Help

I picked up a leaflet yesterday. It's called "Beating eating disorders." The leaflet contains very general information about eating disorders, mainly anorexia and bulimia, links to a website, a helpline number, and some advice for sufferers or friends and family of sufferers.

One of the pieces of advice for sufferers was to go to a doctor as soon as possible. It advised the reader to seek out professional help because it's hard to recover without it.

I've never had professional help for my disorder, so naturally I started thinking about this. The main reason I didn't seek medical help was that I didn't believe I had a disorder until I'd already begun to recover and was considerably better than I had been. Another reason was that I was thoroughly ashamed of what I was doing. Even now, I struggle to even mention my illness to people I know in real life.

There's a lot of stigma attached to eating disorders. Too many people don't believe they're a real illness and think that people pretend to have them to get attention. Seeking help and getting a professional diagnosis means being labelled forever as an ED sufferer. Even when people do understand, they may watch what you eat in a way that's intended to be helpful, but is actually torture. When you turn down a cake, they will be watching and wondering if you're just lying when you say you're full. I can understand not wanting that sort of pressure. The fact that I've hidden for so long is proof of how terrifying the idea of being labelled can be.

So, am I advising people not to seek help? Not at all.

I was lucky. My disorder was nowhere near as severe as some people's, even for its type. And I believe that non-purging bulimia is probably one of the least damaging physical of all the eating disorders. You don't suffer all the myriad of conditions that afflict anorexics and you don't get all the problems from constant vomiting that most bulimics suffer from. The worst that happened to me was that I was found to be borderline anaemic and that was after four years, by which point I was already over the worst. Four years of skipping meals, and then binging on junk left me low on a few nutrients, but not in any danger.

The affects of anorexia, purging bulimia or COE would be a lot more noticeable and pose a much higher long-term threat.

If you have an eating disorder that is associated with more severe health risks, the slow route to recovery alone is probably just going to leave you at risk for longer. It would be hypocritical of me to tell every sufferer that they ought to go and get help, but it's something to think about.

It never occurred to me to seek out an eating disorder specialist or attend a support group, but if you know you have a problem, it would be worth at least seeing what the options are where you live. Particularly if you know your disorder is linked to serious physical health problems and long-term damage.