It spiraled so far out of control that my Mum
and Dad finally stepped in and said, "you need to get help."
I'm Alex, I'm 23 and the relationship with my body was unhealthy for most of my life. [Music]
I traced it all the way back to when I was about 10 years old. My parents
got divorced and the next six months after that I began to comfort eat
and fill that void and naturally I did start to put on a little bit of body fat.
Kids being kids were very harsh and did start bullying me. I started to restrict my food and
started to exercise every opportunity that I possibly could at the age of 11.
I lost weight very quickly and that's when the obsession started spiraling out of control. I
jumped on the internet and whatever unreliable diet culture fuel information I found that's
what drove me to be restricted. I remember one afternoon my Mum pulled me out of school,
took me to the doctor not far away, and he had just received recent blood test results that I got
done previously and the doctor looked me in the eye and told me that I had about two days to live.
And said Mum's taking you to hospital and he said you need to go right now, you can't go home, you
can't go back to school, you go into emergency. I questioned at the time, "what have I done
to myself?" and I understand now that I didn't do anything to myself the eating disorder did.
But i it really really slapped me across the face that I had nearly died. [Music]
When I was at the depths of my anorexia nervosa I constantly saw someone that was too large,
too fat, needed to lose more body fat.
In later high school when I was allowed to actually start going to the gym
and lifting weights that's when I started to take a turn. [Music]
The eating disorder was no longer about being lean it was more about starting to become obsessed with
being as muscular as I possibly could. I am an extremely anxious person. I have deep persistent
sensations or experiences of anxiety on a day-to-day basis. Combine all of these things with
low self-esteem and sprinkle in some perfectionist traits, it's a recipe for an eating disorder.
I understood I needed to see a psychologist and I started seeing one who started helping me address
my anxiety and depressive symptoms which alongside self-help books genuinely changed my life. The way
I perceived the world, the way I perceived myself, the way I actually walked about on a day-to-day
basis and approached life through my anxious brain it genuinely helped me control my anxiety better.
I can say nowadays that I'm fully recovered from my eating disorder.
I no longer have distressing thoughts or behaviors around my eating. With my body
image side of things, I am almost there. I don't want to say that I'm
fully recovered from it but I can safely say that those thoughts no longer get in the way of my day.
I've come to a place where I've accepted my body for the way that it looks and the way that it is.
Just because I look a certain way it doesn't mean that that is my identity and I no longer
feel as if I have to present as a certain physique to somebody to be
Alex, to be the person that I want to be. [Music] If
there's anything we've spoken about on this episode that has triggered you,
eating disorder or body image wise, please see the links below.