My never-again weight, part 10

Welcome to my final #edrecovery blog post, and a heartfelt thank you for following me all this way. I decided to impose a 10 post limit on My never-again weight, even though in truth I could write far more expansively on both eating disorders and mental health issues. I think if I kept going indefinitely this would morph into an autobiography, and I’m nowhere near interesting enough to style out that level of narcissism.

Instead, I’m going to attempt to answer the big question: WHY? Why have I tortured my mind and body for twenty years under the tenuous medical banners of depression, Anorexia, Bulimia, EDNOS et al?

On paper, I am a textbook case. I am white, cisgender, bisexual, and middle class. I was an only child, and an academic over-achiever, placed a year ahead in school. I was a senior prefect and I won the school Latin prize. My parents divorced when I was 13. My stepfather was a rampantly abusive alcoholic. I could have been the incredibly depressing poster child for eating disorders. Anorexia Girl.

Anorexia Girl would be a terrible superhero. Her superpowers would be passing out at inopportune moments and making food disappear under mysterious circumstances. She’d appreciate hiding behind the mask and cape, but cry at the prospect of lycra. Her accessories would be a lone rice cake and a battered copy of Cosmopolitan, the thinspirational Bible.

Here’s the thing though: Cosmopolitan didn’t make me do it. I felt trapped, and needed control, so I micromanaged my diet and body as a way of bringing order to a life that was largely out of my hands. I never idolised catwalk models or supposedly glamorous celebrities. They weren’t my people, and I knew Photoshop existed. I recognised bullshit when I saw it.

Certain pop culture references did resonate with me. Manic Street Preachers lyrics. Girl, Interrupted. Cassie from Skins, who, when asked how she coped when life was fucked up, simply said “I stop eating until they take me to hospital.” I was – am – attracted to romanticised fictional portrayals of mental illness. The lost soul. The waif. The medicated version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Cassie didn’t make me do it either though. I was a desperately unhappy child, and I just needed something to cling to that was mine. I acted out in school to the point of expulsion. I rarely attended college. I self-harmed. I drank. I smoked. I stole. I fought. I took ALL the drugs. But disordered eating was always in the background of all of my antisocial teen delinquent behaviour. As the other coping mechanisms melted away, incompatible with university, work and basically growing the hell up, my issues with food settled in for the duration. They were the easiest to hide, and often their outward effects were outright praised. They were my comfort blanket. Now, and for every day for the rest of my life, I need to shrug off that blanket and pick up the damn fork. Eat. Live.

I never wanted to be a ballet dancer or a princess. I never dreamed of the perfect wedding day, followed a celebrity diet, or craved size zero jeans. There is no cookie-cutter Anorexia Girl. If eating disorders were ever truly the preserve of willowy over-privileged white teenagers, they certainly aren’t now.

They are a modern epidemic because they fit so neatly into modern life. Eating disorders are not the fault of narrow slices of pop culture, but they are a symptom of a society that mythologises self-discipline, control, and the impossible quest for perfection. Everyone scrolls through everyone else’s lives on their phones, beating themselves up for not being enough.

I can’t tell you how to fix that. My only sweeping, generalised advice is to be kinder. To others, in the attitude and language you adopt when talking about food and body image, but also to yourself. You’re probably an okay human. Most people are. Your life may not be particularly Instagrammable, but on the flip side you didn’t get stuck at Fyre Festival crying over soggy mattresses. I’ll leave you with that charming mental image. Perfection is a soggy-mattressed myth.

Thank you, again. 🖤

My never-again weight, part 9

Today, I weigh 47kg, and I have decided that this is my penultimate post. I am – as I mentioned back in part 1 – not recovered, but I’m a healthy weight, and it’s been over a year since my last binge/purge relapse.

Although I am historically a terrible judge of my own appearance, I like to think that I don’t look ill any more. Hopefully, if you met me for the very first time today, you wouldn’t have any reason to believe I have an eating disorder.

Yet at breakfast this morning, I had a complete breakdown over whether or not we should go into town for lunch.

I’m still scared of eating in public. On more than one occasion I’ve actually choked in the cinema, as I’m so self-conscious about chewing and swallowing at quiet points in the film that my throat seizes up.

