Thoughts from Coach D of the 10:25 Cardiff Central to London Paddington service.

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It's now been over three months since I wrote the first post on this blog. At the time I was intending to update it regularly to help other unfortunate people in a similar position to myself through their own personal battles. However, these three months have been rather hectic for me in many ways, and like every good blogger I've kept my mouth shut and haven't updated this since. Yet, I feel this is an appropriate time for an update.

First of all, you'll have to forgive the truly atrocious grammar on display in the opening post of this blog. It was a piece that was never really completed. Originally it was something that I wrote for ED Awareness week in February, but I never got around to finishing it. Part of the reason was is that it was really hard to sum up what I wanted to say. There were so many things I wanted to talk about, yet I just couldn't work out how to fit them all in, so I left it. It sat around on my Mac until mid-March gathering virtual dust not doing anything. One afternoon I went down the school and spoke to two of my teachers, and they said how people were wondering how I was and what was wrong with me. I decided that I could no longer really cover what I had been going through, and decided to just be myself and be completely honest about what really had been happening to me. I hadn't won the lottery and moved to Saint Lucia to top up on my tan whilst sipping martinis. The truth was, I had an eating disorder (and OCD, an anxiety disorder and depression, but they were caused by my Anorexia Nervosa). So I decided to be honest and just say the truth to them. Thankfully, everyone I know is incredibly intelligent and understanding, so like the top student I am, I found something that I wrote before and copied and pasted it straight onto the blog, and just posted it on Facebook to the people who I trusted the most. The only reason I didn't post it to everyone was because I was still anxious about everyman and his dog knowing how seriously ill I was. I was overwhelmed by the support that my friends gave me, and this is the reason why I believe that with any mental health problem, not just eating disorders, it's always best to open up to those closest to you. You'll be surprised by just how caring people really are!

Anyway it's now almost halfway through the year, and I'm completely unrecognisable to how I was just six months ago. My whole physical, and most importantly, my whole mental health has never been as good as it now. Weight wise I'm now bang on a healthy weight at a BMI of approximately 22. Climbing the stairs is no longer an issue for me; I can walk medium-long distances relatively quickly again easily (this time, fuelled by energy of course!); and I no longer get blown about in the wind.

Mentally I've never been as well as I am now. The whole depression and dark thoughts that plagued my life for months on end have now gone away, and I'm enjoying life more than I ever have done before. For the first time in my life I now have a relatively clear(ish!) path that I wish to take in life, and I'm now confident for that I can achieve it. Few would argue it's an exciting plan, unless the statistic that in 1800 there were twice as many doctors in Berlin per head than there were in the surrounding countryside gets your heart racing; but it's what I want to do.

In terms of how my recovery has gone, as much I would have liked to have said it was easy, I'm going to be completely honest again and say that it has been anything but! As anyone with a restrictive eating disorder will tell you, you want to be free of the horrible s**t in your head who prevents you from enjoying and living your life, but it's incredibly daunting. Every extra calorie sets your anxiety sky high; you will feel depressed as the bubble that protected your eating disorder from the world slowly bursts; and you will struggle from time to time. However, at the end, it's worth every upset, every tear and it's worth every second as the melancholic skeleton that you have become slowly becomes a healthy, strong and beautiful body again. Unfortunately the catch-22 with eating disorders is that to improve your mental state and cognitive functioning you must eat to provide your body with what it requires to rebuild itself, yet, your mental state does its utmost best to prevent you from doing so. An excellent analogy that I have seen by an inspiring male anorexic is that an eating disorder can be likened to an abusive lover. It takes you in saying 'I will love you', yet slowly destroys you mentally and physically, yet you're unable to escape as it says 'you're not good enough for anyone else, only I love you, everyone else hates you'. Of course, this isn't helped by the amount of catastrophic thinking that eating disorder sufferers exhibit. Every extra calorie seems a mountain for you to overcome, every fear food an obstacle. Shall I tell you what happens to a normal person when they eat a biscuit with their cup of tea? What happens is that the extra sixty calories goes into their body, makes very little difference to their total intake for that day, and it comes back out again about twenty-four hours late. They don't just pop up like an inflatable balloon! You only become overweight and fat if your total calorie intake exceeds the total energy you expend over a prolonged period of time, over many years in fact! As someone who was once clinically obese, I would never blame overweight people for being overweight, as it's an easy thing to become in this society of ours (if you want to hear what I think of modern food habits, or indeed, society in general, I can probably write an entire dissertation if you wanted me to...). One banana doesn't equal man tits, just as two and two doesn't equal thirty!

