Moving back to Newcastle was a really bittersweet time in my life. On the one hand, I was moving back to a city where I had a load of close friends practically on my doorstep and could wake up and go to sleep with Graeme every day. On the other, I was unemployed after resigning from my last job while signed off with depression and felt I had no control over a lot of my life at this point in time.
I had stopped my medication when my counselling sessions ended because I was “all better now”, or at least that was what I told myself and others. In reality, I was still spiralling but I was spiralling a bit more privately. I couldn’t understand why Graeme would want me or anyone would employ me when I was such a “disgusting, fat, ugly failure”. Yep, there it is. That is what I thought of myself and much worse.
I still didn’t realise it but I was already pretty deep into an eating disorder – bulimia (currently purging through exercise).
This led me to an immediate ‘issue’, seeing as though I was no longer a member of a gym, I was struggling to find a way to “create a calorie deficit”, for me this always meant “purge”. Although, I had immediately found a new slimming world group to go to and had set up a separate Instagram account to publically track my weightloss and take ownership of my food choices.
In this day and age this will sound shockingly normal but think about it. I created a space online where others could judge me by what I weighed and what I ate and I could judge them on the same criteria. This is so upsetting! For me, the pressure and the competition was too much and I quickly started to make myself sick before weigh ins. This turned into most days within a couple of weeks. I was severely limiting my calorie intake too- I will not say to what level as I understand that this could be potentially triggering.
When I started a new job, around a month after moving, around 90% of all of my brain activity was based around what I was eating, what others thought of my body and what I ate, what other people weighed and what other people ate. I was obsessed. It’s a wonder that I learned anything in the role! I was also trying to build friendships at this workplace. Which I managed to do and we still meet up regularly.
I have no idea how I managed it because 10% brain capacity doesn’t go far. I know for a fact that there was a lot of important stuff said to me that I couldn’t take in. There were moments that should build life long friendships that I just couldn’t be present in mind for. There was so much that I missed because all I could do was judge myself harshly against everyone else.
I am sorry if anyone reading this is someone I wasn’t there for. I was really ill and couldn’t admit it or ask for help because I felt trapped in my own body and brain. I hope that I’ve shown through my recovery how much I can be there now.
With my first pay, I decided to buy a Fitbit. Afterwards, my weighing ramped up in frequency again, each time I visited the bathroom I weighed at least 5 times in various states of undress. I wanted accuracy to track my calories burned. I’d pace around the place, run up and down the stairs, jog on the spot, anything I could do to burn more calories.
When my weight stopped going down so fast. I decided to start using (read: abusing) laxatives to increase weight loss. Let me tell you this for free- abusing laxatives does not make you lose weight. You are already absorbing the calories, it will just dehydrate you (which makes you appear thinner but is incredibly dangerous) and, after a while, constipate you. Yep, not the desired affect.
Within a week or two of constant weighing, I began drinking saltwater (sometimes even just eating the salt by the spoon) to be sick after all of the meals I could get away with. I was declining invites to nights with my friends and even date nights with Graeme unless I could control exactly what I was consuming down to the grams of each ingredient. If anyone tried to point out that this was extreme, I would bite their head off accusing them of trying to ruin my weightloss because I believed that they knew deep down I’d never be good enough no matter how much weight I lost.
This was my life for months (with a new obsession with spin class adding itself into the mix) until something life altering happened to change my entire way of thinking.
Self Preservation to Self Love 
Touching Becky and you are not alone in terms of the pressure we put on ourselves to look a certain way. I’m glad you are able to express these experiences in such a poignant way… x
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Thank you, Carol. It makes me really sad to think about how common it is xx
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