In front of other people, I worry that I’m eating too quickly, too slowly, too much, not enough, and that everyone is judging me with every mouthful. I eat clumsily. My hands shake. I dread anyone approaching me. Talking to me. Touching me. Commenting on my choice of food. Add eating in public to my extensive list of fears. It’s right up there with sandwiches and Morris dancers.

I know it’s a cliché, but you never know what battles people are fighting in their own heads. Many friends have reached out to me since I’ve started writing about eating disorders, sharing similar thoughts and experiences, and for the most part I never would have guessed. If you’re not shockingly underweight, morbidly obese, or running to the bathroom every five minutes, then eating disorders are pretty easy to hide. I pride myself in being open and honest with people, but for years I carried this gigantic secret, only ever referring to it to a few chosen people in the most euphemistic of terms. My favourite was “bad food day”. When I told someone I couldn’t come out because I was having a “bad food day” it covered a multitude of hidden behaviours. Fasting. Bingeing. Purging. Laxative abuse. “Bad food day” was wonderfully vague. No one ever asked me to clarify the term, and me and my mess of a head were left alone to torture each other in peace.

After my relapse, I decided that the Eating Disorder service would do me more harm than good, but opted to continue the fortnightly weigh-ins with Simon. The weight gain was frustratingly slow at first. From January to June of 2018 I only went from 38.4kg to 40.3kg. Some mornings I cried at the thought of having to eat again. It didn’t seem fair when I’d only just eaten yesterday. The stress of eating was huge and constant, and the gains felt so tiny in comparison.

I tackled my fears as I went along. I decided that it was okay to be scared, to freak out, as long as I kept going. In my teens I weighed myself obsessively, so I still don’t keep scales at home, but I wrote down my weight after each appointment. By September I’d reached 43.2kg. By December, 45kg. One by one I ticked off the milestones; throwing out my smallest children’s clothes, reaching a healthy BMI, my jeans fitting again, my advent calendar.

I still have mornings when I put off getting in the shower because I don’t want to look at myself naked. I still frequently break down in front of the mirror. On the flip side, I’ve totally mastered eating chocolate.

In addition to sandwiches, Morris dancers, and eating in public, I’m scared of supermarkets, pizza, spiders, pastry, cake, having my photo taken, being called fat, being called crazy, rice, pasta, pancakes, oil, calorie counts, avocados, and other people’s dietary advice. Above all, I’m scared of relapsing.

These are my fears, tell me yours. Or rather, tell SOMEONE yours. I promise it will help. 🖤

My never-again weight, part 8

According to the eternal horror that is Facebook Memories, this photo was posted a year ago today. The Tank Girl tshirt’s legit, but I’m clearly exhausted. If you look closely, my watch is hanging off my wrist. It was a 30th birthday present, adjusted at the time to fit me exactly. In the photo above, it fell to halfway down my forearm whenever I raised my hand.

This was around the time of my final – to date – binge/purge relapse, caused directly by the Eating Disorder service.

It pains me to say that. I work for the NHS. I’m fiercely proud to do so. At 70 years old it’s a tad creaky in places, but it’s full of loyal, dedicated and selfless humans trying their best regardless. It has also, if you refer back to part 5 of this blog, saved my life twice already, even when I didn’t want it to and was a super-sarcastic bitch about it. I did, however, promise myself to tell you the truth. I refuse to add to the online repository of rose-tinted recovery journey stories. If you want pretty pictures, stick to Instagram.

My first contact from the ED service was a letter berating me for missing my appointment.

This was not the point that I relapsed.

As I mentioned before, I didn’t really want the ED referral in the first place. I was already determined, with the help and support of my husband, friends, family and nurse, to work towards a healthy weight. Having said that, I was scared that if I didn’t cooperate, then the GP would push towards hospital admission.

So, even though the Kafkaesque first letter upset me greatly, I contacted the service by text. I explained that they had probably tried to call me, but I was deaf.

I resisted saying STILL DEAF. I really was trying to cooperate.

I was offered an appointment, but it clashed with training at work. I wasn’t ready, at that stage, to talk openly about exactly why I needed time off for treatment, so I asked for an alternative date straight away. I was given one, a mere two days after the first appointment slot they offered.

Not bad, right? A shaky start with that letter, but resolved relatively quickly and sensibly. I actually had high hopes for that first appointment.

