The day I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa I was five and half stone fighting for my life and I will admit it was probably one of the hardest days for me. When that doctor told me that my organs were on the verge of shutting down, that I was putting too much strain on my heart and that I was lucky to be alive as one more week and I wouldn’t have survived. That was probably the hardest thing to come to terms with as a 13 year old that I had been killing myself by trying to survive at the same time.

The next thing I’m about to say will probably make people very angry at me but a part of me knew I had an eating disorder. A lot of you are probably wondering why I didn’t reach out for help sooner but I was 11 years old confused and lost. I didn’t know what I was doing or how to help myself nor did I really want to. I was an 11 year old girl struggling to come to terms with my weight and the way I looked. At that age all I wanted to be was skinny, no matter the consequences. If I was skinny people would like me more and I’d have more friends, If I was skinny I’d be prettier, If I was skinny my life would be complete. People reading this are probably thinking that those statements are so far from the truth but sadly for me at that age and that time in my life those statements were everything I believed and thought.

I lost a good part of my childhood scared of food and calories. Before eating anything I would count every calorie. Most days I would plan what I would eat for the whole day in the morning so I knew my calorie content for that day and usually it wouldn’t go above 500 calories, there was the odd bad days where maybe I ate 700 calories on a very rare day but that would come with so much self hatred and tears for those extra 200 calories. I remember if I thought I had eaten too many calories, I would hashtag foods on instagram like ben and jerrys, pizzahut, mcdonalds etc, so I could see people were eating more calories than me and this was a coping mechanism for me that I did everyday to allow me to be okay with eating 500 – 700 calories. One of the saddest things for me was when I saw the foods I used to really enjoy and physically couldn’t eat it because of how scared of the calories I was. Imagine living a life scared to eat your favourite foods due to a fear of being “fat” at the age of 11 all the way up to 15.

There is so much more to an eating disorder than not eating or making yourself sick. There is the self hatred that allows you to think you deserve your eating disorder because you’re “fat”, “ugly”, “worthless”. It is this feeling where you feel alone in a crowded room, you can have so many friends and family around you but your eating disorder makes you feel so isolated. Eating disorders are not something you just get over by eating, the fear of food is a genuine fear it is just like a fear of flying or a fear of spiders.

A part of me was scared to let go of my eating disorder because I didn’t know who I was without it. I’ve always known myself to be the girl who suffers from Anorexia. However 4 years on and I know who exactly I am without my eating disorder. I am beautiful in my own way, I have an amazing hourglass figure and I am happy and you know what I deserve to be. I know my worth now and I will let nobody or anything bring me down the way my eating disorder did ever again!

4 years on and I can tell you with the biggest smile on my face, I’m a survivor from Anorexia Nervosa.

On the 20th of May that will mark 4 years since the day I was hospitalised