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I started engaging in unhealthy habits in the summer after my first year of university. I had loved every moment; I’d joined a gym and swimming club, met an incredible group of friends and felt settled in my degree.
I turn 35 later this year. I think I’ve ticked a fair few of the stereotypical boxes – husband, career, mortgage. No children yet but we’re working on it. In a lot of ways, my life has gone to (a very happy) plan.
I feel unable to say I have anorexia because my eating disorder makes me think my weight and my thoughts and behaviours around controlling food are normal. I am afraid I don’t deserve treatment, and my eating disorder tells me if my BMI isn’t as low as it could possibly be then it isn’t low enough.
Eating disorders do not occur in a vacuum. Nobody suddenly wakes up having ‘contracted’ anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder. Although eating problems thrive on secrecy and can lead to painful isolation, they aren’t without context either.
Even though I sometimes feel that I woke up one day with an eating disorder out of nowhere, that definitely wasn’t the case. It grew over many weeks, months, even years.
Through a lack of intervention, I have moved from one eating disorder to another over the last 11 years. This is why it is imperative to seek help for yourself, or for someone you care about, because it isn't going to end on its own.
I have only ever been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and even within that, was someone who was able to access care after only around a year of struggling, which I know, sadly, is not the case for so many people.
More than one in three adults (34%) in the UK, who gave an answer, could not name any signs or symptoms of eating disorders, according to a survey conducted by YouGov.
Within four weeks of seeing my GP I was sitting in front of two eating disorder nurse specialists, who confirmed a diagnosis of anorexia. I was offered a weekly outpatient appointment for six weeks.
I remember when I was younger asking my mum what an ‘eating disorder’ was in the car. I was about eight years old and had heard it mentioned on the radio. She said that ‘people who can't eat’ have them. I thought nothing of it after that.
You lied to me; you twisted and warped my reality. Isolating me. Tormenting me. You told me that all I needed was to lose a few more pounds. But you were never happy. You made me hate myself.
Kelsie Silverstone, 20 years old, from Wolverhampton, has recently launched her appeal to raise awareness about eating disorders and funds for Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity.