Growing up in a home where she was tormented by her brother's, constant name calling,’fatty’, and mum on a constant diet, it wasn’t hard to see where the eating disorder came from. Teenage years are hard enough to find your identity, and when all you want to do is fit in, but struggle to find your space in the world, life took Amy in a direction of disconnection. Her best friend at school didn’t help with name calling and bullying from within the ranks, and eventually at 16 she just hated who she was, she just wanted to be somebody different.

From school she started at business college and felt like she had escaped the trauma and had something for herself finally and at that time started at a local gym, cycling to and from to do two classes religiously and as she could see her body changing something clicked in her that if she could change her food everything would fit into place. This is where the control came into Amy’s life.

The not eating became this “thing” that kept her safe! For once she was now in control! After six months she had lost so much weight, about 3 stone. By the age of 17 her weight plummeted to 5.9 stone and her periods stopped. She always remembers her mum meeting her outside the doctors with a can of diet to try and help her show better on the scales… and she recalls the doctor offering her a chocolate digestive biscuit and she was absolutely petrified. The doctor then asked her to leave the room and asked her mum if she was sexually abused as a child?

Back then an eating disorder was seen as a mental illness, trauma and the doctors (or some) didn’t have the answers. Her mums’ constant dieting was inherited from Amy’s grandma and it goes back even further, the idea was that these women, wives, mothers had to be thin! Amy reflects on that time after her therapy and realises that in that moment she was consumed by by a darkness.

She had got to the point where her mum was taking in her skirts by half an inch each week, she was training to the point of exhaustion. Just how obsessive Amy had become was revealed when Amy described how she used to take a midget gem and cut it into four!? In her head that quarter on her tongue had to last her through the stepper. To those around her the change in her appearance was noticable but for the wrong reasons but to Amy, she was getting noticed!

Dinner time at home was another hurdle. She had to prepare all her food, it had become an OCD, she would go mad if her mum tried to cook for her, she was convinced her mum was poisoning her. She would take the food upstairs and only allowed herself 20 minutes to eat the food. Everything needed to be controlled. Clothes could only be worn once and she would do 200 sit ups after every single meal. It was a time when she knew nothing about nutrition or fitness she just knew how to eat, exhaust herself and not eat.

It was probably inevitable that this would impact her mental health at 17 she was questioning everything and felt she didn’t want to not live anymore. Amy remembers how she felt it was as if she was in a black box underground, she can recall that feeling.

“You know when you hear people say there’s light
at the end of the tunnel, for me, there was no light”

“It wasn’t even a pressure from the outside world anymore it was a pressure from something in me, it became so powerful that i forgot who I was, I had no friends apart from my little brother who was 8 at the time but I connected with him”. She felt at this point like she could never be free from it. She recalls vividly how she had paracetamol on her little white MFI bedside cabinet, sat on the edge of the bed, she was exhausted and was ready to give in. She doesn’t know how she didn’t give in but she didn’t.

When she was 19 her mum and dad went away for their silver wedding anniversary. Amy’s Dad always struggled to show his fatherly love but she remembers on the day they left, her Dad gave her a hug and told her he loved her. Amy used to ask her mum about whether Dad loved her. but looking back she realises that he struggled with open shows of affection, she knows that he loved her. it was the morning of 11th August while away on their anniversary trip that her father had the fatal heart attack. “My older brother Mike, got the phone call from my mum that evening”. Amy believes he knew he was ill and that’s why before he left, he hugged her and told her he loved her. Again through therapy she was able to reflect and consider how hard it must have been for her dad to see his daughter killing herself from this disorder!

Amy was 19 and had already gone through so much trauma and the question was, where would life take her next….

If this story resonates with you or you know someone who might be affected please use these links below

https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/eating-disorder-service

Eating disorders are a serious mental illness affecting over 1.6 million people in the UK . There has been an increase in cases with both women and men being affected by the disorder, which is responsible for more loss of life than any other form of psychological illness. Eating disorders are characterised by an abnormal attitude towards food that causes someone to change their eating habits and behaviour. A person with an eating disorder may focus excessively on their weight and shape, leading them to make unhealthy choices about food with damaging results to their health.

Types of eating disorders

According to NHS Choices, eating disorders include a range of conditions that can affect someone physically, psychologically (mentally) and socially (their ability to interact with others). The most common eating disorders are:

Anorexia nervosa, when someone tries to keep their weight as low as possible, for example by starving themselves or exercising excessively

Bulimia, when someone tries to control their weight by binge eating and then deliberately being sick or using laxatives (medication to help empty their bowels)

Binge eating, when someone feels compelled to overeat