to it no matter what. I did that for two weeks and that was enough to shift my whole mental state. I became scared of consuming more than that, I started logging everything I was eating to keep track, that would be what I used as my distraction after meal times. I was still going to the gym, and feeling great because I didn’t have to eat as much as I used to. I didn’t see it but my personality began to change, I started obsessing about weight loss, which became an obsession with health and nutrition. I would spend every waking moment in which I wasn’t studying for my final year either at the gym or reading about nutrition. My brain became a bible of information, but alongside that came an extensive list of forbidden foods, and strange habits. My exercise habits increased, I was be incredibly anxious and angry on days I was not able to get to the gym, it was a release from me, and it was a way in which I could eat the little that I ate without feeling guilty.
This continued until I finished university, returning back to London almost 4 stone lighter than my heaviest point in my first year. Of course family and friends noticed, but the mind of someone in active eating disorder is manipulative and cunning, it needs to be otherwise how would you hold onto the way that you have learnt to cope with life? I didn’t hear people when they aired their concerns, I only heard envy, jealousy, and lies – did they not want me to be happy? All the while, I still saw someone too large in the mirror, and I certainly wasn’t happy. My periods had stopped, my feet and hands tingled, I was cold all the time, I was anxious all the time, I frowned constantly, my mind never stopped, there were thoughts ruminating in my mind constantly and the food obsession was there 24/7.
Someone once explained it to me like this – think about going to the toilet, it’s intuitive, you don’t think about it, you need to pee, so you go and then you leave, that is how normal people eat. With an eating disorder, the amount of time taken up with thoughts would be like someone thinking about when they might next need to pee, who is going to be around? How long will it take? How will I feel about it? What will happen afterwards? What are others going to think? It no longer becomes intuitive, but a process that is so regimented that it is hard to get on with life because there is not much room for other thoughts.
I returned home after university – the hardest transition of all. My routine was thrown, I felt as though I was being watched, I was no longer in complete control of my food having moved back in to my family home. I did the best I could to maintain the work I had put in over the past two years, I was desperate to not put on weight, in fact putting on weight was an absolutely terrifying concept, I signed up to train for another half marathon. I began working at a deli whilst looking for other jobs, this was a dream as I still loved food, in fact I obsessed about foods which I never allowed myself to eat, I started baking and writing this food blog, but I rarely ate much of what I made. When I did eat things that were ‘forbidden’ I felt like I was bingeing and the guilt would stay with me for days, until I had sufficiently exercised it off. I spent a few months in London feeling very discontent, my eating disorder trying desperately to punish me enough mentally that I would regain my control, but I/my eating disorder finally decided I would not be able to maintain my control living under the watchful eye of my loved ones in London, so I began planning a travelling adventure to ‘go find myself’.
Soon after, I was on a flight to Melbourne; the food and coffee scene there excited me, despite my restrictive mind-set. I remember feeling incredibly self conscious on the flight, as if I’d put a lot of weight on in the 6 months I’d been back in London, I couldn’t wait to be in control again, and lose it again – I hadn’t put any weight on. Melbourne was the start of a very destructive spiral into self-destruction, I spent 8 months there, in which time I made amazing friends and had a great job but still managed to find myself feeling incredibly lonely, isolated, lost, confused, anxious and angry, mostly with myself. I began binge eating, it started off with bars of chocolate, reminiscent of school, then it became packs of biscuits, and loaves of bread. I tried everything I could to stop, I tried replacing food with alcohol, I tried getting back into a manic exercise habit, I tried living on carrots, I tried only eating fruit, but I was just falling. I fell out of my controlling restrictive behaviours straight back into the historical comfort and numbing of food. By the time I decided I had to go home, I was having suicidal thoughts due to the shame and anger I felt about having put so much weight on. I could not understand what was happening, I was so out of my depth, so out of control and the bingeing was so automatic, it was as though I had a hole inside me which needed to be filled.
I returned to London completely broken, I told very few people I was coming back; there were people I didn’t tell I was home until months after I landed. I began seeing a psychologist, and I started working at a start-up, food related of course! My mind was infiltrated, I was still so consumed by the eating disorder, I was still living in the eating disorder. Towards the end of my time in Australia I began making myself sick to reverse the effects of the binges. This behaviour continued when I got home. The binges were still out of my control, my anxiety levels were so high, I felt as though I might die if I didn’t eat, I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening to me. All I knew is that if I HAD to eat, I also had to get rid of it. This continued for 18 months after I returned from Australia, although I maintained a job, my social life was a struggle, I hated seeing people because I hated the way I looked, I was so ashamed of myself, I didn’t know who I was anymore, I didn’t know how to act.