In any case, if you're getting help with your struggle, the last thing that your dietitian and workers will do is let you become overweight! The whole aim is weight restoration, not becoming fat! Something interesting that many people have observed is how a whole cognitive shift occurs as you recover and your body and mind begins to heal. When I first saw the CAMHS team I was petrified that I would emerge as the whole sixteen stone five 'fatty' I would be before. I didn't. I'm now bang on a healthy weight for the first time in years, and my confidence in my body and how I appear has never been so strong. Nobody can love you if you don't love yourself people! I don't mean to the extent that you build a little shrine to yourself and get people to come around everyday to worship and praise you, but to just have some confidence and pride in who you are!

Confidence and pride brings me onto what will be my last point, as I have no doubt I just appear like a mad tramp going off on one at this point! Anorexia Nervosa is fuelled by low self-confidence and low self-esteem. When I wanted to lose weight I thought to myself that I was too fat to be cared for by anyone. I thought that I only had a few friends, and felt that I could not be loved by friends or family because of it. What a load of b*llocks! I never realised just how many people really did care for me! Once again it's a classic example of thinking catastrophically. Some people think negatively and are horrible about those who are overweight, yet none of my friends think that way. Neither does most of society. Yes, people make fat jokes. That's part of life. Yet very few actually mean it. The people who could never care for someone because of their appearance are the people you wouldn't want to be friends with in the first place! Those people are called a word that rhymes with 'bats'. On the subject of friends, to anyone with anorexia nervosa I just urge you to think about all the times that you have missed out with because of your disorder. How many parties you turned down because you were embarrassed about the way you look, or were fearful of how much you could possibly consume; the trips out to eat because you'll become fat; or the all the good times you miss out on simply because you wish to be kept in that safe bubble of yours where the world cannot hurt you. I've missed out on too many to count. It's something that I will always regret. However, I have committed myself to several parties, the school prom, and a trip to an all you can eat with one of my classes. Why? BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO MISS OUT ON LIFE AND TIMES WITH THE PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT FOR ANY LONGER!

Caps lock rage over, I only have about three months to see most people before they go away to study in university, leaving me in the rainy paradise that is the Rhymney Valley. I'm never going to be able to catch up on all the times that I have missed with them, however, provided they don't mind of course, I'm not going to miss anymore time with them!

That's about it really. We're just passing Royal Wootton Bassett now, and I'm getting off at Swindon (off the train that is, not off with someone...). I just thought instead of being one of those journeys where I do nothing but stare out the windows with music blasting, or try out First Great Western's relaxation techniques, that I actually wrote something that may benefit others, and help others see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. All I can say is, it gets better as you get better people!

If anyone wishes to contact me about anything that I've been through, and have links to excellent communities which encourage recovery and talk about having life with an eating disorder, feel free to drop me a line!

Cuidate!
Jamie L W 

(N.B I did just copy and paste this in from Open Office without checking it, if there are any errors, sorry!) 

About me.

Please note: I am fully aware of the many grammatical errors in this post. When I was writing this post many months ago I was a in very poor frame of mind, and I just wanted to get my story out there. Many months later reviewing this post I have taken the decision NOT to correct these errors. I feel that correcting these errors would be contrary to the whole point of the post, which was to get my story out there as fast as I could to try and offer support for those unfortunate to be in similar circumstances.

My name is Jamie. I'm a 5 foot 11 17 year old male from South Wales who aspires to study history at university. However, I haven't always had an easy scholar life. I was always a bit of a loner who was bullied constantly from multiple sources in school, with one of the reasons being my obese weight and my low self esteem. The fact that I have an autistic spectrum disorder further means I never really fitted in with people at school, despite having several really good friends, but I just didn't realise it at the time.

Back in September 2011 I was starting AS levels after a lonely and boring summer. I had only seen my friends from school once over the summer, and apart from an excellent and supportive friend who I know from outside of school, I had spent the entire summer lonely. Due to comfort eating and mild depression my weight had risen to 16 stone 5 and I was deeply unhappy with myself. Returning to school I was deeply unhappy with how I was compared to everyone else, and I decided to finally do something about it, and I chose to begin losing weight. Without even researching at first how to lose weight at first I immediately began restricting food intake and exercising, allowing myself two slices of toast with a small portion of low fat olive oil spread with one glass of apple juice for breakfast; a banana for lunch on a 'good' day, and a piece of fish or chicken with beans in the evening, filling myself up on water to try and prevent hunger. Alongside this I took advantage of the free sixth form periods and began doing 1 – 2 hours running intensively on the spot at home during the day when my parents and brother weren't around. The weight began dropping off at around 4lbs a week, but unlike dieting where it slows after a few weeks, this rate didn't slow down, and by December 2011 I had dropped to 12st 8lbs. My parents were extremely concerned, yet I chose to ignore them in favour of the 'voice'. My bullying had calmed down to an extent in school, and some were praising me for my losses; but I wasn't happy. A sign something was wrong was when I went on a geography field trip to a river in that month,where in the snow and freezing water, on 300 calories that day the inevitable happened, and I collapsed into the river. Yet I didn't take this as a sign that something was seriously wrong. Over Christmas week last year when everyone was enjoying themselves, I was out exercising in the morning on brisk walks in the cold, and restricting to soups in the day, dropping another 2lbs over the week.

