My story with anorexia.

Hello :)

It's been a good while since I have posted anything on this blog, I guess I just kind of forgot about it for a while with all the things that have been happening in my life.
I have been wanting to do this post for a while because many say that even if no one is interested it is good to write it all down and get it off your chest.

This post (as you may of been able to tell from the title) is the story of my own personal battle with anorexia from start to finish and so this post will be a long one so I won't get offended if you get bored and sign off half way through.

Before I begin I would like to quickly mention in the year 2012/2013 I suffered with self harming and depression and also this is my own personal story with anorexia everyone's story is different.

In May 2014 I decided that I was going to try and get my figure more to how I wanted it to be, my boyfriend at the time was really into exercise and fitness and watching him work to get his body the best it could be really inspired me to do the same. So I made a plan that in my two week period after my AS exams I would exercise everyday and start eating healthily and in order to do this I downloaded an app called My Fitness Pal.
At the start I really enjoyed it, I liked my fitness improving and eating healthily it made me feel better in myself and when I actually started to see physical changes in my body in spurred me on to do more and more.
Then I spent one weekend away to visit a University and I ate a lot of junk food because being in a car the majority of the time you can't really access 'healthy foods' and when I got home I discovered that I had put on 2lbs. I had this gut wrenching feeling of failure and I hated it and I hated myself and I remember standing on the scale in my bathroom thinking 'this can never happen again'.
So the exercising began to increase to everyday and became more and more intense and my food intake was a strict 1200 calories a day of good and healthy foods and I began to avoid foods that are known to be unhealthy such as chocolate, pizza etc.
Before I knew it I was sucked in, obsessed completely with exercise and food. My daily food intake was cut from 1200 calories to 900 and my exercise routine remained the same. I began to weigh myself after every meal and every workout and I became more and more unhappy with what the scale told me and so I cut down on my food even more.
By September I was eating 400 calories a day maximum, I had a list of foods that I strictly couldn't eat:
-chocolate
-sweets
-crisps/chips
-biscuits
-junk food (burgers, pizza etc)
-cake
-bread
-pasta
-any sauces (ketchup, gravy)
-carrots
-apples
-bananas
-pears
-salt and pepper
-red meat
-potatoes
-oil
-spreads (butter, peanut butter etc.)
-cereal
-normal yogurt (only no fat natural greek yogurt allowed)
-any food over 100 calories
and list of rules I had made myself:
-drink water before and after every meal
-chew your food at least 30 times before swallowing
-no food in-between meals
-no food after 5pm
I couldn't see what I was doing to my body all I saw was fat, I obsessively rubbed my hip bones and ribs to check I hadn't gained fat from just eating. I had no energy to go out of the house and my joints ached to the point where I couldn't stand or walk for longer then 10 minutes, every time I stood my eyes when black and my head spun and I had to grab onto a side until my vision was restored. I could no longer do the long intense workouts I once did so I obsessively did 200 jumping jacks, 100 burpees, 60 crunches, 60 mountain climbers, 50 high knees three times a day everyday.

I became a vile person to be around when your body is starving you don't sleep and so I was surviving off 4hours of sleep per night and 400 calories a day and so I didn't have energy to even speak I just snapped at my loved ones for no reasons until the point where no one wanted to be around me. I became severely constipated and used it as an excuse to abuse laxatives and took around 7 each day I became addicted to them as I loved the feeling of my stomach being completely empty. I couldn't eat something unless I knew exactly how many calories it had in it, and I went food shopping with my mum every week until the point where I couldn't physically go because where I had been starving for so long being around food triggered a binge setting in my brain where I wanted to eat everything. I didn't see friends because I physically couldn't and when I got home I collapsed in bed and slept. I was cold to my core all the time even in summer, I went to Spain where it was 28 degrees in the evening and had to wear a jumper.

I dropped from 9stone 10 pounds to 7 stone in 2 months. My bra size went from 34 C to a 30 A (with room). My periods stopped. My hair thinned out and began to come out in clumps. My body was extremely dehydrated and malnourished. And I didn't care. My illness told me that all the bad things were worth it because I was getting thinner and I was better person because I was thin, I wasn't a failure anymore and people loved me more now.

On September 13th 2014 my boyfriend of 2 year who I planned to go to University with left me, he couldn't handle it anymore my vile moods and obsessive behaviour was sending him into depression. My mum had broken down completely exhausted with the worry of if I had collapsed at school or died in the night. On September 15th 2014 I got admitted to a specialised eating disorder clinic and I have been in recovery ever since.