The day before I was scheduled to attend, they texted to cancel due to unavoidable staffing issues.

This was not the point that I relapsed.

I’d been gearing myself up for the appointment, and it was quite a blow, but I took it in my now slightly shaken stride and asked to reschedule.

The answer was no. It had now been too long since my initial blood tests and ECG, and I would need to get them done again before I could be given a new appointment.

I told them politely that I didn’t want to pursue the matter any further. I locked myself in the toilet at work and cried hysterically. I already felt like I’d spent the last six weeks constantly scheduling and attending appointments for tests, results and referrals. I couldn’t face the prospect of repeating everything just to tick their boxes.

This was not the point that I relapsed.

About a week later, another letter from the ED service arrived. It said that I had repeatedly cancelled appointments and was now refusing treatment, and that my GP had been informed.

This. This was the point that I relapsed.

I was so angry that I couldn’t stop shaking as I tore the letter into tiny pieces and buried it deep in our recycling bin. It felt like gaslighting, making me look and feel crazy and uncooperative to cover up their own failings. Quite frankly, anorexia made me feel batshit enough already. I didn’t need any extra help from them.

I binged and purged for six hours straight. I was ill for two days afterwards. I was also £50 poorer.

The shame of the memory is knotting my stomach and tightening my chest as I type. I was petrified that I would spiral straight back down into my old habits. I didn’t tell anyone about the relapse. I couldn’t.

I’m telling you now because I didn’t spiral, either by bingeing again or by running back to the safety of restricting. The binge was an isolated incident. A bump in the road, not a gaping sinkhole.

Life continued around me and, somehow, I gradually rejoined it. The fear and the guilt lessened. Recovery is not linear, but it is possible.

Tonight, Gareth and I are having one of our Chinese Takeaway Pyjama Parties. This is one of my favourite new traditions. I can’t unlearn all my old, destructive thought patterns around food, but I can forge new patterns, create new memories. A year on from my last relapse, I can be proud of how far I’ve come.

I have a new Lilo & Stitch nightshirt. As Stitch – and Gareth – say, our family is little and broken, but it’s still good.

My never-again weight, part 7

“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”

I know, I know. It’s one of the standard screening questions. I just couldn’t resist.

“Are you saying I’m fat?”

At this point I doubt I tipped the scales at 40kg soaking wet. I’d been asked to wear an underwire-free bra on the day of the bone scan, and I’d resorted to Marks & Spencer’s children’s department to find one that fitted. The new set was stripy dark blue and neon pink lycra, and I secretly loved it, because the underwires on all my bras had been digging into and bruising my ribs.

The women in my family tend to live forever; my exceedingly Scottish paternal great-grandmother made it to 106, and told me the secret to longevity was whisky and shortbread. I was extremely nervous though, because we have a strong family history of osteoporosis and arthritis. My mother had two hip replacements before her 60th birthday. By adding anorexia to that genetic cocktail, I was probably lucky I hadn’t broken a bone or two already.

The nurse fixed me with a hard stare of positively Paddington proportions.

“Have you had a fall recently?”

Oof, totally deserved that one. I felt like I’d just gone from 33 to 83 in a single question. It hardly seemed fair that both queries were necessary, like still getting spots when you already had wrinkles.

“No, this was just booked at the same time as the ED referral.”

Her hard stare softened, and she explained the scanning process to me. It took about 10 minutes, and the scan itself was similar to x-rays, using blocks under my legs to manoeuvre them and my hips into optimal scanning positions.

The results came back two weeks later. I have osteopenia, which is only funny because it has the word PEEN in it. It’s decreased bone density, the precursor to osteoporosis, and I definitely should not have it in my thirties. Add it to the giant list of gross ED side effects. To combat it, I take calcium and vitamin D supplements every morning alongside my daily multivitamin. If I’m lucky the supplements combined with the weight I’ve gained back should help reverse its effects. In the meantime, I probably shouldn’t go skiing.

I can take pills in the morning now, for the first time since my teens, because I don’t throw up any more. This is one of my new GOOD habits, but I still struggle to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy behaviours.

Here’s an example: taking vitamins before breakfast every day is GOOD. Eating breakfast every day is GOOD.

