Only then did I realise what a scary world I had entered. I turned to the Internet, and found a whole community of brave people in the same position that had chosen to fight.

I saw, for one fleeting moment, everything that I had lost. The eating disorder that was at once my best friend and my worst enemy. I even ran away from my house, too scared to face the dinner that had been so lovingly prepared.Įventually, my old self cried out, lost in the eating disorder that had enveloped me. I got better at saying no, at hiding away, at avoiding people, at lying. No matter how tired or ill I was, I powered through until I stopped feeling hunger or pain. I began cutting out entire food groups and exercised to the point of exhaustion. I planned all of my meals down to the tiniest calorie. My entire life revolved around food and yet I barely touched it. Little by little, my behaviour became more extreme. All of my perfectionist tendencies came into play as I flung myself wildly into weight loss culture. A harmless comment that targeted all of my old insecurities resulted in me crying in front of the mirror, grabbing wildly at my body and wishing that I could just disappear. My story took a turn halfway through my first year of university when I was told by my doctor that I had put on weight. Little did I know that it wasn’t the behaviours that were a problem but the thought process behind them. I always thought I had a ‘normal’ relationship with food and my body but essentially, I always thought that I was the largest in my friend group, and made it a goal to eat less than the others. Like so many, my story began long before I thought it did. I am not grateful for my eating disorder, but I am thankful for the position I am now in: to educate and inspire others, to bring attention to the destructive mental illnesses that are affecting more and more people and to turn a personal negative experience into a universal positive one. It saddens me that I had to hit rock bottom before learning to view life with positivity, gratitude and a great big smile, but I am able to look back on my experience today and know that it made me a stronger person. They are all things that I took for granted before my eating disorder journey but that I now consider with gratitude every single day. Working? Where’s the fun in that? But to me, each and every one of them is a reason for recovery. To some, the elements on this list might be considered banal, even boring. It serves as a constant reminder of a life worth living and a recovery worth chasing. This list is one that I began when recovering from anorexia, that I resumed when suffering with bulimia and that I carry with me to this very day.

Anorexia success story