I haven't suffered with my illness for long like millions of others, but the development of my illness was quick and dangerous.
I am currently in recovery and face a battle in my mind every time I eat but now I am getting better I realised that I wasn't living back then, I was dying and I choose recovery over a thigh gap and hip bones any day because in recovery I have my life back, I laugh again and go out.
Anorexia took everything from me, the love of my life, my ability to have children, my family, my friends. But she isn't going to take anything else.

If you made it to the end well done !
Thank you so much for reading, if you have any questions please ask and if you think you are suffering from an eating disorder PLEASE TELL SOMEONE and if you need to talk to me send me a question on tumblr:
Keep Smiling you lovely people
B x

'What is anorexia actually like?' *T/W*

Hello :)

Todays post is based on the question written above which I tend to receive more often then not from both people online and people in my life.
So here we go but before I do write this disclaimer
*anorexia is different for everyone, this post is just what my own personal anorexia is like* 

Okay so many people describe their anorexia as a voice in their head, and I agree with this. My anorexia is like having another person from in my head (I call her the typical name of Ana) and she talks to me pretty much all day everyday until the moment I go to sleep. This voice is my eating disorder, it tells various things such as:
"you're too fat to eat"
"you don't deserve to eat"
"being skinny is all that matters"
"look at you, you can't eat"
"50 calories that's WAY too much"
"no one will love you unless you're thin"
"call yourself an anorexic, look at you eating you pig"

My voice screams louder then anyone else in my life. It screams louder then the doctor, then my family, then my loved ones, it's all I can hear and all I listen to when it actually comes down to eating.
I know all the side effects of this disease, in fact I feel them now. I have joint pains, I can't stand up for long, I can't walk for longer then 10 minutes, I sleep twice during the day everyday and my health is only going to get worse and worse until I reach *god forbid* infertility, hair loss, brittle bones etc. But my voice tells me this won't happen to me, that if I'm thin then that's all that matters and so I carry on and I simply cannot help myself. Food is consistently on my mind, I go to sleep at night planning my meals the next day and how I will avoid eating anything extra whether that's hiding food or making excuse upon excuse not to eat.

I sometimes have good days where the voice dies down and I eat more in a day, but sooner or later the voice always comes back booming louder then ever, making me eat less and less to make up for what I've previously eaten.

source

And so to answer the above question, for me anorexia is like this:
Imagine having another person tied onto your back and they whisper into your ear. This person hates you more then anyone and anything and uses all your mistakes in the past and present against you and uses it as fuel to get you to hate yourself into convincing you, you need to change, that you need to be as thin as is humanly possible. They are there every second of every day telling you the opposite of what everyone else says to you, and you believe them, you cannot help but believe them. And as every day goes on they get tied tighter and tighter to you making it harder and harder for you to get them off and be free from them.

I'm not too sure if what I have written has made any sense at all, I hope it has. I hope this has enlightened some and help some to realise that anorexics can't 'Just eat' despite knowing what they are doing to themselves.

Thank you for reading :)
B x

Food on my thoughts.

Hello:)

So for a good few months now food and the prospect of eating has...well taken over my life. 

I cannot pick up a food and eat it without a long process of thoughts of how many calories are in this piece of food and if it will make me fat from eating it and so I have my foods that I know are safe and well I don't eat anything but those foods. 

I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted, no guilt. Now I can barely pick up a piece of fruit without feeling guilty after it and quite frankly it's shit. 

I'm stuck in a never ending circle of wanting to eat pizza and cake like every other human being my age but not wanting to be fat and feel like a failure. 

As sad as it may make my life seem the feeling of hunger and refusing pizza or cake etc. actually gives me a sense of achievement....saying that (well typing it) actually highlights how sad that is and how bad this situation has gotten 

Sure I get the "just eat more" thing a lot but people don't really understand how impossible that is for me and for a lot of other people I guess as well. 

I ate 700-800 calories a day....that's half of what I should do I have no energy for anything even to feel happy and I am fully aware of all the health risks and how that is for me and how it will slow down my metabolism and only make things worse...but I cannot help it, it's a constant mental battle for me. 

I am sorry if you've come across this post and it's made you sad but I guess I needed to let my inner brain contents out onto a page 

If you have any advice then that would be really appreciated because honestly my life is just a misery right now 

I am not officially diagnosed with any eating disorder if anyone was wondering,

Thank you for reading if you did.

B x

Photo credit weheartit.com