NEDAW – My eating disorder destroyed more than just my body!

This National Eating Disorder Awareness Week I’d like to focus on the damage my eating disorder has done to my entire life – rather than just the physical affects. 

Although the damage I have done to my body I will have to live with forever, for me that wasn’t the worst thing about this illness. My eating disorder took control of more than just my eating – it controlled my entire life! Every single move I made, or every thing I said, was all a part of my eating disorder. 

I couldn’t go outside without constantly comparing myself to others. I’d watch others enjoying portions of chips or packets of crisps and almost die of jealousy, oh how I longed to be able to do that! It got to a point where I didn’t want to go outside at all – that voice inside my head convinced me that everyone else was judging me just as much as I was judging them. I was scared of the opinions people I’d never met had of me. 

I struggled to leave the house a lot of the time as I believed I wasn’t even worthy of going outside. I was exhausted all of the time and even laying down became a chore. Every little thing would make me an anxious wreck and I’d panick over the silliest of things! 

But this illness didn’t just stop me meeting new people or making new friends, it resulted in me losing all of my friends. (Although I wasn’t the most popular to begin with) the more entrapped in my eating disorder I became, the harder I was to be around. The constant hunger caused me to be rude and dismissive – I didn’t have the energy to focus on anything. I never felt wanted so assumed I wasn’t and would never hang around. I struggled to hold proper conversations with people and became even more argumentative than I was before. Even I hated myself, so why wouldn’t everyone else??? 

It’s these same problems which caused problems between myself and family members also. The people who are supposed to love me unconditionally felt like they were constantly stepping on egg shells around me – how could I expect anybody to want to talk to me when even my own mum felt this way?

The more alone I became, the more entrapped I became within my eating disorder. It became like a vicious cycle of feeling alone, pushing everyone away, and feeling alone again. I pushed absolutely everyone away until I had no one left!! The only person I kept around me was the same person who was making me worse. He was incredibly hurtful in the things he’d say and do and yet I was too entrapped within myself to see that.

These characteristics are still a part of me, and I fear that they will be forever. Despite the fact that I now actually have a few friends, I know that I’m still not the nicest person to be around and have to try extra hard to fight that voice within my head just to leave the house each day. Out of everything that this illness put me through, the scariest part is not knowing whether the thoughts are the eating disorder, or whether it’s actually me.

Eating Disorder Awareness Week – please keep your underweight photos to yourself

Today marks the beginning of Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2016, and this week is very important in raising awareness for each eating disorder and the devastating effects that it has on people’s lives. However, every year, in an attempt to raise awareness, some of those who have recovered (or are in recovery) post photos of themselves at low weights, in comparison to a photograph of them at the weight that they are at now. Although I agree that these people should be unbelievably proud of themselves for the differences that they have made for their lives, I believe that these comparison photographs are not helpful, and can actually be very triggering for other sufferers. Not only that, but they do not help with trying to break the stereotype that everyone with an eating disorder is dangerously underweight.

It is a known fact that eating disorders can be incredibly competitive. It is in their nature to compare with others and that need to be the best anorexic can be dangerous. A wise person once told me how “the best anorexic is a dead one”, and although we know deep down that comparing ourselves with others won’t make anything better, we can’t help ourselves. Others may see these emaciated people and believe that they need to be at a lower weight in order to have an eating disorder. Eating disorder’s are MENTAL ILLNESSES NOT PHYSICAL ONES. Weight shouldn’t even come into it! it It is the mental suffering which is at the heart of this illness, and that is something which needs to be reflected on this week.

Of course this does not just go for people on social media, magazine and television companies also need to incorporate this into any features they do on this subject.

Photographs of people at their lowest weights do not raise awareness for eating disorders; someone can be underweight, overweight, or at a healthy weight and still have an eating disorder. And let’s not forget how not all eating disorders result in weight loss at all. Eating Disorder Awareness Week should be used to raise awareness for the truths about an eating disorder , and to break the myths and stigma that still surround them. So please keep your underweight photos to yourself, and try to raise awareness with your story and how you’ve turned your life around.