Chapter 1: “I think I have an eating disorder”

I’m not even too sure where to start. I want to document this journey to help me and to anyone who may this! If you don’t care then don’t read it, and if you do then thanks!

Some context- I’m 18 and ever since I was little (around 2 and a half- according to my mum) I’ve been extremely fussy with food. Now I’ve met people before who are ‘fussy’ or ‘picky’ eaters like me, but none quite as bad as me. Everyone always judged my eating habits and it always made me feel uncomfortable with the remarks people made. I wasn’t being fussy on purpose to be a nuisance to anyone, it was just something that was there. Everyone always told me “you’ll grow out of it when your older”. I expected some change maybe once I became a teenager. Nope nothing changed. Maybe 16 then? Nope nothing. Then maybe 18 - cause I’m an adult now and that makes a difference right? Nope again no change.

Something hit me a few weeks ago when I refused to go to dinner because I freaked out about what was going to be made. Now I’ve never had a reaction quite like that. I was sweating and clammy and shaky and unsettled. I refused to go.

That evening it’s like I had a complete sudden realisation that this was more than me just being fussy, it had gone too far now, I knew something wasn’t right.

So I spent my evening, instead of sleeping, searching the internet of possible reasons for my little episode. My exact words into google being “why am I an extremely fussy eater”. And as you can probably imagine a lot came up. I spend what felt like 5 minutes but was actually about 3 hours researching. After lots of reading and research I finally found something that I resonated with. An eating disorder called ARFID - now before my research I had never heard of this! It stands for Avoidance/restrictive food intake disorder, instantly this is what I assumed I had. I remember being taught about eating disorders at school and only ever really being taught about anorexia and bulimia, I think this is why it took so long to come to the conclusion that this should be treated as an eating disorder. To my shock there are so many other eating disorders I had never heard of.

While I was reading the symptoms/ information on these conditions I instantly knew that this was something I needed to really consider and take some action.

At about midnight, in the middle of my research session I stumbled across a helpline. And normally I would never consider reaching out to a random person for help/ advice, it might’ve been the tiredness that did it, but I plucked up the courage and emailed this helpline. Within 10 minutes they had responded with absolute help and support, the support I didn’t know I needed. They were so kind and told me exactly what I should do next - which was talk to a gp.

Now I don’t know about everyone else but the thought of talking to a gp made me so scared, it’s daunting and I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I would have to finally admit this was something bigger than everyone thought. I read through the leaflets and information packs the helpline had sent me and then realised I would have to actually tell someone about this i.e my mother.

After finally getting some sleep that night and waking up the next morning I once again found the courage and went and told my mum “I think I have an eating disorder”, after lots of chats and tears we finally might’ve had an answer to the years worth of trauma caused to me by food.

After trying to call the doctor everyday for two weeks and there being no appointments finally we managed to get one. Now as you can imagine I was petrified for my appointment. Literally couldn’t think about anything else but that for days! Luckily, a positive was that with appointments regarding eating disorders you are allowed to bring someone with you (for the entire time) to support you, which I found incredibly helpful as I would’ve hated it even more if I had to do it alone!

We were sitting in the waiting room at the clinic, waiting for my name to be called. I was sat there with my piece of paper which I had wrote all my ‘symptoms’ and possible questions and outcomes. Then the doctor called my name I nervously walked into the room sat down and………

burst into uncontrollable tears! I couldn’t stop crying the whole time. The gp was handing me tissues, it just felt like a whole mess honestly! After talking to the gp we ended up walking out with a referral to a specialist- which is the best possible outcome for this stage! On the journey home, I still cried the entire way back I even cried for about 20 mins when we got home. I just felt really emotional and I didn’t know why.

Next steps:

Hopefully within the next two weeks we will hear from this specialist who will help with what’s next.

The next part is to tell people, if I’m going through something which I didn’t know about until I was in a crisis and had to research it, then clearly other people don’t know either! I want to over come whatever it is I have. Hopefully other people might find out too and learn more than we assume.

I know eating disorders are a very taboo topic which aren’t spoken about enough. Maybe if it was spoken about more, I would’ve been able to get help sooner and not had to live 18 years being judged for my habits, which is why it’s even more important I talk about it now.

I want to make this a blog type/ follow my journey type of thing- not sure a specific name but yeah something like that! I want to get it out there!

My relationship with food:

-Another tw here-

My relationship with food is weird. There’s no other way to describe it. The issue isn’t that I don’t eat, because I do eat, sometimes I eat a lot, I do enjoy food. The issue is what I eat and the way food makes me feel.

I’ve never liked textures really or things mixed together. I would never eat anything in a sauce, no spaghetti Bolognese or shepards pie or gravy on a roast dinner. Even writing those things or thinking about them makes me feel uncomfortable. I would always pick things apart and things on my plate can never be touching. I eat very basic things (what’s generally considered childlike). Some smells also really freak me out. It’s hard to explain and describe what it’s actually like because you won’t really understand unless your in the same situation. I can no longer drink tap water either, after seeing a report saying there was something in the taps. This was about 6 months ago now and since that day I haven’t had a drop of tap water, the thought of drinking it makes me feel poorly.

Even though I’ve always had this, I think it really got worse after I caught covid last year. With covid I had really awful nausea and major loss of appetite, I ate the minimum amount of food that week where I just nibbled at anything I could actually stomach. The thought of eating made my mind go into overload. Once all my other covid symptoms had gone away some stayed, Of course it was the eating ones that stayed! For months and months the thought of food made me feel physically sick. I wasn’t sleeping well because I was convinced I would wake up in the night and be sick. I was going to college unfocused and sitting in class petrified that I would be sick. All I could do was think about food and the effects it could have on me. I tried not to think about it but it was all that was on my mind. This whole era of my awful thoughts never ended. However I was, after time, able it manage it better. One part of this was fast food, I couldn’t eat any fast food for about three months after I had covid because it repulsed me that much- and that’s very unlike me because I loved a cheeky McDonald’s or KFC. Another being major paranoia over how things are cooked, whenever I cook for myself I tend to purposely over cook my food just so I’m sure it’s actually cooked, basically so I wouldn’t eat anything raw and be sick from that. Even with me intentionally cooking everything for an extra 15 minutes the fear stayed. Even when other people cook for me I inspect every piece of food, sometimes on a bad day I literally would get the torch on my phone and check to make sure each piece of food was cooked. Even it if was cooked I would still sit there paranoid.

There’s so many more things that make up my relationship with food but maybe that’s for next time I’ve rambled on enough for this time.

At the end of the day, I do eat that’s not the problem here. The problem is what I do/don’t eat and why I’m like this? Why am I so petrified of some foods?

I’m intrigued to see what the specialist says and it seems like I do have options but we’ll have to wait and see!

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading that!

Hopefully I can keep writing up my journey, hopefully it helps me cope with it all. I hope it helps people understand and learn something new. I hope if your going through something similar you can get the help you need. Or even if you know me I hope it helps you understand me a little better, I’m not doing it to be annoying or awkward it’s generally something real and hopefully it’ll get fixed!

Hopefully see you next time 🙃