I can look through pictures and tell you how I was feeling and maybe even remember the exact weight I was on that day...
I was pretty happy on this night because I was out with the Frankie's trafford lot and when we're all together we're always lively, fun and laughing. I was 8 stone 12 on this night.
This was the morning after prom, I was 9 stone 10 and I was really embarassed by the majority of my pictures leading up to leaving school and prom and I felt I looked really big but I have actually gotten bigger....
This photo actually haunts me, the fact that my boyfriend looks so much slimmer than me, made me feel sick. I was 10 stone 5 and I'd been with him for 3 months, I was and still am extremely happy with him but in the first couple of months of us getting together, he showed me a life I never knew, one in which he took me for all these amazing meals at these amazing restaurants and we would lie in bed and have sex most days and then go out for meals or to the cinema, we couldn't get enough of each other because we only saw each other once a week with us being fairly long distance. After this I tried to lose weight
I was 9 stone 11 here and I had tried to lose weight leading up to my birthday but I was still really happy and life was good. Apart from my weight troubles.
Just over a month later it was my mum's wedding and I had gotten down to 9 stone 2 and I felt great. I go through phases in which my appetite goes up and my appetite was pretty low at this point. I was quite happy but this night I wasn't actually as happy as I seemed.
This was about three weeks after the picture before, here I am 8 stone 11, I had dropped the rest of the weight as a couple of days after my mum's wedding I fell really ill, the doctor even showed sympathy every time he saw me and said he hadn't seen anything that bad in a while. I know it's bad but I was more happy that the illness made me drop the weight and I felt really good after that, when I was overweight I felt the fat, every inch of it, I felt clogged up and disgusting. Here I felt really free and great.
When I was younger nobody realised how obsessive I became over my weight, nobody got it, nobody wanted to know. I made myself sick, I cut my arms up with razor blades, I cried myself to sleep most nights, I starved myself for days and would have no energy whatsoever, I forced myelf on liquid diets of energy drinks. One day I became too scared to even drink any water, it was so fucked up and now I see how fucked up it was. I have become used to weighing myself every day before I even do a thing and if I didn't do a workout 4 or 5 times a week I would feel ridiculously bad. The obsession stayed with me and now I am much happier and over the majority of my issues but if I gained weight I would feel shitty and sometimes I get really scared about eating.
This was about 3 weeks ago maybe, on this day I broke down on the tennis court in front of my fiance and told him how awful I felt about my body and how I wished it would all stop. I was on an all inclusive holiday in the Dominican Republic with the love of my life.. I should have been the happiest I've ever been but body issues are something that stay with you when you're good and when you're bad, it doesn't matter. He then took me back to our room, found this amazing article on Oprah and read every page of it with me and then asked me questions and I have never felt such an overwhelming amount of relief and support. That day really helped, finally one person in this whole world understood how hard it is for me.
This was taken a week later and by this point I felt amazing, I was moving away, leaving all the shitty arguments with everyone behind and all the food that my heavier family members scoffed on, I left the scales and my mirror that horrified me on a daily basis and I moved to the countryside, to live with my fiance who before I go to sleep every night tells me how beautiful he thinks I am and when I wake up every morning he tells me how shocked he is that someone can look so amazing so early. He says all the right things and he makes me laugh so hard, he never questions it anymore when I say I don't want to eat much on an off day and he does every workout with me when I'm feeling bigger than usual.
I fully support every person out there suffering from eating disorders, they do take over your life and you can't let them, you have to allow yourself to be happy and you have days where you feel really shit even after you stop it all but you also have really good days, more good than bad. They're the ones to look out for, the days you realise that life and health is much more important than a couple of numbers on some shitty scales.