Eating exactly the same breakfast every day at exactly the same time is BAD. Using the same plate, knife and fork every day is BAD. Attempting to find the thinnest slice of bread in the loaf to toast is BAD. Attempting to calculate the exact calorie content of my breakfast is BAD.

See? It’s not even 8am.

I should mention, at this point, that my partner Gareth has been instrumental in my recovery. I know a lot of people were rather amused that I married a BOY, or even that I got married at all, but all I did was promise to love my best friend forever. His never-ending patience, even at my never-again weight, has been my lifeline. He has helped me establish new traditions, and taught me to start having fun with food.

I’m still scared of shopping, cooking and meal-planning. I still panic when I find out exactly how many calories there are in what I’m eating. I throw away packaging without reading it so I won’t obsess. I bury it deep in the kitchen bin so, much like rejected food when I was restricting, I won’t fish it back out again.

Thanks to Gareth, I eat homemade meals every day, and I eat them at regular but not exact times. The cutlery varies, and I have a new collection of creepy cat plates, from the charity shops of Hove. Most of them state quite clearly on the back that they are works of art, and not suitable for food consumption. I revel in the middle class anarchy.

There can still be a huge disconnect between knowing I should eat something and actually putting it in my mouth, but again, I’m working on it. Day by day, mouthful by mouthful.

I started to open up about the ongoing mess inside my head at the fortnightly weigh-ins with Simon. It was therapeutic without ever being officially therapy. I was still waiting for my ED appointment – more on that in part 8 – and appreciated his help.

“Any plans tonight?”

“Dinner and UFC. I’d like to get back into boxing again myself one day.”

“Ha! Not with your bones!”

Simon never pulled his punches. 😁🥊

My never-again weight, part 6

This has been an eventful week for me, so I’ll return to the bone scan and ED referral next weekend in part 7.

The photo above was taken exactly a year after the scary lollipop-head shot attached to part 1. In it, I am 46.4kg, in contrast to part 1’s 38.4kg. My BMI is 18.8, and I am no longer underweight. By less than a kilogram, but it still counts.

Christmas stressed the hell out of me, with its relentless onslaught of food and sugary alcohol. I dreaded a binge/purge relapse. I dreaded putting on weight. I dreaded losing weight. There was, in short, a whole lotta dread.

In the midst of it all, my mini victory was my posh vegan advent calendar from Hotel Chocolat. I ate it in the socially acceptable manner of one door/chocolate a day for the first time in…well, ever. I actually enjoyed the ritual of it, without getting obsessive or controlling. In previous years, my poor advent calendars had all been abused terribly. As a child, I cheated, removing the plastic tray insert so I could steal future days’ chocolates while leaving the cardboard door perforations intact. As an adult, I would inhale them in one swift, mechanical sitting as part of a binge, or throw them in the bin and cover them with bleach so I wouldn’t be tempted to fish them back out again. It was, literally, all or nothing.

I have wasted countless thousands of pounds of food over the years in this manner. I can’t stand waste now. Rotting food makes me angry. Leftovers make me anxious. Full fridges and cupboards are still mesmerising and terrifying in equal measure. On bad days, I can stare into them for HOURS. So, as you can imagine, that week between Christmas and New Year was a minefield. I sewed until my fingers blistered to keep my hands busy.

Afterwards, I started this blog, to remind myself how far I’d come, and to explore the feelings that I still have left to conquer.

On Tuesday, I had my first appointment with Jane, the not-Simon nurse. She’s sympathetic but brusque, which is a brilliant level for me. I’m pleased to say that I put on a tiny bit of weight over Christmas. I had my first tattoo appointment of the year yesterday too; five hours on my ribs and back, aided by homemade barbecue jackfruit and Nakd bars. I joked that I was the only person in the world who was celebrating keeping their Christmas weight on throughout January.

When you are in the unusual position of trying to gain weight, you become especially attuned to the collective cultural obsession with losing it. I spend my life throwing away packaging now. I don’t want to know how many calories are in the damn thing. I just want to eat it.

January is the pinnacle of this. Diets, detoxes, and new year/new me resolutions are ubiquitous. Teaching yourself to eat again in a world that berates you for doing so can be very lonely, but living in the grip of an eating disorder is infinitely worse. You are constantly hiding and lying, wracked with shame, guilt, remorse and self-loathing. Losing weight is not the most impressive thing a human can do. I just need to remember that, and keep going. 🖤

My never-again weight, part 5

I took my second paracetamol overdose just over four years ago. Sometimes, when I’m really upset and anxious, I can still taste the activated charcoal.

I spent three days in hospital on a glucose drip, panicking about how many calories were in it. I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to talk to anyone, so I spent most of the time reading Solar by Ian McEwan. When a well-meaning nurse came round on the third morning and asked me how the book was, I told her it was so dull I’d tried to kill myself instead of finishing it.

I was being a total dick.

I was discharged after my blood tests revealed my liver function was, according to the consultant, “better than it had any right to be”. In my psych assessment, I told them that trying to commit suicide had been painful and boring, and I wasn’t planning on doing it again any time soon.

I left the hospital by myself, walked the two and a half miles home, then binged. I was angry at being alive, and figured that if I couldn’t kill myself quickly, I could at least still do it slowly.

At the depths of my depression, I binged and purged at least once a day, and often more, for hours at a time. It was, much like the overdose, painful and boring. It was also so expensive that I couldn’t afford to do anything else. I would extend my overdraft on my phone while walking to the supermarket as it opened at 7am. I binged and purged and worked and slept. Those were some of my darkest days.

Later, as the depression lifted and I was able to go a few days at a time without bingeing, killing myself slowly became a worry rather than a goal. My mouth tasted of acid and was plagued with ulcers. The constant over-expansion of my stomach bruised my ribs while the laxatives gave me debilitating cramps. Some days, I struggled to stand. The after-effects of each episode lasted longer and longer. Much like hangovers and comedowns get worse as you get older, what my body could bounce back from at 16 was beating it to death at 31.

Unfortunately, none of the ED assessments ever showed the full story. With the exception of a “slight heart murmour” on an ECG at 15, I’d never been so much as anaemic. I was, in my own ridiculous way, highly-functioning. When I ate, I ate a relatively balanced diet. I had a penchant for fortified children’s food, and I took vitamins and medication at night, when I wouldn’t throw them back up. My hair never fell out. I never fainted in public. In many respects, I slipped under the radar for far too long.

For years, this was a secret pride of mine, that I was somehow cheating the system. Even when I broke free of the binge/purge cycle and Anorexia took hold completely, I knew I would mostly look fine on paper.

At my never-again weight, my heart and liver function were still normal. My hormone levels were rock bottom, but I wasn’t deficient in anything else. My Anorexia-voice squealed in delight, but I had to ignore her. I had, by that point, lost feeling in my knees.

At my first “weight management” appointment with Simon, I had put on half a kilogram. At the time, that felt monumental. My plan was threefold: to stop losing weight, to put it on slowly and healthily, and to start enjoying food for the first time since puberty. I remember my greatest achievement that fortnight was eating a sherbert lemon and only being briefly incapacitated by the shame.

Next on the list was the bone scan, which is where I’ll pick up again next weekend.

Today, I am not underweight, but I do still suffer from some long-term side effects of disordered eating. I have a mouth full of very expensive dentistry and my digestive system is unpredictable at best. I also have a head full of bad memories and associations that I’m still trying to work through and unpick.

I’m still scared of sandwiches.

I feel like I should end this on a happier note, so I’ve added a photo of Gareth and I at the Ritter Sport flagship store and Museum in Berlin, in November 2018. Chocolate and Gareth have both been instrumental in my recovery, and I am eternally thankful for both of them. Gareth made me cinnamon porridge for breakfast this morning, and I added chocolate and raisins.

I have no idea how many calories were in it. I don’t care.

My never-again weight, part 4

“So try and get better and don’t ever accept less/Take a plain black marker and write this on your chest/Draw a line underneath all of this unhappiness/Come on now, let’s fix this mess/We could get better/Because we’re not dead yet”

Physical assessment for Eating Disorders referral is thorough, because the strain on your body by the time you’re deemed “sick enough” to need one is immense. Essentially, they need to check you’re not about to drop dead before you get to the top of the waiting list. That would be embarrassing for everyone.