In December 2014, with my mum’s encouragement I started to get some help, I left my job, and unsurprisingly, once I began getting vulnerable, things got worse. I had no other way to cope with my intense feelings of self-loathing and anger, than to eat and be sick. I was eating as much as someone might eat in a week in the space of two or three hours, taking breaks to throw up the food. I completely abandoned my self-care, I had moved out my family home, but stopped seeing or speaking to my house-mates, I felt lost and alone with my eating disorder, I had become completely insane. I stole food, I spent £1000’s on food, I threw up in public places – eating disorders ARE NOT GLAMOROUS. I did not know what to do with my time, the only way I knew how to fill it was with compulsively eating and purging, I put my body through hell, my muscles ached all the time, I was angry and irritable all the time, my relationships with my siblings suffered, I was living in my head rather than in the world. My world was no longer worth living in.
In May 2015 I went into a treatment centre in the UK, where, for the first time in 3 years, I felt safe. I was terrified, I would finally have to face up to the feelings I had spent my life running from, I would have to be honest, I would have to learn new ways to cope. 6 weeks there stabilised me, but I was not yet ready to live without my coping mechanisms, so I flew to a specialist eating disorder treatment centre in South Africa, where I stayed for a further 10 weeks. I started to unpick myself, and discover the Charlotte who had slowly disappeared, I learnt about my body dismorphia, I learnt how to laugh, I learnt how to cry, I learnt to distract myself, to meditate, to take time to look after myself, and most importantly of all, I learnt that this is a lifelong journey and no stint in a treatment centre was going to fix me. I was terrified to return home, away from the safe confinement of a treatment centre.
LIVING WITH AN EATING DISORDER
I have been home for 5 months, the journey so far has not been easy, and it has been rocky as most people’s lives are. I am slowly learning to communicate my feelings, to love myself, and to look after myself. Food still takes up considerable space in my head, I still judge myself and my body far more than I would like to, I still feel self conscious as if others are judging me, I still have days where I slip and eat too much and consequentially make myself sick, I have days where life seems like too much of a struggle, as if everything I do is a battle. I have days where I’m down, or very anxious and easily overwhelmed which are feelings I find difficult to manage. I have fear of rejection and abandonment, which still fuel my disordered thoughts, but now I have awareness which means I don’t have to act on those thoughts.
Living with an eating disorder is not easy, but it is part of me, and a part of me that has enabled me to go on a journey of self-discovery, to find out what I really value and care about. I have an immense amount of gratitude for the position I am in today. I have an incredible support network of family and friends both in and out of recovery who I turn to when I am struggling, I am no longer afraid to ask for help. I am no longer a broken, lost person, I have confidence, I am honest, I have passion, I have interests, I care greatly for others and I have a lust for life I truly believed I would never have when I was living in my eating disorder.
I am thankful for everything I have been through and for the person I am today.
This is a diary entry from 6 months after returning from Australia – I have no shame in sharing this… this diary entry was not written by me, it was written by my eating disorder, this is a genuine word for word diary entry from when I was living in my eating disorder.
27th April 2014
You are such a fucking nightmare.
Why do you eat when you aren’t even hungry? Do you just want to get fatter and fatter until you are so ashamed you can’t even leave the house?
The rest of today is going to look like this
- smoothie
- lunch with friend, small salad or soup. THAT IS ALL.
You already ate half a jar of almond butter, which is about 83976 million calories so you certainly do not need dinner.
Come on woman – where the fuck is your will power? When did you become so weak and pathetic? I’m not even asking you to workout, just fucking eat less.
Other people manage and they function perfectly fine. You are smarter when you’re thinner, your cognitive functioning is better.
Do you want to be smarter?
Do you want to be thinner?
-> come on, it’s really not that hard to work out…
STOP EATING FOR FUCKS SAKE!
Peace, Freedom, Love 
A hugely brave decision to share your story lovely girl, you inspire me as always. Pxxx