I spent the entire Christmas holiday revising for a geography exam, which despite having 100 UMS in I was deeply unhappy with myself. However, I was also experiencing one of the common side effects of starvation, which is euphoria, kidding myself that everything was alright. My diet didn't alter much, changing to a salad roll at lunch time and vegetables for tea.

This pattern continued to April where I closely restricted, and carefully 'rationed' out food such as chocolates for my birthday, and only allowing myself to eat out of the house if I had lost weight that week; with the excessive exercising continuing. Once again my diet had changed, with lunch now consisting of a salad and a slice of bread and a thin cold cut of meat for lunch, and a small dinner. Apart from 2 glasses of skimmed milk in the morning (an obsession), I refused to consume liquid calories, even when it was obvious my blood sugar levels were low (my unpronounced record being a non fasting glucose level of 2.3). Yet as a consequence of my photography which requires a lot of physical energy, carrying heavy photography equipment around hills for up to 10 hours a day on Saturdays, a consequence was that on these days I tended to 'binge' as I viewed it, though looking back through the benefit of hindsight they only came to around 2400 calories per day. But the next day I would feel awful from it, and I would restrict heavily, starving myself from after a small Sunday lunch around mid-day to Monday morning. From the first week of April I locked myself inside the house revising for my AS levels, apart from an hour long brisk walk in the morning to satisfy the 'voice'. I revised solidly for 10 hours a day, not allowing myself breaks, with the consequence that my concentration was terrible, I had problems remembering things and I was deeply unhappy. I was withdrawn from all my friends and I was terrified of piling on weight from no activity.


After the exams my depression was terrible, now mostly down to the starvation that was occurring. I didn't want to be around anyone, spending as little time in school as was possible. My diet was changed again, as I began replacing more 'solid' foods with low calorie vegetables. My spare time, which I had a lot of, was spent researching food and nutritional information, basically with the sole intention of scaring myself off certain foods, until in the end my fat, carbohydrate, sugar and salt intakes were as low as I could get them. This summer I only saw one friend, who isn't even from my school. I lost all tolerance for the people around me, and wanted little to do with them despite them being excellent people. When I went on holiday abroad for the first time to Portugal I was constantly worried about my food intake and exercise level, only eating salads and fresh fish, with the consequence being on my first holiday abroad I spent the evenings wandering around an area of a country where I couldn't speak the language and didn't know anyone to be away from my family and sink back into my thoughts. When I had my AS levels back I had AAB, the B in my favourite subject history was only five marks off an A in what I can only say was a horrible exam, and despite the fact I had the highest in the school, even higher than someone who went to Oxford to study history several years back. Yet I felt worthless because of it; the one subject I enjoy the most and I thought I was crap at it, causing my depression to worsen. Once again instead of celebrating with food I only allowed myself a first trip to Nando's, my safe option of chicken.

It's at this point I would like to clear one of the myths surrounding Anorexia Nervosa, that people just don't eat. The average intake of a person with Anorexia Nervosa is 600 – 800 calories. With that you could technically eat a Big Mac, or 6 slices of bread. The extreme cases such as those who only eat an apple or less a day are the ones you hear of because they unfortunately don't tend to make it through recovery. I had lists of safe foods (basically any vegetables with the exception of starchy veg such as potatoes and carrots, with white meat and fish with wholemeal bread for safe carbs) and bad foods (basically fruits including apples for their sugar content and practically everything else). On my 'treat' day I would even allow myself something like a plain McFlurry, provided I exercised excessively after it or restricted heavily to compensate. Anorexia Nervosa isn't an eating problem in the sense that it's a physiological disorder. Also, people with Anorexia Nervosa do not dislike food. One of the side affects of starvation as noted in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment by Ancel Keys, the bloke who demonised saturated fat (basically the anti-christ of everything that tastes nice) is how obsessed people become with food when starved. I spent hours reading menus and calorie and nutritional information of restaurants I'm never going to go to, and playing around on KFC and McDonald's nutritional calculators of combinations I would never touch. In short, my life became consumed by food.