I was booked in for a battery of blood tests for everything from hormone levels to liver function, an ECG to check my heart, and a bone scan to measure my bone density, or terrifying lack thereof. The bone scan was booked in later, on another site, but the blood tests and ECG were back at the walk-in centre just a few short days after my initial run-in with the mansplaining GP.

I am heavily tattooed, but I hate blood tests, in part because I can’t stand the weird vampiric vacuum sensation of drawing the blood itself, but mostly because of the near-ubiquitous “Oh, you must be fine with needles!” quip I’m subjected to every time I roll up a sleeve.

The nurse was cheerful and chatty. He asked me questions about my tattoos to distract me, but he didn’t make the joke. I was phenomenally grateful; somewhat uncharacteristically, I was not in a joking mood.

As I undressed for the ECG, I took stock. My tattoos have always been my version of therapy. They have helped me accept and live in a body that I often resented and at times outright hated. Some of them are physical armour, covering the ancient but extensive self-harm scars on my arms and stomach, but the rest are psychic armour. They’re a protective layer of memories, motivational quotes and dumb pop culture references that, in combination, are purely and uniquely mine. They are a diary of my life, of me, and I love them all.

At my never-again weight, I was scared to get tattooed in case I passed out, and, mortfyingly, I knew my favourite artists were reluctant to touch me for the exact same reason. I usually found the pain and the ritual of getting tattooed calming, but now I feared having to eat more both before and after the appointments. I caught myself trying to work out exactly how many calories getting tattooed burned, versus how many extra I needed to consume, in an attempt to make even my erstwhile therapy calorie-neutral.

My very first tattoo, a flaming 8 ball at the top of my right arm, was now misshapen and elongated because I’d lost so much weight. That meant I was significantly skinner at 33 than I was at 19. I wanted my 8 ball back. I wanted my arms back.

I cringed at the thought of my stomach scrunching up into rolls as I got up onto the table. As I laid down, I cringed again at my visible ribs, and the way my pants stretched over my hip bones without touching my stomach at all, which was concave between them. This was Anorexia’s double voice at work; I switched seamlessly between I’M TOO FAT and I’M TOO THIN, entirely aware of the contradiction but unable to break free of the thought pattern.

An ECG sounds a lot scarier than it is, and I’ve had several for ED referrals over the years. You strip down to your underwear, get covered with about a dozen sticky electrodes, then lie still for a few minutes while the machine records your resting heart rate. It’s undignified but not unbearable.

Afterwards, I sat down with the nurse and had the conversation that I had tried and failed to have with the doctor. Thankfully, he had read my notes. I said that I knew I was underweight, but that I didn’t want ED treatment, anti-depressants or therapy in any traditional sense. I wanted to teach myself to eat properly. To actively enjoy food for the first time in my adult life.

I asked to check back in every fortnight, so I could get weighed and talk about my progress.

The nurse – Simon, although I didn’t know his name then – did the one thing I genuinely and desperately needed at that moment.

He believed me.

To this day, I’m not sure why. He must have heard hundreds of those speeches before. I’d made at least a dozen myself, and this was the first I’d meant in earnest. The odds were very much stacked against him – and me – on this one. Still, he booked me in again, two weeks to the day. I appreciated the exactness, the structure.

“We’ll call it…weight management!” he gestured vaguely as he blocked out a half hour slot on his calendar. “You’ll have your results back from the doctor by then too. We can talk about them together.”

I vowed, at that point, to eat a little something extra every day, and to try at least a bite of anything vegan I was offered. These were my first baby steps.

Next weekend I’ll talk about my results, and ED side-effects in general.

It’s gonna get gross.

My never-again weight, part 3

This entry’s going to be tough. Bear with me.

I got old and married and moved to Hove – which my 20-year-old self will never forgive me for – but I’m still registered with Brighton Station Health Centre because it offers evening and weekend appointments. I am sorry to say that this is its only meagre advantage. It’s a minor injuries walk-in centre, run by Care UK, so I don’t have a set GP. As far as I can tell, I get assigned one randomly each time I visit, from an ever-shifting pool of apathetic and bitter locums who seem to resent my very existence.

I had to make the appointment in person, to bypass their telephone-triage booking system, because I’m deaf. I have a moderate to severe hearing loss of around 65 decibels, so I wear two hearing aids and I’m reliant on lip-reading in person, and subtitles on screen.

