Category: Binge Eating Disorder
-
Dump The Scales Speech
Yesterday, 27th April 2024, I had the honour of speaking at the #DumpTheScales march in London. For those who couldn’t attend (or hear over the helicopter above our heads), here is my speech. I lived with an eating disorder for over 40 years, mostly binge eating disorder, or BED. I think I first binged around…
-
Lies
Lies A short poem about a day in the life of an eating disorder for #worldpoetryday Content warning: eating disorder thoughts and behaviours.
-
Does restriction cause eating disorders?
There’s been a lot of debate about restriction causing eating disorders recently. Now I’m not a scientist. I’m someone in recovery from an ED. Someone with over 40 years of experience of eating disorder behaviours. Was my illness caused by restriction? It was a potential factor, but not the main cause. Did restriction keep me…
-
Breaking my silence
This week marks a year since I finally had THAT conversation with my mother. The one where I finally told her the secret I had kept for forty years… I told my parents about my diagnosis of BED a few years ago, when I started treatment. We had a few conversations about what it involved,…
-
Binge Eating Disorder on the BBC: an open letter
Dear BBC, It was so wonderful that BED finally made it on to national TV this week. I am in awe of Lorren and Martha, who were brave enough to share their stories for the film. I am glad you chose Sarah, an expert with personal experience to speak, too, even if you did spell…
-
It’s been 2 days since I bought a tub of ice-cream and I haven’t eaten it
I should explain. Ice-cream is my ultimate binge food. Not in the way that movies portray it, that cliche where the skinny actress turns to it after a breakup. No, for me it was much more than that. It was capable of consuming my every waking thought. On a bad day, I would plan my…
-
Stigma and Time to Change
This blog was written for a local council to mark Time to Talk Day 2021. A 2015 parliament paper* describes Mental Health stigma using Time to Change’s definition: “the set of negative attitudes, pre-judgements, prejudices and behaviour that can make it harder for inviduals with mental health problems to live a normal life”. Time To…
-
The BED Post blog is a year old
November 2020. A global pandemic. Dark evenings. Boredom. And I decided it was time. Time to tell my story, on my own terms. Time to take what I had learned challenging stigma as a mental health champion in the real world. Time to face my fears and go online. I googled “how to start a…
-
Silence
I thought I’d learnt to trust youThat love would set me freeBut how could that be possibleWhen I was hiding an ED? Concealing frequent bingesFat, disgusting, greedy meHow could anybody love this?A woman hiding an ED My dirty little secretI couldn’t let anyone seeThe fat pig living inside meSo I kept hiding my ED I…
-
Am I addicted to sugar?
This week, Richard Osman opened up about what he referred to as food addiction, and it got me thinking: am I a sugar addict? There have been times is my life when I’ve wondered if I’m addicted to sugar. Pretty much every binge I’ve ever had contained at least a sweet component, anything from cereal…