My name is Laurie. I live in Florida. I’m a Junior in high school. I want to help.

I’m 16. This is my story…

I remember most of my childhood being FAT. Yes, the dreaded “F” word that teachers let you say in school. Most of my life I was tormented by other kids. I think I’ve heard all of the fat jokes. It got to the point that I was scared to go to school. The kids were really mean. They actually HATED me because I was fat. I even had a counselor at my after-school YMCA program make an example of me. She told some other kids that she used to be as big as me. It really hurt me too. Someone who was there to watch over me and make sure I was okay wanted to hurt me in front of other children. I hated my weight. I hated shopping for clothes too. Every time I went clothes shopping my size would get bigger. I finally got to a size 14 at age 11. I was 155 pounds and it was my last year in elementary school.

I really don’t know what happened from there. Some how I got the strength to lose the weight. I did sit-ups and ate healthier. I went from a size 14 to a size 11 in one summer. I was so proud of myself. It was my first year in Junior High School. I kept doing sit-ups and eating what I thought was healthy. I remember one day my mom and I went shopping again and I was a size 9. That was only a few months after school started. That only made me happier.

By the time Christmas rolled around my parents made me stop my sit-ups since they thought “I had lost enough weight.” That upset me more than anything. I remember locking myself in my bathroom and doing my sit-ups in there. I realized it was useless to sneak around so I stopped the exercise. After that, I ate less. Only Fat-Free and extremely Low-Fat foods. I remember at one time I actually cried because I was so hungry. Eventually, my hunger went away. I didn’t have a “taste” for food anymore. I got used to not eating. By the time Christmas was over I was a size 5.

My parents always made me weigh myself when we went to the stores. I hated going shopping because it was like a routine checkup in which if I lost weight I’d get in trouble. My parents wanted me to go to a therapist but I wouldn’t. I didn’t want help. I wanted to be thin. By the end of the school year I was a size 3. Then after a week of a 4-H summer camp that I wanted to go on I came back as a size 0. I remember eventually dropping to a size 00. I still can’t believe they carried that small of a size in the Junior department.

At the beginning of my 7th grade year I was called in to the nurses office. Someone in my school asked the nurse to weigh me. I still don’t know who. She asked me how I was losing weight. I told her I was eating healthy and exercising. She said I was 97 pounds. That was the last time I weighed myself until years later [which I'll talk about soon]. After that I still continued my normal [at least for me] eating habits. My mom and dad still pressed me for counseling so I finally did. It didn’t help. I was relieved that we got a bad therapist. She told my parents I wasn’t anorexic. She said, however, that I may have OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder], and went on to blame my parents for my problems and also said that she really couldn’t do anything else for me because besides my OCD everything was fine [she couldn't prescribe medicine for some reason]. So we left her.

I was happy to be done with that and kept losing weight. I didn’t think I’d have to go to another one but finally did. We went to a whole new place not affiliated with my previous therapist. She was really nice. We talked and she tried to help. She even tried to get me to slowly start eating. I still wouldn’t. Not even a salad! I also had to meet with a psychiatrist. She was the only one who could prescribe me with medicine and diagnose me with whatever I had. She told my parents I was definitely anorexic and that the anorexia was brought on by my OCD. I remember hating my doctor because of that. I couldn’t believe she was trying to say I was anorexic. I didn’t think I was.

She made me take tests at a hospital to check how I had been affected [I'm guessing] by my anorexia. I guess she wanted to prove to me something was wrong since I was too stubborn to realize it myself. After we got the test results I found out this: my heart beat was too slow, I had developed hypothermia from not enough fat in my body [which explained to me why I needed a sweater even in the midst of summer], and my liver had deformities in it from mal-nutrition. That’s when it hit me that I could probably be dead in a few months if I kept going on.

It’s a miracle that I wanted to get better. I never did before. I got to really like my psychiatrist after a while because I knew she wasn’t against me…she was for me…she wanted me to get better. And I kept seeing my therapist too… I loved seeing her…she helped a lot. I was prescribed many pills before I found a combination that would work for me and was on different combos of pills for years. I even fully recovered.

However, this year has started something. I am now 16 [17 in a couple of months] and a Junior in high school. This past summer I weighed myself after my boyfriend asked me to [he wanted me to get over my fear of scales I guess] and something snapped in me. I’ve been dieting again. I eat one low fat meal a day and only fat-free snacks besides that. I do sit-ups too again. I’ve lost a lot of weight in the last 2 months. My parents are worried it’s going to happen again. I even make myself throw up if I eat too much [I've only done it a few times though]. I just did it tonight. I felt like I had too much fat in my Christmas dinner. And it bothers me that I didn’t get to throw it all up [I waited until I could be alone to do it]. And I won’t take my pills anymore. I want to lose weight again. The scary part is that when I think about losing more weight and being maybe a size 3 again….it doesn’t scare me. I’m finding that things are happening now like they did when I was 11-13. I’m confused and alone…but I’m too stubborn and strong-willed to stop. I want to keep losing weight but I don’t want to die. I can’t stop again…I’m lost again…

Related posts:

1. My Battle With Anorexia
2. My Story of Drugs & HPV
3. Escaping the Bondage of Bulimia

by Stephanie

The first time I forced myself to vomit was halfway through my first semester of college. I had restricted my eating and binged through out high school. I went through all four years feeling completely miserable in my body. I never acted on my feelings in a recognizable way until I left home and was able to without anyone noticing.

My roommate and I had ordered pizza that night, having planned to avoid the cafeteria and treat ourselves to something edible. I ate the pizza we ordered until I was uncomfortable. I had done this before and, as usual, was consumed by feelings of guilt, fear and revulsion. I felt like I had to do something, I resolved to not eat again, to exercise twice as hard the next day and of course spent the evening berating myself.

My roommate who I’m sure was fed up with my complaining told me to just throw up if I felt that bad. At that time I had never considered myself as someone with and eating disorder. I thought that every girl secretly hated her body and that I was just honest enough to admit it. When she suggested it, I knew it was a bad idea but it seemed like such a good solution. It was not something that I thought about becoming a habit. Just had to do something to get that feeling out of me.

I took a tongue depressor from a first aid kit I had. I went into the bathroom and shoved the tongue depressor to the back of my throat. I was finally successful. My eyes were burning and teary, My throat hurt, my head hurt and my stomach felt crampy, but I felt better. I felt empty and I confused that emptiness with calm. At that point I really had given up on myself and I don’t think that I was really feeling anything.

I began to exercise twice a day. Running in the afternoon alone and in my room at night with my roommate. We would run barefoot in our underwear in front of a mirror so that we could see how our bodies looked. I was sore all the time, knees ached, hips were tight but I liked it. I enjoyed the pain. It seemed normal, I felt athletic.

I would skip lunch and wait all day for dinner and then gorge myself. I would make sure that I made it back to m;y room in time to throw up before my roommates made it back. I had begun to use a toothbrush to gag myself with. It was easier than using my fingers and no one would notice if I took my toothbrush with me anywhere.

I was always rushing around, hiding from people. The few friends that I made when I first got to school stopped trying after I began acting to strange. The one girl from home who went to the same school was suspicious. I was so tired and grumpy and thin, I knew that she knew something and so I stopped hanging out with her.

When I went home for winter break everything fell apart. I was exhausted. My roommate had dropped out and went home. I was sad that she was leaving, she was really my only friend at school. It was also scary because she was as bad off as I was and I felt OK if she was there. Now I was going to have to do it alone. When I got home I was pretty unbearable. I was so stressed because I couldn’t throw up at home and that was how I had been dealing with stress for the past three months. I was so sensitive and irritated with my friends. We wend out for New Years Eve and got into a huge fight. I was so lost, I had no idea how harsh I was being with them. I had to have my mom come pick me up and I didn’t talk to two of my friends for months. There is still one girl that I’m not friends with anymore.