In an ideal world, my doctor would have glanced at my notes before I sat down in front of him. I know that he didn’t because he himself sat hunched up, scowling at his computer screen, with his right hand on his mouse and his left hand covering his mouth.

Not an auspicious start. Of course, I already wanted to walk straight back out the door again anyway. The Anorexia-voice in my head assured me that I didn’t need him, that the Occupational Health nurse was over-reacting and I was absolutely fine the way I was. This voice is my closest, constant and most loyal companion, she’s seductive as all hell and I love her dearly. Unfortunately, she also wants to kill me.

I asked him to move his hand.

“Why?”

POLITENESS? PROFESSIONALISM? BECAUSE I’VE BEEN DEAF FOR 33 YEARS AND MY HEARING HASN’T GROWN BACK YET?

“I need to lip-read.”

I took an extremely deep breath and told him everything: 20 years of bingeing and purging. Countless diagnoses of Anorexia, Bulimia, EDNOS, Anorexia binge/purge subtype, depression, self-harm and substance abuse. Never making it to Eating Disorder treatment because the waiting lists were so long. Three rounds of Fluoxetine and one each of Venlafaxine and Mirtazapine. Two paracetamol overdoses, ten years apart, because apparently I learnt nothing. Breaking free of the bingeing and purging cycle, but failing to acknowledge until that very week that I had almost stopped eating entirely. How I now needed help putting some weight back on please thank you very much.

He weighed me, took my blood pressure, and booked the ever-familiar ECG and blood tests. He also insisted on booking the referral to the Eating Disorders service that I had told him, unequivocally, that I didn’t want.

He asked me to crouch down on the floor then spring back up to my feet again. I felt like a broken puppet.

“You’re very underweight,” he concluded. “Do you know what Anorexia is?”

YOU DIDN’T LISTEN TO A SINGLE WORD I JUST SAID, YOU OVER-PRIVILEGED, MONEY-GRUBBING, SADISTIC GHOUL. I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU.

“Yes, that’s why I’m here.”

I didn’t cry, for two reasons. Firstly, my hormone levels at that weight were virtually non-existent. I was a highly-strung robot who hadn’t even cried at her own wedding. More importantly though, I was damned if I was going to cry in front of HIM. I literally bit my lip, picked up my bag and left.

Somehow, miraculously, I clung to my new resolve and kept the appointments for the blood tests and ECG. More on those next weekend.

In the photo at the top, taken in July 2018, I am still underweight. That was my very first vegan milkshake though, at the amazing Cactus Kitchen Gals in Worthing, and the smile is genuine. While this past year has been a gigantic uphill struggle, I have tried my hardest to document my highs so I can refer back to them during my lows. As I mentioned before, this story doesn’t have an ending. I’m still taking it one milkshake at a time.

My never-again weight, part 2

I am exactly 8kg heavier than I was this time last year. In its infinite wisdom, the internet tells me this is a whole TWO CATS heavier. That pleases me because it stops me obsessing over the numbers. I’ve always been a counter.

At no point did I eat two cats: I’m vegan. Alongside settling down in a ridiculously happy relationship, going vegan was actually the major lifestyle change I needed to break free of the bingeing and purging cycle that I had been stuck in since I was thirteen.

I’m not saying that veganism cures compulsive over-eating. This is not a how-to guide, and although I work for the NHS my bank balance assures me that I am not a doctor. Veganism just happened to work in my particular case. For me, food has always been about control, and switching from a vegetarian to a vegan diet gave me a strict set of rules to live by that weren’t linked to calorie consumption. As I am fond of telling people, chips are vegan. And yes, I eat chips. Still not as many as I’d like, but I’m getting there.

Bingeing and purging is extremely addictive, destructive, and expensive. It’s not something I feel comfortable going into a great deal of detail about here just yet. I will try later, if you’re interested. I fear relapsing intensely. I still have nightmares at least once a week in which I binge. When I wake up, I am filled with shame and hopelessness, just as if I had binged in real life. The anxiety feels like a rock stuck under my ribcage, and I wander around our flat, dazed, trying to shift it. I’m a delight in the mornings.

