Eating Disorders Awareness Week - Their stories

As part of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, many people are sharing their experiences to help people understand what the often-misunderstood mental health conditions are.

Two girls, who have both used our eating disorders service (CEDS), wanted to share their experiences to help others understand exactly what an eating disorder is, what it’s like to live with and how others can get support.

Eden, 18, from Tameside is in recovery from anorexia and wanted to tell her story to raise awareness and potentially help people find the support they need:

“I first began to struggle with disordered eating when I was 12 after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The focus on food portions and counting carbs led to counting calories and obsessing over any weight changes.

“I was referred to CEDS when I began my first year at sixth form, the stress from GCSEs and having a big change in my life made my eating disorder behaviours much worse and they were noticed by others. For many years I had known that something wasn’t right with my thoughts about eating, but I was ashamed and afraid of talking about how I felt. Although the thought of having to open up to people at CEDS was scary, it was a relief to finally be able to tell someone how I felt and begin to understand what I was going through. 

“It’s difficult to explain what anorexia feels like to someone without it because it doesn’t make much sense; how restricting food and losing weight could make you happy. It doesn’t always really make sense to me either, which brings a lot of contradicting emotions. For me it’s like having a voice in my head that tells me not to eat and that I should lose weight. This brings a lot of guilt when I eat or look at my body, so I restricted food to try to deal with this. Although there are still my own thoughts reminding me of the opposite, at times the eating disorder voice is overwhelming and none of my logical thoughts can make it go away. 

“The CEDS team taught me ways to distract myself from the eating disorder thoughts, reminded me that the thoughts were irrational and helped me disprove them. Going to CEDS gave me a space where I could openly say anything I was thinking and feeling about my body and eating disorder where in the past I’d been ashamed to talk about it. A lot of the work they did with me was about finding reasons to not give into the eating disorder thoughts. 

“I’ve been in recovery for about two years now and have reached a point I never thought possible. When I was at the lowest point with my mental health, I didn’t think recovery was possible and thought that trying was pointless. I think everyone in recovery is fed up with hearing ‘it gets better’ but it truly can. I still have eating disorder thoughts and still have a way to go with my recovery, but I’ve achieved things that wouldn’t be possible if I had continued to give into anorexia.”

Amy, 17, from Bury is training to be an elite athlete in gymnastics whilst studying at college to eventually enrol on a science course at university. The numerous lockdowns had a particularly strong impact on her mental health and her battle with anorexia:

“I started seeing the staff at the child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) community eating disorders service a year ago when my underlying eating disorder ‘blew up’ during lock down.

“I have anorexia, which is down to a contribution of overexercise and under fuelling. As my training and mobility (e.g. walking to, from and around school) was stripped from me during the pandemic, I overtrained even more in attempt to compensate for not training ‘properly’ and I under-fuelled to a greater extent. The pandemic gave me a lot more thinking time, so my mind became consumed with food as it had no other occupation.

“My initial treatment focused on eating and restoring my weight and then shifting slightly to maintaining weight and building a healthy relationship with food. It equipped me with the skills to prevent a relapse or regression in my recovery.

“An eating disorder, put in a simpler way, is disordered eating - where your mind is emotionally driven causing unhealthy and destructive habits around food. Eating disorders are fuelled by anxiety with the unhealthy food related habits and obsessiveness around food acting as a coping mechanism for the anxiety. It isn’t just something you struggle with at mealtimes, you struggle with it constantly.

“The CEDS team have been an incredible help to me. Above all else they stopped me from being hospitalised, but they also gave me and my family hope that it will get better when, at one point, all we could see was darkness. They brought back taste and enjoyment into my diet, a smile on my face and a proper belly-laugh that I’d forgotten I had. Ultimately, they helped me find the true Amy again.

“For anyone struggling with food, seek help, because I know for a fact that I would not be in the much better position I am in today without the support from others, especially the CEDS staff. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you didn’t choose to have these struggles and beating your eating disorder can be the hardest and proudest thing you will ever achieve.

“I also think it’s important that people aren’t misinformed by some of the nutrition advice out there, a lot of it is flawed. Fats are not bad as the body and brain need it to function – the brain is 60% fat. Only take nutrition advice from a qualified dietician and remember your nutrition needs are not the same as anyone else’s.”