When I got back to school I knew I had to change things. My friends from home all knew and had told the girl from home that went to school with me, so she was occasionally checking up on me. I think that even though I hated that, I needed it. I also was lucky in that my roommate was recovering from bulimia and she encouraged me to get help. It was in her best interest as well, so she really helped and was supportive. I saw a counselor at the service on campus. She helped me to get out a lot of the bad feelings I was having and to find better ways to deal with them. When I left school in June I was not throwing up any more. I have seen counselors off and over these past four years and it has been two since I threw up last. I still struggle with body image but as I get older I am more able to see that it is not that important and I know now that if I will not be able to keep weight off that I’ve lost, I should not even begin to try to lose it. I had a lot of support and still do.

Related posts:

1. My Story of Anorexia

by Eimear

I’m Eimear and i’m 17 years old.
I thought I’d tell you my story,
hopefully to inspire other people.
I’m very sorry if this upsets anyone.

This all happened about one year ago.
I’ve never been very confident with myself.
I’ve been bullied practically my whole life, because of everything. Being called fat, because i’m shy & because i’m different from other girls.

It was the whole being called fat thing that bothered me more than anything.
My mum and my friends would be like “you’re perfect as you are.”
That wasn’t good enough.

I was fat and i had to admit it to myself.
I guess at that age, your hormones and emotions are everywhere anyway, and i think some girls really become ‘body conscious’.
I no i did.
I went to a seriously dark place.
I wouldn’t come out of my room, i was crying constantly.
I literally locked myself in my room and looked in the mirror, just crying.
I remember pinching my skin and wanting to get a knife and cut it off. Right there and then. I actually tried to. I got a knife and physically tried to cut it off.
(wow this is really hard to write down! i didnt think it would be)

I wasn’t really mature enough to realize about carbs and things like that. My mum didn’t really talk about it much, i just ate what i was given. Didn’t no what was in it.
So to me – everything was fatty and EVERYTHING had to go.
I starved myself locked away in my room i wouldn’t eat.
When i thought I was going to pass out i’d eat a piece of bread.
and i’d FORCE myself not too eat anymore.

My mum would make my meals but it wasn’t strange for me to eat in my room – i’d done that since i was about 13.
So i’d take my meals up as usual.
I’d hide food in my room and at night i’d take it outside to get rid of it.
It’s fair to say I’d become quite the expert.
this went on for about a week.
My mum came upstairs before I’d managed to take the food outside and she found it.
I tried to convince her it was the right thing to do.
I remember saying “mum its no big deal, i just wanna be thin.”
I remember a lot of crying and shouting, my mum just broke down.

She didn’t take me to the doctors – not straight away.
She didn’t want to admit her daughter had a problem – she’s very old fashioned.
So, she started making me sit downstairs for three meals a day.
I ate them. To make her think i was okay now.
But, for the second and third meal of the day – thats where the being sick started.
I ate breakfast, ‘cos i thought ‘it cant be THAT bad for me’
but for dinner and tea, id eat it and be sick. She had no idea.
At dinner time she made me come home from school to eat.

So about 2-3 months down the line, i looked seriously ill. – i can see that now.
I weighed 5 stone. I did weigh 9 stone.
That’s how much weight i lost in about 2-3 months.
Not good, i realise that now.
But i thought i looked amazing.
I was finally thin like all the girls at school.
But it was strange, i thought if i was like them, they’d hang out with me and talk to me.
But they didn’t. I was stilll an outcast.
So i thought “maybe i’m still fat.”
Stupid, i no that now, but at the time, i genuinly thought i was.

Cut a long story short, it got so bad i was in a coma.
Put into hospital where i had to force fed by nurses.

not a nice thing

i had counselling and help.
it was a very long process
and i’m happy to say, i feel ok now.
I’m still only 6-7 stone.
But i’m happy.
sometimes i feel i look chubby.
But i don’t think about it too much.
i’m just enjoying my life.
yeah, there’s still the bullying and yeah people look at me funny since they know about my problem.
but i can live with that.
i wouldn’t change what i have now for the world.
dying to be thin nearly ended my life.
the doctors didn’t think i’d make it.
and now i realise that nothing could make me wanna do that again.

for all those people out there who are struggeling – you can do it.
you just need realisation that you’re NOT fat.
there’s NO perfect body type out there
& seriously, EVERYONE is PERFECT
listen to that – i didn’t and it almost ruined my life.
don’t let it ruin yours too

Related posts:

1. My Story of Anorexia