With any other addictive substance or behaviour, the medical advice is to stop it completely, to cut it out of your life and avoid triggering situations if at all possible. This can’t be done with food. You can’t, ironically, go cold turkey.

I know because I tried, and I ended up at the never-again weight. No one’s invented a real life version of the Willy Wonka Three Course Dinner Chewing Gum yet, so there’s no quick fix. Everyone in eating disorder recovery has to teach themselves, somehow, to eat in moderation.

I still want to binge EVERY. DAMN. DAY. It is slowly getting easier though. As time passes, the cycle’s grip on me loosens. I eat more, I gain weight, I get stronger. I celebrate each small victory. Sometimes, I even manage to celebrate with chocolate.

I made my first appointment with the doctor the day after my Occupational Health visit, before I lost my nerve. I realised that my fear of relapsing had morphed into a fear of food itself. I had, to be blunt, never learnt to eat like an adult. It was time to start.

This weekend, I’ll write again. If you’ve made it this far, thank you. 🖤

My never-again weight

Yesterday, I had my final weigh-in appointment with Simon, the nurse who has helped me reclaim my life and my body over the past year. From now on, I will have one check-up a month with Simon’s replacement, Jane, to make sure I don’t backslide and start losing weight again. I am still very far away from being entirely unsupervised. I still need my hand held.

To be clear, I do not consider myself “recovered”. I don’t think I ever will. This isn’t an inspirational story with a sunset-hued happy ending. It doesn’t have an ending at all. I’m finally ready to relate it in more depth than the occasional Instagram caption on my dinner though. This is for everyone who has supported me by liking and commenting on my #edrecovery posts. It’s also, crucially, for those who have sent me private messages thanking me for speaking out, and sharing their own stories.

Theirs don’t have endings either.

The photo above was my turning point. That’s Christmas Day 2017, and even through my Anorexia-goggles, which usually made me look like a bloated, saggy mess of a human, I could see the lollipop head. Mine, not his. He’s beautiful.

After almost 20 years of cycling through bingeing and purging anything up to three times a day I had finally stopped, and had started trying to eat properly. I had then moved in with my fiancé, landed a brilliant new job and gotten married, all within three months.

Eating disorders are phenomenally powerful beasts; they twist your reality to suit their own needs. On one level, I thought I was absolutely fine, that I’d managed to find the magical, perfect weight. On a second, more rational level, I knew something was wrong. By the time I went to my first Occupational Health assessment in January, I was wearing three jumpers and three pairs of tights, and I still couldn’t feel my toes. I was perpetually cold, only dragging myself out of the scalding shower every morning by promising myself I could have another one straight after work.

My point is, I simultaneously believed both realities. Passionately. Wholly. On bad days, I believed a third reality too: that I was still too fat. I knew that this was insane. It was also exhausting. I got on the scales.

I am 157cm tall. I weighed 38.4kg.

This is my never-again weight.

I told the nurse that I wanted to put weight on, and was frustrated that she didn’t believe me. She recommended a GP appointment and Eating Disorders assessment straight away. I knew what that meant: blood tests, an ECG, endless questions, and a whole lot of scolding from white men in suits. I had started down that road many times before, but never made it very far before retreating.

Looking back, of course the nurse didn’t believe me. I had a BMI of 15.5, and there was still a part of me that was absolutely delighted. I was finally, after years of Bulimia, EDNOS and Anorexia binge/purge subtype diagnoses, purely Anorexic. I had achieved the ultimate accolade; I was finally considered “thin enough” for inpatient treatment.

The problem was, I no longer wanted it. Teetering on the precipice of doing so, I realised that there was nothing romantic about starving to death. I didn’t want to be analysed, counselled, medicated and forced into recovery. I wanted to help myself.

My mother claims that my favourite phrase as a stubborn toddler was I’LL DO IT MYSELF. 30 years later, I rediscovered my bratty toddler resolve. I would go to my GP, but this time around, it would be on my own terms.

That was day one. More another time, but for now, a big shout out to anyone who recognises themselves in any aspect of this post. Our culture still places weight loss on a puritanical pedestal. Thin people are still seen as better, not just aesthetically but also spiritually, as if their self-control and willpower separates them from their lowlier, fatter peers.

It’s poisonous bullshit. Try to remind yourself of that as often as possible.