F is for Food

Now you may have read the title or seen the thumbnail and thought, what has food got to do with mental health? Well in some cases, especially mine, food has a lot to do with my mental health and this is the topic I want to talk about today. I’m going to discuss my experience with eating disorders, my experimentation with ‘’fad’ diets and the reason why my relationship with food is so bad.

I figure the best place to start is to talk about how my relationship with food is, how it is today. Up until my 17th birthday I had always been slim, i had a good figure and i’d feel confident and I was always one of those people where I could eat anything and I wouldn’t put on a lot of weight (back then anyway).

My weight slowly started to increase whilst working at McDonalds, it was just to tempting to keep eating the free meals on my breaks and using my discount when I wasn’t working, meaning I was consuming a lot more calories than I previously did. This is also around the time my relationship with my abusive ex started, we rarely went out so our staple meal times were filled with take aways and fatty foods, with little exercise, we would over eat and indulge and I used to be able to finish large pizza’s on my own with ease, it was like my brain forgot to tell me I was full. During this time I did put on a couple of stone, but considering i’m tall I could still pull it off and feel confident, I went from. size 10-12 to a 14 which to me is a normal size, and a health size for my height.

When the abuse started, my whole thought about food changed, it was no longer something to keep me from being hungry, it became something to make me feel better, whenever I was scared or anxious I would eat. Not only would I binge, I would eat all the things that were bad for me, I would order take aways and fast food, I would order more than what one person should be eating, for example I would order two meals from McDonalds and a dessert.  Now i knew this wasn’t healthy but I couldn’t stop myself, it made me feel better, at a time when I thought there was no light left in my life.

Once my relationship had ended I went though stages where people would start to call my fat, people I used to work with would make snide under breath comments about how big I am. Even my family would keep saying how big I had gotten. I don’t think these people knew what I was going through, and i don’t blame them for that, but I do resent the way people spoke about me, and made comments behind my back. I understand that people were ‘trying to help’ but telling me i’m fat and just need to eat less doesn’t help, it hinders, because all that makes me want to do is eat more, because those people were hurting me, so i wanted to make myself feel better. All of those comments didn’t make me stop eating, I instead got into the habit of hiding what I ate, I would sneak things into my room and binge eat, I would eat cake and chocolate,I even snuck a take away pizza into the house, and then when my mum would call me down for tea, I would still eat it, because I felt bad about what I had just done. These behaviours became normality for me, even living away from home with my husband I still sometimes feel the need to hide what i’ve eaten, even though i know he would never say anything to me regarding my weight.

The past ten years have been hard, i’ve gained over 10 stones, more or less a stone a year, and my confidence is gone. I always wear baggy clothes and I’ve gone from a size 12 to a size 22 which is heart breaking. I’ve tried many diets over the yers, I tried slimming world, weight watchers and I even tried hypnotherapy techniques such as Paul Mcenna, but none of these worked, i just could tell my myself to stop eating, it was like my brain wasn’t send my stomach the signal that I was full. All of these types of diet just weren’t working because I wouldn’t fully commit, I wanted to but I couldn’t.

So I spoke to my doctor and they said it sounded like I have BED (binge eating disorder) which is when you eat regularly, and also eat large portions and pus yourself past the point of being full, and after you’ve done this you feel guilt (much lie when I would eat two meals because of the guilt) Below are the symptoms of BED, as per http://www.nhs.uk, and as you can probably tell i’ve discussed most, if not all of these,I do eat fast, I eat until I am uncomfortable, I eat when i am not hungry, out of boredom or loneliness and I always feel bad afterwards.

Below is another extract from http://www.nhs.uk this, this looks at causes of BED, now as it mentions they don’t now the exact causes but looking at these i have experienced more than one.

Thats why I made the hard choice to go back and speak with my GP and he was supportive and I am now being referred to choose to change, which is a NHS service to help with weight, I am still waiting on my appointment as it can take 3 weeks but i am feeling positive as my GP said I am still at the right age to change before all the health risks become more serious, and this time I am determined. I want to change, I want to be healthier so that I can start a family, and have my old confidence back, my energy back.

I do believe that we can be happy no matter what size we are, whether that be a size 8 or 24, and no one should ever be body shamed. I don’t want to lose weight to be skinny like the models in the magazines, i don’t want live up to their expectations of beautiful, because I am beautiful in my own way, but i do want to be healthier.

So today I start the fight to be healthier, regardless of my size, I want the old me back! I want my confidence back! So let the battle between me and food commence.

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C is for CBT

B is for Beginning

Hello, and welcome back. I wanted to stat this blog, where you start most things …the beginning.

I always had anxiety, but I guess I didn’t realise it, I always associated it with being nervous, which I thought was normal. It wasn’t until after a failed relationship that I started to get more and more symptoms and this is also when I started to have panic attacks.

The main reason and trigger behind my disorder is the failed relationship and that is what I’m going to talk about, which is hard for me as it was a horrible time in my life and it brings up a lot of negative feelings., but its not all bad as I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.

So down to the details… this relationship started when I was 17, so I was young, not that I am old now, but I was still studying and I had only had 1 boyfriend before then. This particular relationship starte off well, he was romantic and he treated me well for the first year of our relationship. We fought like any other couple does, we had out rows and we were both in the wrong, and it seemed normal. Until one day, one argument turns violent, I can’t remember what we were arguing about, but I remember him pushing me into the door so hard that a cut my upper arm and bruised it all, at the time we made up, he told me it was an accident and it woul only happen once, and I believed him, I was wrong. As the months passed, he moved out of his parents and I stayed at his house a lot, I cooked, cleaned and washed his clothes, and we’d have long periods of being fine, so every time another ‘accident’ happened I’d let it go, and I believe he was going to change. This is where my anxiety started, I would flinch whenever people touched me or came too close, I would hate being in busy places on my own, and I would hate  confrontation, but around him I put on the brave face and I smiled through it.

There as one occasion, on my 18th birthday, where we ha gone to a Taylor Swift concert and I asked if he could get me a drink, as it was busy and it made me feel nervous, we then had a massive row, to the point where at the end of the concert, we left straight away, argued all the way home and when he dropped me off he said he would leave me, despite me doing nothing wrong, and for some reason in my head, I thought I was better with him than without, so I begged him, I stood in front of the car begging, so desperately, and he just drove off.

He took  back a day later, but things only got worse, the violence got worse, what started out as pushing, turning into punches and then one day he had me on the floor banging me head off it, somehow I stayed for another year, until it got to the point where I had no emotion left, other than panic, and I left, I packed everything I could find and I told him it was over and I drove home. He followed me and sat outside my house, this time begging me to stay, but that was the moment I decided to take a stand and although it hurt I never looked back.

People ask why I didn’t leave sooner, but anxiety was part of it, it was the anxious feeling of not wanting to be alone, because he took my youth, and my self confidence, he made me believe that I would be alone forever. Ever since I left my panic has got worse, I struggled for a long time trying to find myself again, I still to this day 6 years later strtuggling in busy places, and panicking if someone touches me, and that is something that I ill always struggling with.

I will leave this story here, because frankly he does not deserve anymore of my thought, or anymore of my words, he knows what he did wrong and he lost me because of it, and he will have to live with that for the rest of his life. What I will say is, as I said earlier, I believe everything happens for a reason, although I live with a panic and anxiety disorder because of him, I also realise that if I han’t of gone through that, I wouldn’t have met the love of my life, who I am now married to, but that is a story for another day.

PLease come back next week when I discuss the letter C

 

 

The A- Z of Mental Health

Hello,

I wanted to start this blog to talk about my mental health issues, because I feel now, more than ever, it is so important to share out experience and coping mechanisms.

I suffer with Anxiety, and although a lot of people suffer with a ‘normal’ level of anxiety in their daily lives, mine was triggered by a series of events. So what was once normal developed into a severe panic disorder, which lead to many more issues and mental health problems, which affect my day to day life.

In these blogs I will talk about my journey, and my journey is far from done. I suffer everyday with my illness, but I cope, and that is because of the people I choose to surround myself with but also because of what I have learned through therapy and through reading.

I will also talk about my triggers and talk about specific things which lead me here, and events that I struggle with.

I won’t go into all the details on this first post, this is just my introduction to you all, but please come along for the journey, share your experience and talk about mental health, because it may be considered an ‘invisible’ illness, but to me it’s not, I can see it, I can feel it….and I know it is there, and you are not alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton