Eating Disorder Week, 1 - 7 March

1-7 March is Eating Disorder Week.   Each year, Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, runs Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Beat’s purpose is to end the pain and suffering caused by eating disorders which affect around 1.25 million people in the UK. Beat provides services to encourage and empower people to get help quickly, equips family and friends with essential skills and advice and campaigns to increase knowledge of eating disorders and for better funding for treatment.

For anyone who needs support please do contact BEAT or reach out to EAP or one of our Wellbeing Champions. 

Madeline Harris, took some time to share her experience with us, read more below:

Hello! My name’s Madeleine, I’ve worked for Welsh Water for two and a half years since joining in 2018 on the Commercial Graduate scheme, finding me in my permanent role as a Commercial Analyst in the Energy Team. I’m probably come across one of those stereotypical vegans in my mid 20’s who believes in star signs, loves to keep fit and eat healthy, and I spend any other spare moments obsessing over my cat.  My favourite colour is green, I’m an introvert, and I firmly believe ketchup belongs in the fridge, not the cupboard!

When do you think you realised you had Anorexia nervosa – can you tell us your story?

I realised I had Anorexia aged 21. I was going through the most difficult time in my adult life and tightened the controls of my disordered habits as a means of coping. It had gotten so bad that I was the thinnest I’d ever been, I was waking up every day with headaches, I constantly felt faint and dizzy in work, eating very little but still forcing myself to go to the gym and making myself vomit every day. I was in a miserable, lonely place and I didn’t feel I could admit to it because I’d look like a failure. It was Eating Disorder Awareness Week (1st week of March each year) and an article from Beat, an eating disorder charity, popped up on my feed. Honestly, I resonated with everything I read in the article and on the entire website. This couldn’t be true. I tried to convince myself these horrific headaches and dizziness were due to something else. I even got my eyes tested, but my vision was fine. Eventually, still not convinced it was an ED, I went to the doctors about them. The GP just simply asked me if everything was ok? I broke down into tears. For the first time in my life I heard myself say aloud ‘I think I have an eating disorder’.

Despite the fact I was 21 when I had this revelation, on reflection, I realised I had been obsessed about my weight for as long as I can remember. As a child, I weighed myself constantly, preoccupied with comparing my body and my face to other skinnier, prettier skinnier girls in my class. I began to act on these thoughts at about the age of about 9, where I started making myself vomit after eating because of how disgusted it made me feel. I just wanted to be skinny and pretty but I felt like an ugly, fat lump. These early obsessions ended up manifesting into a full-blown eating disorder, but I was completely unaware of it for a good 10 years. When I looked around me for, most other women also counted about calories, dieted, and worried about their appearance. How could I see any wrong in my commitment when I was achieving the size 6 body that society had glamourized? 

Below details just 3 of my own misconceptions I initially had about eating disorders, and how my own experience has proved them otherwise.

 

“My illness is all about me wanting to be skinny because I’m vain and selfish”

 

Anorexia is a complex mental health disorder which is often triggered by some form of anxiety – as we’re all aware anxiety is something that affects many of us. I had a very dysfunctional upbringing to say the least where unfortunately, abuse and neglect spanned the most of my childhood and early teenage years. I never experienced a safe environment where I was able to talk about things that happened to me or where I could express my feelings. As I got older my unpacked trauma and emotions began to present themselves at large and manifested into this overwhelming insecurity of not being good enough. One point as a teenager I was actually a bit overweight, and some unsolicited comments about my weight from family members and people at school triggered me to lose weight.

As I began to lose weight in a healthy way people started telling me how great I looked, leading it to soon take over my life in an obsessive way. I realised I could achieve the validation and sense control that I had always longed for as a child but never received, and there was always room to push myself harder. It made me feel accomplished and great about myself. It made me feel so great that it was worth feeling constantly tired and hungry and I continued to live life in this anxiety-driven, exhausting auto pilot for years. My disordered habits started as a convenient way for me to cope with a lot of the overwhelming aspects of my life, but also coincidently answered my unmet needs. They kept me focused and stopped me going off the rails somewhat – but I became too dependant on them.

The reality is at some point we’re all likely use food and exercise as a means of coping, but people often feel far removed from an actual disorder because most unhealthy habits are glamorised. It’s particularly hard to notice when we’ve been subjected to diet culture from a very young age, where losing weight is encouraged usually portrayed as a positive thing, particularly for women. We have set ridiculous expectations for our appearance and bodies! But alcohol is very similar. Heavy drinking is also glamourised from a very young age, and we often label people as weak when they don’t partake in excessive drinking, yet when people become dependent on it in a way where it interferes with their lives – we shame them. “That could never be me”. If you’re doing something addictive as a means of coping, of course it can happen to you. Eating disorders can happen to anyone, at any time, for any reason.

