There is often stigma around medication for mental illness. If the doctor prescribed you antibioitics for an infection, many people would not have any reluctance to take them, or talk about the fact that they were taking them. But medication for mental illness is often, for some reason, thought of differently. People can feel reluctant …
I have been very quick to write off this year. What a shocker. There is a post going round social media saying that people are soon going to start telling you what they have achieved in 2020 but that simply surviving 2020 is the most important achievement. In essence this is true. I did not …
I don’t think anybody really likes gaining weight. You hear it all the time – people moaning about the fact that they have gained weight. People generally feel a bit crappy if they gain weight. But in anorexia recovery weight gain feels horrific. There is no way to flower this up or make it seem …
I speak a lot about eating disorders. I have suffered from anorexia since I was 13, although was not officially diagnosed until I was 19. It has had the biggest effect on my life more than anything else. So that is why I speak a lot about it. But what I don’t speak about as …
Everyone faces different challenges with their eating disorder recovery. There are always certain eating disorder rules that people feel they have to follow. Examples of rules include those around exercise obsession, trying new food, not counting calories or weighing out food, meal times, eating out. The list really is endless. In recovery, it is really …
A pretty inevitable fact of anorexia recovery is that you will end up growing out of small clothes. I feel this topic of clothes becoming too small for you, isn’t really talked about that much as you are going through it. So much of the focus of anorexia recovery is on weight gain and helping …
Growing Out of Small Clothes – Anorexia Recovery Read More »
The reality of anorexia The beginning It’s break time at school and you and your friends are scrolling through Instagram. You are bombarded with stunningly beautiful celebrities. A friend says she’s going on a diet, so your other friends say they are too. “We can go to the gym together – It’ll be fun,” they …
I have a tendency to compare myself to other people. Well, I say I have tendency but it’s not really. It is more of a compulsion – I do it so often that to me, it feels like I am genetically hard-wired to compare myself to others. I don’t really chose to do it, I …
I was asked to write a letter to my younger self for the eating disorder charity FirstSteps ED. What would I say to the younger me knowing what I know now. Anorexia clearly started to creep into my life when I was a young teenager, although I didn’t know it at the time. This letter …
Home workouts? Baking banana bread? Online courses? If you haven’t completed one of these activities yet, you may well be feeling that you are the only one in the world who hasn’t. My social media is filled with videos, photos and messages of people using their time in lockdown to be really productive. Whether that …
Home workouts, baking banana bread, online courses – What I am NOT doing during lockdown Read More »
The world seems very scary and uncertain at the moment with Corona Virus. Everyone is dealing with the stress and anxiety in their own way. Everyone has their own coping strategies. For me? Welcome back anorexia. You had become so much quieter and I was making good progress with my recovery. But when faced with …
For the first time this week I went to two universities to speak to nursing and psychology students about eating disorders. I am not someone who is very confident in presentations and I also have no confidence in my ability to talk smoothly and articulately. I was incredibly nervous – I was a million miles …