herself; for me, it was about improving myself and beating everyone else.
Naomi was a very good cook, and she knew I wasn’t eating enough. She would prepare me meals and slip added fat into them. Once she made me a pea and potato soup, swearing blind that that was all it was. Unbeknown to me, she had slipped in dollops of extra cream and olive oil. She told me that the hot chocolate she had made contained just one spoon of Options low-fat drinking chocolate, but really it had ladlefuls of the full fat stuff.
Nobody liked broaching the subject with me, and when they did I would pass off my skinniness as the result of a tropical disease I had picked up in Asia. I could see people were concerned, but the need to control my eating overrode everything. I started swimming, and then took up water polo. I was awful – couldn’t catch, couldn’t throw – but there was no hiding my weight loss in the pool. It made me even worse at water polo, because I was easily brushed aside. I was also getting very cold in the water. I played because it was an excuse to swim around like a lunatic and because there was a great social scene. I wasn’t drinking much, but I would always go to the pub to meet people. And when I didn’t I worked flat out on my master’s, well into the night, before getting up at the crack of dawn to go running.
It was an unhealthy lifestyle, but I couldn’t stop. Working relentlessly is an addiction; anorexia is an addiction. It had started off in the usual way – with the question of body image. But when you’re so driven and compulsive, it turns into a competition within yourself. Each day, I would try to eat just a little less than the last. If I succeeded, that was a good thing. To do the reverse would be to give in to temptation, which was weakness. Occasionally, I would have a binge on crisps and chips at a party and I would berate myself for it. I had lost control. That meant punishment would follow.
But I was already punishing myself. My body was feeling the strain. I used to wake up in the night with an aching jaw, because I was grinding my teeth. That was partly through the stress I was putting myself under on the course, but anorexia affects your sleep patterns. Nowadays, my teeth are almost non-existent at the back, and I wear a gumshield in bed.
My hair grew dry and then started to fall out. I smothered it with conditioner. Downy hair, meanwhile, started to grow on my body. My periods stopped. I knew I was too thin, but I couldn’t escape from what I was doing. I wanted to be rid of the chokehold it had on me. It’s so mentally draining. Eating less may start as a means to an end, but in an anorexic it soon takes over as the end itself. You lose perspective. Yes, on some level I knew I was too thin, but you don’t realise just how bad you look. In a mirror, you don’t see what everyone else sees. Concerned friends might tell you you’re looking thin, but that’s exactly what an anorexic wants to hear. When people said it to me, I just thought, ‘Great!’
My friends from water polo, Tamsin and Gemma, wanted me to see a doctor (in response to my insistence that I was suffering from a rare tropical disease). I lied and told them I was seeing one. I did, however, go once to see a counsellor at the university, but I didn’t like it and never went back.
In the end, it was my family who snapped me out of it – that, and a photo.
My parents knew I had changed my eating patterns by becoming a vegetarian (always eager to accommodate everyone, Mum cooked me a nut roast that Christmas). By the summer of 2001, though, it was clear to them that I had a problem. They came up to visit me one weekend, and we went for a walk in the Peak District. I could tell by the look in their eyes that they were desperately worried, and it tweaked something deep inside me. A few days later, I developed some photos we had taken on the walk. One of them was of me. I was shocked. Somehow, seeing me there, frozen
Naomi was a very good cook, and she knew I wasn’t eating enough. She would prepare me meals and slip added fat into them. Once she made me a pea and potato soup, swearing blind that that was all it was. Unbeknown to me, she had slipped in dollops of extra cream and olive oil. She told me that the hot chocolate she had made contained just one spoon of Options low-fat drinking chocolate, but really it had ladlefuls of the full fat stuff.
Nobody liked broaching the subject with me, and when they did I would pass off my skinniness as the result of a tropical disease I had picked up in Asia. I could see people were concerned, but the need to control my eating overrode everything. I started swimming, and then took up water polo. I was awful – couldn’t catch, couldn’t throw – but there was no hiding my weight loss in the pool. It made me even worse at water polo, because I was easily brushed aside. I was also getting very cold in the water. I played because it was an excuse to swim around like a lunatic and because there was a great social scene. I wasn’t drinking much, but I would always go to the pub to meet people. And when I didn’t I worked flat out on my master’s, well into the night, before getting up at the crack of dawn to go running.
It was an unhealthy lifestyle, but I couldn’t stop. Working relentlessly is an addiction; anorexia is an addiction. It had started off in the usual way – with the question of body image. But when you’re so driven and compulsive, it turns into a competition within yourself. Each day, I would try to eat just a little less than the last. If I succeeded, that was a good thing. To do the reverse would be to give in to temptation, which was weakness. Occasionally, I would have a binge on crisps and chips at a party and I would berate myself for it. I had lost control. That meant punishment would follow.
But I was already punishing myself. My body was feeling the strain. I used to wake up in the night with an aching jaw, because I was grinding my teeth. That was partly through the stress I was putting myself under on the course, but anorexia affects your sleep patterns. Nowadays, my teeth are almost non-existent at the back, and I wear a gumshield in bed.
My hair grew dry and then started to fall out. I smothered it with conditioner. Downy hair, meanwhile, started to grow on my body. My periods stopped. I knew I was too thin, but I couldn’t escape from what I was doing. I wanted to be rid of the chokehold it had on me. It’s so mentally draining. Eating less may start as a means to an end, but in an anorexic it soon takes over as the end itself. You lose perspective. Yes, on some level I knew I was too thin, but you don’t realise just how bad you look. In a mirror, you don’t see what everyone else sees. Concerned friends might tell you you’re looking thin, but that’s exactly what an anorexic wants to hear. When people said it to me, I just thought, ‘Great!’
My friends from water polo, Tamsin and Gemma, wanted me to see a doctor (in response to my insistence that I was suffering from a rare tropical disease). I lied and told them I was seeing one. I did, however, go once to see a counsellor at the university, but I didn’t like it and never went back.
In the end, it was my family who snapped me out of it – that, and a photo.
My parents knew I had changed my eating patterns by becoming a vegetarian (always eager to accommodate everyone, Mum cooked me a nut roast that Christmas). By the summer of 2001, though, it was clear to them that I had a problem. They came up to visit me one weekend, and we went for a walk in the Peak District. I could tell by the look in their eyes that they were desperately worried, and it tweaked something deep inside me. A few days later, I developed some photos we had taken on the walk. One of them was of me. I was shocked. Somehow, seeing me there, frozen
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