    

  “I don’t look like I have an eating disorder”

 

This is an important one for me, that you have to meet a certain image/criterion to have an eating disorder, based on size, weight, gender, race – anything. I think most people are under the impression that anorexia is an illness for young, white already skinny girls to keep themselves skinny. Even though I meet most of these criteria, I never saw skinny enough, and sadly I probably never would have. Basically, because I felt I didn’t look like I had an eating disorder, then I didn’t have one, completely overlooking the absolute wreck that my mind was. I can’t stress enough that it is 100% a psychological condition, which can have spill over effects onto your physical health. Even when I started to recover and opened up to people about my experience, I did get a few “I would never have guessed, you just didn’t/don’t look skinny enough”. Comments like this made me invalidate my experience all over again. 85% of people with eating disorders are not underweight, and this ‘Anorexia Standard’ is absolutely toxic, and it is an expectation which prevents people getting the help they need. You can have an eating disorder and deserve help at any size, gender, race, age. I feel this is especially important for men with the rise of gym culture and the unrealistic expectations they are now having put on their bodies – a 25% of people with eating disorders are men!

 

“Recovery has to be linear. I have to go from bad to better by myself –that is the only option”

 

Although admitting and realising I had a problem gave me a massive sense of relief, I didn’t want to do anything about it. I was too attached to my habits and I felt they were something I was in control of and could get over by myself when I wanted to. I lived with them for another year when they got really bad again, I saw that they had more control over me than I had over them. I decided to get professional help, while this helped massively, the prospect of letting go of the habits that gave me comfort and had helped me navigate my entire life was still too much. They were part of me. I didn’t complete my therapy course. Things improved, but I just continued recover and relapse for a while. My idea of recovery just seemed like something completely out of reach. I discarded the idea all together, accepting I would never get there. I decided I was beyond help.

Over time I began surrounding myself with incredibly lovely supportive people, who helped me form safe, non-judgemental relationships where I could be vulnerable and talk about my feelings. I started feeling less ashamed about it the more I confronted it, and this secret that I’d tried to hide for so long was finally ‘out there’. I realised how strong I was for everything I’d been through - quite the opposite of weak or broken. As I reached out to more and more people, others also began opening-up to me about their mental health experiences, and I was amazed by how many people also had disordered eating thoughts and habits just like mine.

As my expectations of myself, others and “recovery” changed, my disordered habits gradually faded away. I noticed some of the rules I used to be policed and restricted by had disappeared with them. They didn’t really serve me anymore.  The things I feared happening such as eating bread, skipping the gym, buying the next size up all happened, and my life didn’t fall apart. It was very subtle. Now I’m in a place that I never thought achievable - living with such a suffocating and limiting mindset again seems unimaginable. However, I am quietly aware of how easy it is to relapse and that I know I have more to grow – but this is something that excites me. Looking back though, my recovery was far from linear. It was up, down, move it all around! And it happened when I shared it with others. This is personal to me though.

 

What advice would you give to anyone who may be going through similar or perhaps has a colleague, friend or family member?

For anyone who feels as though this even remotely resonates with you – I would urge you to read up more into this and speak to someone about how you’re feeling. Whether this is a friend, a partner, a professional, or even an anonymous helpline. Mental health disorders absolutely thrive on secrecy and it’s so important to acknowledge what’s going on so you can get the help you need – and remember you aren’t alone and you aren’t a burden! I often regret how much time, energy and potential I have lost from being absorbed by this disorder and I really wish I’d had my epiphany much, much sooner. I wouldn’t wish the same for anyone - life is too short.

For anyone who may know/or suspect someone in their lives is suffering, my advice would be to be compassionate towards this person and understand that this illness throws one’s rationality out of the window. What they see and experience, will be very different to what you can see. They cannot just simply eat to solve the problem. I would encourage people to be gentle and create a safe, non-judgemental environment where this person could express their experience to you or someone else. Be gently curious and reach out - let them know you care. Yes - eating disorders are a massively uncomfortable and very sensitive topic, but this might be the one thing someone needs to realise their situation. For me (and this is just me – won’t be the same for everyone), nothing was more heart-breaking than when I confessed my eating disorder to those close to me and they said “Well, I’d always thought you had one but I didn’t want to say anything”.

Personally, I just felt stupid because other people could see I had a problem (and I totally understand why people felt they couldn’t say anything) yet had let me galivant toward a potentially fatal ending, obliviously. If you do feel ready to reach out, just be patient and whatever you do don’t force recovery onto someone when they are not ready, because it’s likely to push them the other way. Here's some guidance.

Just a general tip to everyone –try and be a bit more mindful when commenting on someone’s weight/size/eating habits any changes in it, and refrain from endorsing diet culture. Be aware of the content you’re absorbing on social media which could slowly be contributing to unrealistic expectations. We all need to work a bit harder at appreciating and loving our bodies and minds, and everything they do for us. Also, normalising conversations about mental health is crucial because we can realise that everyone struggles at some point, and everyone struggles differently, and this helps regulates our expectations. You can go from feeling far removed from everyone else’s seemingly successful, happy lives to realising you’re on the same trendline as everyone else! This openness allows us to connect to others in a way which is fundamental for our wellbeing.