You're not thin enough to have an eating disorder.
I wish I had a body like yours.
It's all in your head.
Just eat a banana.
Just eat a banana, I know! Just eat a banana!
I'll just eat a banana.
"You don't look like you have an eating disorder."
What does someone with an eating disorder look like?
There is no one kind of body for an eating disorder, right?
Not everyone is skinny, not everyone is super muscly.
Well, I think the T-shirts that they give out
are a real dead giveaway to... What do you mean? I'm joking.
What I mean... Oh, my God!
Oh, you don't look like you have an eating disorder.
Well, LOL, welcome to mental illness.
And even, like, doctors and stuff, you go and see a doctor to try
and get some extra support with your eating and they literally say,
"You're not thin enough to get any support." Yeah.
What do you want me to do,
wander around with sick smeared in my beard
just so I look like I've got bulimia?
"Ew, so you puke up all your food then?"
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What's it to you?
If someone had, like, a gut problem,
you wouldn't go and say, "Oh, so you shit yourself?"
People think that just because you've got an eating disorder
it means that you don't eat ever
and if you do eat, you then make yourself sick. Yeah.
Whenever I have, like, a stomach bug now, I'm always like, "God, am I..."
God, yeah, yeah, yeah. "Am I back here again?"
The panic, it's like, "Am I in recovery,
"am I not in recovery, what's happening?"
"Just have a banana." Ooh.
No, I don't even like bananas.
That's like the thing that cockneys do in musicals,
"Have a banana," that's what they do.
It's funny how people assume that, you know, "I've discovered it,
"I've got the answer, I found it." It's like...
When people constantly tell you to just eat, you're like,
"I wish that I could just let myself have that, but I just can't." Yes.
I'd have maybe 20 bananas because it's binge eating.
One banana is not enough.
OK, you'll have a banana, you'll get the energy you need,
and then you can go about your life, but guess what -
a banana doesn't satisfy you.
The number of doctors in A&E who've told me, "Just have a banana,"
as though they're telling me, like, the wisdom of medicine.
Like, as if it were that easy. Yeah. I actually really like bananas.
Have a banana. Like, I think that...
That's always going to make me feel great, to be honest.
"It's all in your head."
Yes, that is mental health, it's in your head.
But, no, we're not making it up and it's not a fantasy. No.
If I was going to make something up,
I'd definitely make up something better than anorexia.
Mine was a form of punishment because I hated my sexuality,
I hated my identity, my parents had cancer,
and I felt like I was the one that should be punished.
Some things we do are really irrational
but, again, we have no control over it. Yeah.
My dad just said, "Do you know what? I don't get it."
And I said to him, "You know what, Dad, I don't get it either."
"Only rich white girls get eating disorders."
I don't know, are you rich?
Eating disorders are not Donald Trump,
they don't discriminate based on race, gender, sexuality.
I went to a doctor for help and I got turned away because I was a boy.
Are you trying to invalidate someone's experience because, like,
"Oh, this is just something that rich white girls do."
I felt like my experience wasn't real or I was like an alien
because I wasn't represented in these books.
I've been fed up of being told that my periods are going to stop
because they're not, as they never started in the first place.
"So you hate food, then?"
Quite the contrary. I was obsessed by food.
I watched, like, every cookery show,
I became super good at cooking, like, cooking gourmet food,
like, five-course dinners that I wouldn't touch.
One time I remember, when I was really unwell,
I woke up and I'd dreamt that I'd eaten the entire fridge
and I was like, "Oh, my God, did that happen?
"Did I eat the whole fridge overnight?"
I don't hate food. I love food. I love food. I love food.
"I wish I had a body like yours." Why, thank you.
I'm always like, "What? With the bones of a 50-year-old menopausal woman?"
That's genuinely what my doctor told me.
Why would you want to have my body when you've got this messy brain
every single day telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing?
People said to me, "Oh, I wish I had your control over food,
"then I could lose some weight."
"Oh, well, you know, sometimes I go bulimic."
"Sometimes I go anorexic."
You're not choosing it to happen to you.
And if I told you what I was doing,
then you'd be pretty freaking scared right now.
Go and be sick for five years, spend two years failing at recovery,
and another three years of actual recovery,
then you'll have a body like mine.
It's all been worth it. Yeah. Ta-da!
"You're just attention seeking."
I remember when I was unwell,
I didn't want anyone to know what was going on. I didn't want...
You're literally trying to shrink yourself away. Yeah.
There's better ways to get attention. Yeah.
Go streaking, you'd have a lovely time.
I used to hyperventilate if someone got a camera out,
I would literally cry if I caught myself in a shop window or a mirror.
If I wanted attention, I'd go out in the street
and be sick in every single bin that I saw,
that would get me attention.
"Oh, my gosh, you weighed how much?"
# Mind your own business. #
Like... That's how much.
People always ask me, "What was your lowest weight?"
and I always never want to tell them because I'm not going to be like,
"Oh, I was a gold-star anorexic
"because I got down to this number of kilos."
Two times in my life when people have cared how much I weighed -
when I was born cos there's that thing of how much you weigh,
and then when you're anorexic.
When I started my recovery,
I realised how much I needed to stay away from scales.
Scales, like, weren't even created for humans.
I'm pretty sure they were created for cows and insurance purposes.
If you need to monitor your weight for whatever reason, do it,
but, you know, don't monitor other people's weight.
Hashtag Fitspo.
When someone has an eating disorder, it's not a #fitspo moment.
I switch on Instagram and all I can see is people doing pull-ups
and having bodies that are, like, better than mine
that I'm never going to get unless I give up all my work
and become a professional athlete.
Everyone goes to the gym and they're covered in make-up
taking loads of selfies, got all that expensive stuff going on,
and then, like, you're in the gym
and you're just in your bed T-shirt or whatever
just sat there with no make-up on.
So much of it has just been hijacked
by people selling you ways to achieve the ideal body for a woman,
the ideal body for a man.
I really love the idea of body acceptance and body neutrality.
It is this meat casing that's... Yeah, that's what I mean.
..literally plodding you around the planet.
It's just like ham on the bone, isn't it?
So rather than trying to fight for your perfect body,
just love your body and love who you are
and you'll honestly have a much happier life.
Someone once said to me, like came up to me after a gig,
and said that, "I don't think you're really anorexic.
"I think you're a white middle-class male
"who has so much unchecked privilege
"you need to create something in order to feel special."
I was like, "Whoa!"
I said, "Jesus, Mum."