Holding my Key

Apologies for my absence, but I’m back. Back with a huge amount of motivation, and enough to show anorexia the door.   Since I last wrote, life became pretty full on as I was back in my clinic full time again, 10.30am to 7pm. It took time to settle back in, and also very importantly remind myself what needs to be worked on.  I think when we are at home, especially in the 3rd lockdown we have all just endured, I personally fell into a rut. I was intent on getting through every day, logging on zoom at 11 and logging off at 5. It became pretty monotonous and although it was a big help, online treatment was not what I needed.  Since returning to in-person treatment a few weeks ago, I suddenly got this surge of motivation. It is normal that motivation will fluctuate as that happens with all of us, however I decided to make this return to in-person treatment successful and I am determined to give it my all. This isn’t to say motivation will always be present the whole ...

Last year I wrote myself two letters.  Two very different letters.  I don’t want to share them word for word as they’re quite personal, but I thought I would give you a snapshot of the dilemma that often races through my mind. The first was to a Lizzie in five years time, still battling Anorexia. The best way to sum it up was utterly depressing. I wasn’t married, I was alone. Alone with my thoughts and with a ‘life’ filled with hospitals, machines and the dreaded word, food. I had let it conquer my life. Anorexia had won. I had thrown away every hope and dream I had left inside. There was nothing left inside me fighting for freedom, the only thing left was a small, flickering flame that kept my eating disorder alive and powering through. S had left me long ago, my siblings had given up on me, and whilst my friends experienced all that comes with life in their late twenties, my life was empty. I burst into tears after writing it.  The second was to a Lizzie in five years, ...

It is the end of Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2021. Often many posts shared on this week are filled with transformation pictures, showing sufferers in their severely underweight figures next to a more recent image in their newly-found ‘healthy’ body. The reality is there is so much more to raising awareness than just wanting to validate your own illness through photos to prove you were the 'sickest' (I'm aware it sounds strange that people with an eating disorder might celebrate being the most unwell). When people talk of ‘awareness,’ this should mean a time to remind and educate others about eating disorders and the full scope of them. I have often found that ‘awareness weeks’ that occur all throughout the year casting light on a whole variety of issues and illnesses occurring in the world, can become albeit monotonous. Someone recently told me, ‘every week seems to be awareness week.’  I guess they are correct in a sense, however they exist for a reason. They exist beca...

Anyone you meet will always have a list of habits, both conscious and subconscious. Some are daily, others, occasional, like making sure you have a cup of tea in the morning. Most of these habits are benign, if at times strange, but there will always be those that we will want to rid ourselves of! Much of this is because many habits can be harmful, often without us noticing for a while. Whilst many of us might be content to live with them, we all have the ones we want to say goodbye to!  It would regularly take time for an initially harmless act to turn into something unhealthy, and by that time the behaviour had become entrenched. I didn’t realise that my daily mandatory 5+ black coffees with sweetener were bad. I rationalised (falsely) that it’s just coffee and everyone likes coffee, as well as convincing myself the insane amount of coke zero I consumed was normal (it had no sugar!). On the surface, these habits aren’t horrendous, but they contributed to my anorexia. Coffee and s...

  Wednesday 27th January is Holocaust Memorial Day. On this day we remember the murder of six million Jews, and 11 million innocent people overall. As a Jew, I have had the privilege growing up to hear many heroic stories of survival from those who were there to witness the atrocities, including my very own grandparents, who had to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Whilst my blog might be focused on Eating Disorders, I wanted to write on a slightly different topic that means a lot to me. I find it simultaneously fascinating and shocking to learn about the horrors that occurred during the Holocaust, especially how peoples' minds were manipulated by the Nazis in a way that allowed them to commit the abominable crimes that they did. Since visiting Poland aged 16 and visiting numerous concentration camps, including Auschwitz, I have walked away confused. I am still dumb founded how humans, however deep their hatred of other groups may be, can be led to commit genocide, whilst having a de...

  The news of a third Lockdown in the UK may be the path out of this Pandemic, but it does mean that the Mental Health crisis in the UK is only set to continue.  Now, when I say ‘Mental Health Crisis,’ I don’t just mean those with diagnosed conditions, I mean anyone whose mental state is not where it should be, such as loneliness, which has risen 63% among young people over the last 12 months. For many, this will most likely have manifested itself as Anxiety in some form or another, a condition which 5% of the UK population has been diagnosed with. Given the low levels of reporting mental health problems, and the lack of accessible treatment, it is likely that this number is far, far higher. It is also estimated that 1.1% have been diagnosed with OCD.  Both Anxiety and OCD invade peoples’ lives unnoticed, slowly becoming stronger until negative behaviours can become entrenched. For me, I have been affected with Anxiety since childhood, and, like many, I didn’t get help fo...

   Eating disorders are often characterised by an intense desire to lose weight. Whilst valid, this statement is only true to an extent. It is true that, over the years, I have had a real urge to get the numbers that show up on the scales to drop. Even a menial fall in weight was a rush, and I felt like I had succeeded at attaining the personal goals I kept setting myself. It was almost like a rush each time. I know full well - as I have mentioned in previous posts - that these thoughts of success are lies, and that they are anything but the answer to my problems. When your goal is to be as thin as possible, the reactions of others can be frustrating, because their worries seem to fly in the face of everything you are thinking inside. They think: • Why can’t they just see that looking emaciating is anything but pretty?  • Why can’t they see that they are damaging their health?  • Why can’t they come to the realisation that they are ruining their life?  For...