There is something about me that my friends and family aren’t all completely aware of. I want to share what I went through, because I think that it might help other young women avoid the same pitfalls. In December of 2012 I visited a doctor and was advised to seek therapy for an eating disorder that had been escalating for some time. I knew that I had a problem, but hearing a doctor say it made the whole thing real and honestly, it scared me.

 

Now I didn’t have a full-blown case of bulimia, although I was purging some of my meals and engaging in many destructive eating practices. I was getting through the day on a coffee, a chocolate bar, a hand full of nuts and a sandwich while working thirteen hours. I was fasting regularly and exercised obsessively on and off throughout the year. Sometimes I would get so hungry that I would eat small pieces of everything in the refrigerator just to throw it up moments later. The thing is: the purging was only short term and was the final straw in me accepting that I had a problem.

 

I was twenty when I started looking for help, but I had become gradually more and more obsessed with my body and eating habits since I was seventeen. In food science at school I learned about the energy content of food and I realised that it could be controlled and manipulated to help me improve my body. I also became fascinated by the idea that a certain number of vegetables per day or a specific amount of calcium could fend off disease. I started monitoring my food and by the time I was eighteen it was well established. It was one of the main things I talked about. Still, I didn’t have a huge issue with my weight until I started university.

 

My weight increased throughout the course of VCE despite my interest in diet and exercise and by my second trimester of uni I weighed 80 kilos. I was unhappy and made an effort to return to my post-VCE (and post first relationship) weight. That was fine except that meal plans were all I could think about. They were jotted down on all of my school work; I got distracted thinking about them at work. I exercised compulsively and couldn’t go out until I finished two hours of planned activity per day. I kept this up for a while and managed to get my weight down to 66 kilos, which was by no means concerning, but my weight began to fluctuate as soon as I tried to relax.

 

I spent the next year creating a ‘thinspiration diary’ and periodically punishing myself by purging, fasting or exercising to exhaustion whenever the mood struck. I planned my meals and ate the exact same things at the exact same time every day. I watched documentaries about eating disorders and was startled by how much I had in common with them — for example, I couldn’t make decisions about what food to eat if I couldn’t check the kilojoule count — but I didn’t seek help. I wanted to be thinner.

 

At the end of 2012, I was going through work stress, family stress and personal stress and the behaviours escalated. I was now too exhausted to exercise efficiently. I weighed myself twice a day and felt sad and irritable if I hadn’t lost any weight, or worse, had gone up in weight. Even though I never became underweight (my lowest weight was just less than 65 kilos), I was not well and I knew it.

 

Read: Weight and Weighing

 

 

I went to the doctor for a confirmation of what I already knew. I didn’t want my family to know how bad things had gotten so I made the decision to try and turn things around myself. I stopped weighing myself and started focusing on what my body could do instead of what it looked like. I focused on how much protein I needed to stay strong and healthy instead of how little energy I could survive on per day.

 

In 2013 I met a new guy and my lifestyle changed. Being less focused on myself ironically helped me to improve myself. I started eating home-cooked meals prepared by other people, with ease, for the first time in years. I am now in the best physical condition of my life to date.

 

The reason I am telling this story is because many people who are experiencing what I went through might not think they are ‘sick enough’ to deserve help, especially if they are not underweight (which many people with eating disorders are not). Some of you might be starting to have obsessive behaviours around food and exercise without even realising that it is a problem. If the way you feel about food and your body image is starting to impact your life and prevent you from doing things you used to love, like going out with friends, then you do have a problem and you do deserve to get help.

 

Being healthy doesn’t mean fitting a certain dress size or having perfect measurements. It means having a healthy relationship with your mind as well as your body.

 

Read: The Truth About Vanity Sizing

 

 

Have you suffered or know someone who suffered an eating disorder? What was your experience and how did you break out of that mindset?

 

An account of one writers struggle with an eating disorder and her journey to move on