I didn't know I had an eating disorder. I wasn't anorexic, bulimic or binged - I just ate super healthy and made sure I never over-ate. I started out trying to loose some weight so I'd feel more confident and comfortable in my own skin but overtime I didn't just loose weight, I lost myself too.

 

I'll save the details on how I developed my eating disorder because truthfully I'm still working it all out in therapy. People develop eating disorders for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes it’s a complicated mess of many. Like all eating disorders – it isn’t simply black and white. What I know for sure is that I became obsessed with what I ate. What started out as eating a bit healthier, and going vegan soon snowballed into something I ironically had no control over. I counted and tracked everything. Meals and snacks, then calories, then calories burned, then the size of my clothes, then my weight, then the weight of my food, then the amount of water I drank, then the micronutrients, then the times I ate. My life was a numbers game, and I was miserable.

 

I had constant anxiety about food and would have panic attacks if I accidentally ate something I shouldn't have or if I somehow miscalculated and went over my calorie intake for that day. This once got down to 1500 calories a day and has taken me months to get up to 2000.

 

It’s no surprise my weight dropped during this time. I literally lost a third of my current weight but according to my bmi I’ve never been “underweight.” Just because someone isn’t anorexic, doesn’t mean they are not sick (I have to tell myself this regularly). My body said otherwise; I am constantly cold, I haven’t had a period in a few years, my skin is constantly dry, and my energy levels flocculate throughout the day. My emotions are all over the place too, which is a good indication of how messed up my hormones now are.

 

All of this terrifies me. Not just getting blood taken – which I hate and you have to get when you stop getting your period – but also knowing that I’ve messed up my body to the point it doesn’t function how it should. Also what if my period doesn’t come back? I’m in no hurry to have kids, but I’d like to know that I have the option for when I do decide I want to have them. I think it would kill me to find out I had taken that away from not just myself, but the person who I would have decided I wanted to start a family with too.

 

I was living in another country for sometime and it was there I was forced to acknowledge that something was very wrong. Some of my friends over there began to tell me they were worried about me. They told me I talked about food all the time (which I did because I was anxious about it all the time, and when you’re anxious about something, you talk about it) and that I shouldn’t be so cold. Two of them had had experience with an eating disorder – one’s mum was anorexic, and another had been so herself – so they spotted some of the things I was doing a mile off.

 

Once I got home, things got worse. My anxiety grew and I restricted more and more. I stopped eating fats and proteins because I was scared they would make me big. I ate a “super clean”/ “wholefood” / “80/10/10” diet. If somebody ever tells you they are following any of those, they have an issue with food. Please don’t ignore it.

 

I hit rock bottom when I had a panic attack over a rice cake (YES, A FRICKIN RICE CAKE) and sat crying on the kitchen floor for 2 hours. I was faced to deal with who I had become, that I was no longer “me,” but most importantly, that it wasn’t who I wanted to be.

 

I’ve been going to therapy for a few months now, and it was there they confirmed to me that I did in fact have an eating disorder. It’s super challenging but it’s helped a lot. When I’m stressed or anxious, I find it particularly hard. I’m slowly building a healthier relationship with food but I am not at the point of saying I have beaten this. I’m getting there though! Somebody recently told me I was more like the old me, which made me so happy that I wanted to cry.

 

Throughout all of this, I haven’t really confided in my friends. Because I couldn’t label my eating disorder as to what I thought was one, I was embarrassed. I feel the need to constantly apologize to people for being annoying talking about food, being funny about what I can or can’t eat, or them thinking I’m getting at them about it (which I’m not, I’m just struggling to justify myself eating a full meal when I don’t see them doing the same even though I know I have to).

 

I recently mentioned it to a few friends, but I wish they knew more about it. Eating disorders are really lonely. I’ve lost count how many socializing things I’ve turned down or ruined for myself and dampened for others because they involved food or drink.

 

I’m looking forward to the day I don’t even think about counting a calorie, or can eat whatever I fancy from a menu at a restaurant, or not compare my body to anyone else’s. I’ve learnt through all of this that I need to learn how to love myself. It may be cliché, but it’s true.