my experiences with eating disorders

Posted by: Anonymous

I’ve been lucky in the sense that I haven’t ever had a full blown eating disorder as such, but have had quite a lot of experience with it in different phases over the last few years, both from my own experience and from seeing other people I know have eds. I’ve been a bit hesitant about posting this, but it’s always good to have something to relate to, so anyway, here goes :) I’ll give you a bit of background info to start with, otherwise it wouldn’t make much sense.

Growing up, I’d always been a bit of a perfectionist. In particular, I wanted family life to be good, and was terrified that my parents would split up one day. At around 10, I developed loads of little habits and weird routines, and had loads of specific rules for things I could and couldn’t do on particular days of the week. For example, I had good and bad numbers and words, and had to do things a particular number of times, and organise everything meticulously.

I also subconsciously sorted everything I read or heard into ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’ words. I was convinced that if I didn’t do even one of these things, it would bring bad luck to my family and my parents would split up. It sounds ridiculous, but I wasn’t as mental as I probably sound. I was generally happy, and did all of this in secret so no-one found out about it.

Then at 13, my dad left and I sort of went off the rails for a while. I suppose I’d known for years that it would eventually happen, but was still a bit shocked at how quickly everything changed. It was a very messy split and my mum became very depressed, understandably. We didn’t really get on and things were always tense. I’d always been a bit of a daddy’s girl and after everything, I didn’t love him any less and just wanted him to come home, even though everyone else was really angry at him. So things at home weren’t good (we moved in with a relative at this time btw, and dad stayed in the house), and it was hard when everything had changed so much- not being at home was strange too.

I hated school and was extremely shy so never told anyone about what had happened and therefore was lonely. My appetite disappeared, but my mum or granny or whatever adult was there always made sure I ate dinner every day. Then I went to a summer camp type of thing for two weeks, and sort of saw it as an opportunity to have control over what I ate for a change, and barely ate anything for the whole time. After that, it gradually became more about weight and less about not being hungry. I weighed myself obsessively several times a day, and ate really little.

I was quite naive and didn’t really know much about nutrition or anything and therefore didn’t count calories- I just made sure that everything I ate for each day would fit in a saucer. Sounds weird, but I was weird at that time. I over-exercised- again, doing silly things like jumping up and down on the stop hundreds of times, and did loads of other exercises in my room each night. I always had a target weight in mind-!

I remember one night, being ¼ of a pound heavier than I wanted, and running laps of the room until I lost it. I lost about a stone over 3 or 4 months, even though I wasn’t even heavy to start with. I never told anyone about what I was doing- they just assumed the weight loss was because of stress, and they were understandably to busy with other things to notice the truth. Lots of other things that I don’t want to mention were also going on that summer, which probably contributed to the way I acted too. However, when things at home became more normal, and I finally accepted that my dad wasn’t coming back, I stopped acting like that and became ‘normal’ again.

I’ve had those anorexic type thoughts every so often in phases ever since, but haven’t really done anything drastic. I suppose, last summer has been the only time I’ve sort of verged on having an eating disorder again since. For the entire summer, I was obsessed with weight and felt so fat despite not being even nearly overweight. I didn’t want to worry my mum and therefore sort of ate relatively normally, but exercised obsessively instead. I would run/cycle/walk long distances for a couple of hours every day, generally burning off about 700-900 kcal a day through exercise, sometimes more. I’ve always been quiet, and all summer, my social life was non-existent so I was lonely and didn’t really feel like there was anything better to do.

I counted calories and stuff too, and wouldn’t eat anything I considered to be unhealthy. However, when school started back again, I started getting a lot busier, and simply don’t have time for that amount of exercise anymore, so the obsession stopped quite quickly. Balancing A-levels, a job, volunteering, and about 3 other clubs, on top of family/friends stuff, it no longer has the same priority in my life as it had before. I still exercise nearly every day, but only for an hour or so, and with a much better frame of mind.

More importantly than just being busy, though, is that nearly every day, I see my aunt running down the road, who has had exercise obsession for the last 20 years, and I see my friend at school who was severely anorexic a couple of years ago. So, I’ve seen how much it can mess people’s lives up, and am quite determined not to ever sink as deep as they did. So, overall, I’ve always been a bit on the mental side, which was probably why I developed some form of eating disorder, but I’m very glad not to be back to the way I was.

My story is absolutely nothing in comparison to what other people have been through, and I can’t begin to describe how strong the people are who have recovered/are starting to recover after having eating disorders for years and years. Mine only last 6 months and 3 months respectively, but still felt like hell at the time. Good luck to anyone else who is in a similar position at the minute. I can honestly say that I’m a lot happier at the moment, and if I could give advice to anyone in the same position, it would be to join a club or have a project of some sort to focus on.

For me, loneliness was probably the main factor behind my behaviour, and there are much, much better ways to cope than by developing unhealthy lifestyles. I’ve found that keeping busy has really helped, and I have so much to focus on now that I really don’t want to ever go back to being like I was three summers ago.

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