Your Stories

I want to shed some light on diet culture and what it drove me to do to myself for eight years. I will never get those eight years back, but what I do know is that I will never put myself through all the self-inflicted pain it took in order to look a certain way.

Self-isolation is hard for everyone right now; everyone with an eating disorder is aware that there is pressure on every single person’s mental health.

In the present chaos of COVID-19, I write these words from my own personal story as a reminder to your precious self that there is light in the midst of the uncertainty, confusion and calamity.

Now, I’m having to source ingredients and make food-related decisions in the moment, thus shaking me from my self-imposed reverie. This, added to my constant fear of someone coughing on me next to the tubs of Hellmans makes what should be a straightforward activity into a frantic, emotionally charged scenario.

These two posts, written two years apart, show how Mel managed to overcome a lot of the anxiety she felt around shopping for food.

Spreading kindness during this period in time is such a beautiful thing to do not only for those you are offering kindness to but also for your own wellbeing.

The theme of this week is ‘kindness’. That means, we can all be kind for 7 days, and then get back to being cruel, nasty and inconsiderate.

I have suffered with anorexia for about 2 1/2 years now, and the descent into the disorder was very fast and absolutely devastating.

Self-care is a broad term that could mean anything from eating well to hypnosis, exercising to getting a haircut, watching your favourite film at the end of a long day with a foot bath to seeing a therapist. The list goes on and on.

Ramadan this year is very different for all Muslim households, as the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically changed everything.

Covid-19 is doing strange things to my perception, my lungs, my mind. And strangely, I am also thinking… “Phew, I’m glad I’ve been locked up before!”