Anorexia kind of takes on a persona
and becomes this person in your life.
Rather than being something that is you,
it's about separation,
between her and you.
She's nasty - anorexia is always, always nasty.
If you lose a bit of weight, then for five minutes, she's praising
you and telling you that you look fabulous with this new weight loss,
and then she'll go back to, "But you're still fat."
She is just this horrible bully that I have to live with.
That's who I have to contend with all my life.
Anorexia is telling me that I'm doing really, really well,
and the doctors and nurses are telling me that I'm going to die.
I was 15 when I got diagnosed with the anorexia.
I was quite a tomboy.
I mean, I was always up trees, or scraping my knees
and playing football and sports.
Jodie and I met in year eight.
If she'd stay over at my house to get, like, movie snacks
and stuff, we'd go over the road in, like, onesies
and stupid make-up, and it's all very embarrassing!
I started school and I got bullied through school,
so I kind of channelled my energy into my studying instead,
and I had a lot of issues from the bullying about my body image
and how I felt about myself,
and I was always quite insecure of myself, I think, after that.
I think I became kind of isolated, which then led me
to study a lot, and that kind of added to the pressure of just
wanting to be good enough.
At college, she was, like, wearing baggier clothes,
like, she'd wear really oversized jumpers and stuff to kind of,
I guess, hide the fact she was losing so much weight,
but you could still see it in her face.
She would weigh out her food quite a lot, um,
and be really specific on measurements.
If you had a bag of crisps or a bag of chocolates
and you'd offer it, she always say no - like, always.
The anorexia began with sort of the calorie counting idea
of, "Oh, let's stick with this many calories a day,"
and she manipulates you to get your calorie amount to go down each day,
and as soon as I'd eaten something,
I instantly wanted to exercise it off.
It turns you against everyone,
it doesn't want you to be friends with anyone, it doesn't want you
to feel loved, because she acts as though she's your friend.
We were really close, before the anorexia,
then when the anorexia came, it pushed us quite far apart.
Anorexia hated my mum and dad, and my nan and grandad,
because they were the ones that were trying to help me.
Quite often, Jodie would say she would hate me and want me dead.
She bit me quite hard,
she would pin me against the wall,
but I could see it wasn't her, it was always the anorexia doing that.
She was a split personality, Jodie, at that time.
Once you're in the state that Jodie was in, when she was at her worst,
there was hardly any of Jodie left.
I made a doctor's appointment and we went from there, really.
I went straight from the General Hospital to the in-patient unit,
which was really, really hard.
It was hard, because her sugar levels kept dropping,
they were worried she would go into a sugar coma.
Um, her heart rate was extremely, extremely low.
It was quite a muddle, really, is how I could describe it,
because I wasn't with it a lot of the time.
The doctors were telling everyone to say goodbye at this point, you know,
Nan and Grandad came down and everything,
because they thought it was going to be their last moments with me.
So, the in-patient unit was quite a competitive environment.
I mean, the problem is, when you've got a group of girls on a table,
all eating together, all with the same anorexic voice,
it becomes a challenge as to who can eat the slowest,
or who can not finish their food, or finish first.
Daddy and daughter making dinner!
And cat.
I had a light bulb moment after dinner.
Me and my dad would always go for a walk,
and we'd always go around the block.
And one day, I got to the end of the road, and I let go of his hand
and he said, "What's wrong?" and I said,
"Well, the anorexia's telling me I need to walk round
"the rest of this block, I need to complete my walk,
"but my heart's actually telling me I'm not going to make it there."
And I think I'd crushed her instantly, in that moment of,
"I really don't like you any more, I don't want you in my life,
"I don't want you in my head."
There we go.
One of the biggest hurdles was the voice getting louder, because
when you begin to rebel against her, obviously she's not going to
like it, so she starts to scream at you, and she really does get loud.
I made an Instagram called Jodie Eats To Live,
and that was a username decided by me, Mum and Dad.
And we thought it was quite accurate
to describe the journey I was going through.
Although I was against social media at the time,
actually, it's made Jodie a stronger person.
I think her Instagram actually really helped her,
like, being able to document it, kind of like a food diary.
My fear food challenge is, you know, eating a food that you find
particularly scary, whether it be a sweeter food, where
the sugar content is maybe a little bit higher,
or more of a savoury food where it's a bit starchier,
makes you feel full up.
Shaking whilst putting the ham on my thin,
but here is my thin.
Jodie Eats To Live kind of began as a story for myself
to get through it, and then, as I got through it,
it became a story for me to help everyone else.
I keep motivated because I try now and look at what I didn't have
and what I have and what I could have.
Now I've been weight restored for about
coming up to two years, actually.
I just can't describe it in words, really.
I'm just feeling really grateful to be here today.
Yay, there we go!
My teenage years, they weren't great,
but we can sort of move on from that.
Wish for a bigger cake!
Got to make a wish first.
VOICEOVER: My 20s are going to be a new chapter for me,
a completely new start of my life,
you know, I'm going to take things from such a different perspective
and keep positive, and they're going to be the best.