By September I felt rock bottom. I was frequently feeling suicidal, being fatigued, melancholic, withdrawn and suffered from a serious lack of motivation and concentration. I didn't want to be with friends in school, with some seaming to realise something was seriously wrong with me, although they could have put it better than 'why have you lost more weight, just eating a McDonalds'! It was all becoming too much for me, and I spent evenings crying on my own in my room. It was only then I decided to ask for help as I realised if I continued like this I would have ended up dead. Against 'the voice' in my head telling me that nothing was wrong I went and asked for help. My father was extremely concerned about me, and he quickly got me to the doctors. In the meeting she was vague about details, but said she would put a CAMHS referral in for me, which was dated for December 4^th and despite it being obvious in hindsight that I was suffering from a serious eating disorder, she only recorded me as 'suffering with mood'! It seemed as if she was implying that the reason for me losing half my body weight in no time at all was because I was a bit grumpy... All the time I was getting worse, with me experiencing more distressing and dangerous thoughts, and I felt close to fainting frequently as I continued to restrict heavily as I couldn't bring myself to eat for fear of gaining weight. We told the school and they provided a councillor for me, and put in another CAMHS referral. Yet still the appointment wasn't brought forward despite 2 more visits to the GP and more referrals. It was only after a very bad depressive episode after work experience in October half term where I will be honest and say I put a knife to my throat and threatened my family that we basically contacted CAMHS directly. They finally brought the date forward. Then in November I had a breakdown in school in English, and I was forcibly withdrawn from school, and have been off school as seriously ill since then.


When I went for a meeting with them I spent double the allocated time with them, and they brought in a doctor from a meeting as they were concerned with my symptoms. I was showing signs of severe starvation, my weight 9 stone 3, my blood pressure very low and showing signs of severe damage to my body as a consequence of the starvation. At the follow up meeting I lost another pound and the doctor basically said looking at my daily intake I was taking around 900 calories on average, and that if I lost another pound by the following week he would have no choice but to section me over Christmas. Yet only then did someone finally say to me that I suffered from Anorexia Nervosa (and OCD, anxiety and depression, with a very high probability of suffering from an autistic spectrum disorder).

It's at this point I would like to address people's misunderstandings about OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder isn't just obsession with things such as cleanliness, but it an anxiety disorder that compels people to perform rituals to avoid situations that they would find distressing, in my case, gaining weight. My entire day was planned from when I got out of bed at 06.26 in the morning until I went to bed at 21:14, with specific meal times and times when I would go to the toilet. For years before the onset of my Anorexia I also had the feeling that made me think that if I didn't perform certain rituals in my everyday life something awful would happen, such as a family member would die. It seems ridiculous when looking back over it, but this is what OCD forces you to do.

That scare I'm trying to use as the force for change for me. With basically no other choice I was forced to eat 1500 – 2000kcal daily, but even still I was rushed into hospital 4 days before Christmas for vital tests to ensure that it wasn't likely that I wouldn't pop my clogs over Christmas. I was prescribed Fluoxetine (aka Prozac) to treat the depression, anxiety and OCD. I couldn't return to school in January, with my family now realising the seriousness of the problem when I went on a day out with my father and began crying and threatening to hurt myself all because I had a small portion of fish and chips where I didn't know the calorific value. My weight only increased by a pound over Christmas, and following my refusal to eat I was put on Olanzapine to basically force me to gain weight.

Nowadays I spent most of the time zonked out on cloud nine thanks to the Olanzapine. I am now close to a minimum healthy weight for my height and build (11 stone). However, the psychological aspect of my disorder is as strong as ever, and if it wasn't for the medication I would be in my old habits. Nowadays I tend eating wise to be on the other end of the eating spectrum. I find myself binging often as my starved and destroyed body seeks to repair the millions of calories worth of damage it has been done. I'm basically forced by the dietitian to eat 3000 – 4000 calories a day to repair the damage done to me. I miss all my friends from school, and I wish I could say sorry to them for how I become as my illness took over me.

I am writing this because the subject of male anorexia seems to be taboo amongst people, but it shouldn't be. It could happen to any unfortunate person. However, I'm lucky to have the supportive family and friends that I have. I urge any person suffering from eating problems to seek help, it may just save your life like it did to mine.